What Is an Adult Problem That Nobody Prepared You For?

Last month, on a rainy May day, I had just sat down to put together a collective letter to the art institutions in Finland, calling upon them to issue a statement of solidarity with the people of Palestine and to use their power and resources to apply pressure on the Finnish government to condemn Israel’s settler colonialism and demand an end to the occupation. I wasn’t necessarily hopeful that the letter would do anything or that many artists would agree to sign it. After all, most of the time, being political in this art scene is a matter of one’s mood. It is a choice that many feel they have.

While I was working on the letter, I kept getting phone calls and text messages from my aunts in Tehran, telling me about their problems with one another. In January 2020, I lost my grandfather, and soon after, the whole family started falling apart. Every day, petty fights and conflicts erupted over things I couldn’t care less about, but they were matters of life and death to them. Sisterhoods, held so dear, were getting trashed and torn down, taking with them the memories I had so persistently hung on to of the once tight-knit family I had grown up with. My poor attempts at mediation were not only going anywhere, but they were making things worse. Once, I was a little tipsy, and in a ridiculously good mood, so I suggested Auntie A approach Auntie B—who was enraged with her over some shit—the way Shahrukh Khan would, with love. I promised that love would be the answer to everything and that if they talked to each other from a place of love and affection, which I was sure they had for each other, they could find a way to forgiveness and reconciliation that would take them back to whatever half-assed normal relationship they had before my grandpa’s passing. My post-advice self-gratification didn’t last long as my Bollywood-inspired master plan failed miserably, and I was politely asked to step down from my position as the wise diasporic problem solver. In other words, they asked me to shut the fuck up and let them unload on each other whatever pain and anger they had suppressed to avoid upsetting the family patriarch. Now that he’s gone, what’s the point of concealing decades-old grudges and resentments?

The phone calls ended, and I looked at the letter in front of me. I’m useless at dealing with even the most trivial of domestic dramas. What brings me to think I can do anything meaningful in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle? I’ve had similar thoughts before, usually when I’ve gotten into an argument with a male family member about their unfortunate, misogynist ways of thinking. How can I proudly bear the title of being a feminist when I’m incapable of holding my own in a conversation with my own father/brother/uncle, etc. to make them understand why what they have said or done can be considered misogynistic without giving up halfway through the conversation/battle?

Isn’t it true that most of us feel like failures when bringing about change in our circle of loved ones? We cannot afford to live up to our politics and values for the most part. Wasn’t it Marx who desired that his daughter marry into a wealthy elite family and that his wife always wear a red shade of lipstick? Wasn’t Arendt a racist who wrote in support of segregation in the US South, praised colonialism, and called it a “form of achievement” carried out in “exotic countries”? I could have used a course in art university curricula that focused solely on preparing students to deal with the hypocrisies, offenses, and sometimes outright crimes committed by the star artists and thinkers they’ve been taught to learn from/cite/idolize/hold exhausting reading sessions and panel discussions on, and so on. We haven’t been taught how to come to terms with such disappointments, whether in ourselves, our friends and family, or in those whose politics and practise we admire and look up to. We haven’t been taught what to take from them and what to leave behind. We haven’t been taught what to expect, from whom to expect it, and when. We write “Call for Action” letters to fight against things we’re suffering from, be it climate change, racism, or Israeli apartheid. We address those letters to individuals instead of institutions and governing bodies with actual power and control over these issues. We are disappointed in these bodies, so we put the burden on our own, becoming unpaid agents of Neoliberalism, unwillingly and unknowingly. An adult problem that nobody prepared you for.

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This editorial has been annoying me for a while. I started it in May and finished it today, a day before publishing the fourth issue. Why? I don’t know. I guess June has not been the easiest month for me. Those of us growing up in Iran who at some point or still were sympathetic to the Iranian Reform Movement of the late 90s and early 2000s call this time of the year “خرداد پرحادثه” which translates to “eventful/momentous June.” One reason for this is that the Iranian Presidential elections happen every four years in June. They are always a major spectacle of power struggles, at times promising and, at times, like this year, frustrating and devoid of any hope. This year, my eventful June/Mercury Retrograde came with an overload of work, romantic disenchantments, overwhelming expectations from others, a thesis presentation, and my 32nd birthday, celebrated next to the sweetest of feminist allies in Stockholm with a mud cake and a birthday present from Vidha. She gave me an embroidery of the word ‘Nonsense,’ a catchphrase of hers that I’ve come to love and parrot after using her tone. I’m going to frame it and hang it in my flat as a constant reminder of many things. Not everything I say, write, or do has to make sense at the time I say, write, or do it, this editorial included.

The other day, a friend of mine whom I mentioned in my previous editorial called me. The one who had the overly ambitious plan I tried to tone down because I thought there was no way in hell it could be taken seriously at this point in her career. She told me she got the grant she had applied for and mentioned that she didn’t tone anything down. Then she suggested that I give the update here, and since I’m ending the text addressing ‘nonsense’ and that of my own in particular, I thought I should listen to her.