Things Aren't Great. Here Are Some Survival Tips
Or five useful hacks from 1980s Iran to make it through the winter of our discontent
By now most, if not all, of you lovelies here know that I grew up in Iran in the 1980s, right after the revolution. (If this is news to you: surprise!) The decade was one of a newborn Islamic Republic flexing its repressive muscles to the max and a bloody war with Iraq that provided an urgent need—or so the argument went—for that repressive flexing.
My point is that I’m well trained for this moment that we’re in and have found myself reaching for the survival mechanisms I acquired from my years of living, sometimes dangerously, sometimes not, in Iran.
Here are five life hacks/survival tips/nuggets of wisdom from me to you:
The most important life hack I learned was: only answer the question you are asked. Not a word more. If you are asked: How are you? The answer is a yes or no. If you are asked: Are you in pain? The answer is a yes or no. It’s simple and yet so crucial. It has served me well in life—crossing borders (literally, though of course it has served me well crossing metaphorical borders too) and being questioned by border folks. “Are you bringing in a carpet?” “No,” shortens the time you spend in secondary questioning in the airport. “Do I look like I can afford a carpet? And also, do you ask everyone that question or just those born in Iran?” definitely lengthens the time one spends in the airport.
There is one instance, though, that I do regret adhering to this principle a little too closely. In 1993, when on an Iranian passport but with a US green card, I was asked by a UK border person if I were planning on getting pregnant during my weeklong visit to London. I dutifully responded, “No.” In retrospect, I should have said: “WHAT THE HELL? Are you crazy? I’m 21 and in college. Also, why do you care?! Also, would I even know if I’m pregnant in that week? Doesn’t it take longer to show?!!”
Sadly, all these questions have remained unanswered for over 30 years.
Now let’s suppose you are asked “Are you in pain?” and you are. So you say yes. The next thing to know is that the answer to “Where does it hurt?” has to be vague—unless you are, of course, about to keel over and are thus in a hospital and talking to a medical expert—and even then, try to avoid the direct response as much as you can. I was often told that there’s a well-known expression in Persian that if, let’s say, your stomach hurts and someone asks you if you’re in pain and you say yes, and they say “Where?” you should say your head or your arm or anywhere but your stomach, as your stomach is too close to your genitals and it’s not polite to talk about your genitals when asked “How are you?”
Now that I’m older and wiser, I understand that there is no such expression… how would you even begin to turn such wisdom into a pithy sentence or two? But the point remains.
We have so much anxiety these days about how our choices are retracting. Our liberties vanishing. Reminds me of when we had just immigrated to America and in my AP social science class (or whatever it was called for AP), the teacher and the students kept going on and on about how the most important thing was choice and the freedom to choose. And how in America, freedom was our #1 jam. I was a new immigrant, so who was I to dispute this? But I did think of the first time I went to a supermarket after having spent the ’80s with wartime food rationing, and staring at the shelves of food, paralyzed by the choices in front of me. “What’s the point of choice,” I was about to blurt out in class, “if people don’t have the tools they need to make the right choices?” But I remembered the golden rule: I wasn’t asked a question, so I provided no answers.
My dad always said: Why reject yourself when others will do that for you? Meaning: Don’t take yourself out of the game preemptively. Don’t assume you can’t do something before trying to do it. Don’t assume you’re not qualified. Always take a chance. It’s not your job to reject yourself.
Obviously, this isn’t a survival tip for this moment we’re in, but a tip for survival in all moments, good and bad.
The author was having fun watching Jarvis Cocker, 62 years young, bend, sing, and not fall.
Have fun! Always! I’ve been quite perplexed by this notion that because we’re in such a precarious, dangerous, soul-crushing, human-killing, speech-restricting, surveillance-expanding, climate-destroying world, we must all be performatively—or actually—glum. When it comes to the Middle East, we love to celebrate the ways in which people engage in acts of joy even as the world tumbles. We don’t present it as frivolous but as resistance. To have fun in the face of repression is good, is brave, and is to be celebrated. Shouldn’t that be the case always and elsewhere? (Except for in the movie The Matrix Reloaded. That dance should never have happened. It’s the one case where I can’t celebrate their fun…)
Most parts of the world don’t have the choice to be glum because the cause of glumness is so pervasive that to be glum means to give up. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but if you feel you have the choice to be glum or not, then you still have more choices than you realized—and apparently, that’s a good thing.
