Hello My Name is Holden and I'm Here to Say Goodbye

I'm just not in the mood these days

Dear Readers,

I think I’m going to quit this forum. At least for a while. Not writing in it stresses me out. I’ve written this post multiple times. Most of those times in the form of a lament for why I can’t or don’t want to write anymore. It included banal things like I developed de quervain’s tenosynovitis (and it apparently has now afflicted both wrists so yay for me!) A “fun” party trick when asked why my right wrist was in a brace was to ask: when typing, what key do you hit the most and with what finger? Weirdly writers often said the letter T; non writers often said the space bar with your thumb. Ding Ding Ding! One for the non-writers. It also included less banal things like the accumulated exhaustion from the cruelty of the world in 2025 (and 2024 and 2023.) But let’s be honest: why I have, for lack of a better word, writer’s block is not interesting, not even to me.

I don’t fully know why I don’t want to write here anymore, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I’ve come to despise Substack. I came to it during Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement where I got to write what I wanted to write. During that time, I, like others in my field, was constantly approach by various media asking for my analysis, asking for my opinions but that analysis and that opinion could only be expressed as long as it intersected with what the editors of these newspapers and radio shows already thought they knew about Iran. I don’t mind being edited but I do mind being told that my analysis doesn’t align with that of people who don’t know Persian, don’t know Iran, or otherwise I have very little respect for. Writing in my own Substack gave me a space to write what I wanted, and it was exhilarating. But as the world turned and it became crueler and more AI sloppy, I lost my desire to talk to it. And this medium that was meant to democratize and free up writing ended up being not an open vista where one could see the horizon but paywall after paywall after paywall. People should get paid for their labor. Absolutely. But should everything we write—random thoughts bulletpointed to ChatGPT and spat out in the world’s flatest form of prose—demand a price? I guess I’m just not in the mood anymore.

In 2025 I had the great privilege to spend a month at the Rockefeller foundation’s Bellagio Center. As a graduate student in the 1990s I had wondered if I would ever reach the heights that to me back then was this fellowship. And now I got to be part of that. There I got to meet all kinds of people that the Rockefeller foundation calls change makers. The kind of changes the fellows want to make in the world will undoubtedly make the world a better place. I learned so much and I am in awe of their abilities to turn ideas into forces that transform the world. Not many of us get to spend time with dreamers. I’m very lucky that I did.

But two of them left an indelible mark on me at this moment in life. In meeting and befriending J. I came to understand what it actually means to be a writer. Not the kind of writing that AI does and which apparently now even literature students prefer. And not the kind encompassed by the dictum that anyone can write. Rather than be intimidated by such immense talent, I feel comforted by it, and by the knowledge that sure, maybe everyone can write but not everyone can produce the capacious and enduring Literature that she does. Anyone can write but only a few can make a baseball loving 11-year-old mesmerized by the dreams of a brown girl. In a democratizing, AI slopping, boringly written world, I cling to the fact that some individuals are singular and not like the rest. Maybe I’ve just watched too much Pluribus.

M. also has deeply seeped into my thinking. I am in awe of her openness to a world of readers and listeners—total strangers—that she interacts with in a manner that is curious and honest. When M. asks a question (and she asks many), you don’t wonder if she’s just asking something to fill up time. You wonder why you’re so lucky she’s asking you. And she does the thing I’ve been really struggling with: Being open and gracious towards the world while boundaried and private. And curious in a world that seems to have turned its back on knowledge and is just spitting out useless, pointless, and damaging opinions masquerading as facts.

Perhaps I’m naïve or perhaps truly privileged but I had never realized how much ambition these days is wrapped in the art of the hustle. You must constantly hustle and perform. Perform and hustle. The realization has turned me into a Holden Caulfield like person and I don’t mean that in a good way. Just in a descriptive way.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t know. I swear I don’t. But when I sat down to half write half dictate this post, I promised myself to be more confessional, to be a bit less withdrawn, to just write as if no one is watching, and see how it feels. And let me tell you: I don’t like it. Not one bit. As I said: Holden Cau…

My withdrawal is not motivated by just laments and complaints. Part of this phase I’m going through has been going back to paper. I’m re-reading The English Patient. Or rather re-reading the copy I’ve had since 1996 when I first read it in Cairo. I bought it second hand after people called Linda and Al gifted it to someone. They in turn sold it to a secondhand bookstore. Some of its yellowed pages are still crinkly from the downpour of tears that occurred as I made my way through it the first time. So far, not a tear has been shed. “Maybe I’m just dead inside,” I suggest to my husband. He guffaws.

A copy of Wuthering Heights awaits me next though I’m worried, to quote my guffawing other half, it’s a bag of snakes waiting for me to stick my hand in. I read it first as a teenager in 1980s Iran and was overwhelmed by the love of Heathcliff and Catherine. I’m worried this that time around, I’ll keep rolling my eyes at Heathcliff.

Perhaps instead I’ll finally read The Left Hand of Darkness. I’ve always been in awe of the first page: “The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the facts you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.”

Recently, I saw a play called Christmas Day. It surprised me. I didn’t think a play about Jewish-London identity would. A character talks about how god had to withdraw in order to create. Otherwise, everything would be god, leaving no room for creation. Am I using this story as a parable for my own desire to withdraw a bit? Yes, kinda. Not the god part. But I have so much fury and anger. I need to make some space, if not to create than just to breathe.

Truth is, I lied. I do have one more post in me. It’s about bananas, Thousand Island dressing, and potato chips. I promise to share it before I go. And a promise is a promise. Especially when made to such lovely readers like you.