Michael Jackson seemed crushed under a weight of identity: black/man/star/brother/father/son. Add philanthropist/media-victim and -manipulator/accused pederast/primate owner/fashionista and dancer. Owner of, and now perhaps a returnee to, Neverland.

I keep waiting for the moment when I say: “yes, this is where I’m from, this is what my culture means, this is a connection I’ve been waiting for all this time. Everyone I meet keeps saying, “yes you are Canadian, but you belong to India” – which just heightens the disconnect between what I want to feel and how I actually feel.

Whatever the results of the election, over the course of the past five days, I have been overwhelmed by the courage of Iranians as they peacefully demonstrate across Iran in protest. It is therefore frustrating to see Iranians in the diaspora projecting their own politics onto the situation, using this moment to smear Mousavi, retreating into the battle lines of 1979, or speaking condescendingly of voiceless rural masses whose votes can be bought with a potato.

Iranians in Tehran and countless other cities are testimony; Ahmadinejad’s gamble has failed. What ever the result of the political turmoil that has unfolded in Iran, Iranians have proved to themselves – and the world – that the spirit that moved mountains 30 years ago is still living.

These are my people, and yet there is an unreality about being here that occupies most moments. I feel as though time and place are suspended. I never know what time it is, either here or at home, and my head spins from the difference in time – day feels like night, and my stomach growls while I sleep.

Bored by the main street, I wandered off into a labyrinth of back lanes housing street side food stalls and tiny children running around on the dusty paths…Landmarks that I thought I were markings in my head disappeared, and the sun’s rays started to beat down hotter and hotter. I realized there were no street names, and precious few women around.

Street signs can give us insight into a character of a place– reflecting the instructions of local authorities or indicators of commercial interests or something else altogether.
Sometimes informative, sometimes downright strange.
Share the street signs from where you dwell or roam.

On June 12, Iranians will go to the polls to elect a President. On the ground, this is one of the most contentious elections in the thirty-year history of the Islamic Republic. With glitzy campaign videos, a so-called green wave taking the over Tehran’s streets, nightly riots between the supporters of the two frontrunners, and brazen accusations of corruption and lies unfolding on the first-ever televised debates between candidates, election fervor has gripped Iran.

As much as President Obama’s speech in Cairo has been branded as one “to the Muslim world”-whatever that might mean-it is certainly a speech whose audience spanned across a much larger swath of the world. In terms of signaling substantive policy changes for the peoples of that world, there is not much to count on. Much of the lip service is the same as that of the Bush era. We are not fighting Islam, but rather extremists-yes, Bush said that. We want the Muslim world to prosper-yes, Bush said that. We care about the oppressed sectors of your society-women, religious minorities, etc. Yes, Bush said that too. The main difference thus far is that not enough time has yet passed for the disparity between words and action to become irreconcilable (the disparity between words and words, though, is another story, as Obama dubbed the misogynist and racist monarch of Saudi Arabia to be full of wisdom just a single day before he went to Cairo).

Special blog contribution by film maker and journalist Arshad Khan. His observations during the filming of his latest project, Daraar: Fault Line, are chronicled in this piece, Health Diagnosis Pakistan: Obvious psychological pathology however complete and utter denial of any and all problems.