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.

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.

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.

It’s an idea I revisit often noting that the grandest improvisers I know are always immigrants. Immigrants who are rarely reliant on manuals, directions, courses, or packaged kits, because such inventions are over packaged frills for settled people, not fluid, transcendental, adapting newbies(ish). “We are still building our house on sticky foundation, so we bring our roots with us…or we make use of what we find”.

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.

We will regularly be presenting a featured artist, writer or performer who is exploring questions of identity and personal narrative through their medium of expression.

The map is your representation. No rigid lines, no defined routes. You direct it on your own account.