Longing for a Homeland We Have Never Seen

I was listening to Princess Noor Pahlavi’s heartfelt remarks at the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway. Her words stirred something strange in me, particularly when she spoke of her own experience: ‘I have never set foot in my country. I have never walked its streets or touched its soil.’ Those few simple sentences set a question ringing in my mind. I was reminded of the saying: ‘Words that come from the heart will surely find their way to another heart.’

Why should the words of someone who has never seen Iran touch us so deeply? Princess Noor Pahlavi was speaking about her own life, but my thoughts turned to the many young women and men born into Iranian families far from Iran. They have never run through its alleyways or breathed its air. Yet some of them take to the streets of other cities, in cold weather and in heat, giving up leisure and time in their youth to raise their voices for Iran’s freedom. Why?

Is love of one’s homeland inherited? Can we long for somewhere of which we have no personal memories? These questions stayed with me. I spoke to several people and asked why they loved Iran. Their answers seemed simple: they said they had grown up with their parents’ memories, with the songs and familiar sounds of home. To understand this, I turned to academic research.

Inherited longing

The children of immigrants do not know Iran only through history books. Iran has been present in the Persian language, the smell of food, the songs heard at home, Nowruz and Yalda, old photographs and their parents’ stories. A child born in London may have no memories of Shiraz or Tehran, yet may have spent years living with stories of a home in those cities. Before Iran is a place on a map, it is the voices of the people they love.

In her research, ‘Nostalgia Without Memory’ (https://cms.mit.edu/nostalgia-without-memory-iranian-americans/), Talieh Rohani explores how second-hand family memories and media can create a connection to an unseen homeland among second-generation Iranian Americans. Neda Maghbouleh, too, discusses ‘inherited nostalgia’ in a study (https://doi.org/10.1080/07256861003606382) of second-generation Iranian Americans. But this inheritance is not genetic. No one is born remembering an alleyway they have never seen. Stories and feelings are passed on through shared life, and children reshape them for themselves.

Marianne Hirsch uses the term ‘postmemory’ (https://www.mariannehirsch.org/postmemory) to describe the next generation’s connection to the profound, sometimes traumatic experiences of the generation before: experiences the younger generation comes to know through the stories, images and behaviour of their elders. The concept cannot be extended to every cultural attachment, but it can help us understand the shadow of exile in some families. A child may not have experienced the pain of being forced to leave their homeland, yet may have lived for years with their parents’ grief.

Of course, the picture built from family memories does not always capture the whole reality of Iran. Sometimes it is more beautiful and less painful than everyday life there; at other times, news of repression and present-day hardships shatters that cherished picture. The younger generation can form a view of its own. Belonging to Iran does not mean having no sense of belonging to the country of one’s birth. A young person may well consider both places home, sometimes be regarded as ‘foreign’ in the society where they were born, and still ask: ‘Who am I?’

Homeland is the name of people we have never met

For some, longing is above all a longing for people: a grandmother they have known only through a phone screen; a grandfather who died before their first meeting; relatives whose voices are familiar, but whose embrace is not. Migration can keep a family apart despite constant contact. In such a life, the question ‘What would have happened if my parents had not been forced to leave?’ is more than regret for the past; it is grief for an opportunity that never arose.

From longing to choosing freedom

Yet loving Iran does not, in itself, explain why a young person works for its freedom. Their struggle is not necessarily about recreating a past they have never seen. It may be about realising values they experience every day in their own lives: freedom of expression, equality and human dignity. Someone who can protest without fear may ask why a person of their own generation in Iran must pay so dearly for the same right. Here, a family connection can become a conscious choice grounded in human rights.

A study (https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2025.13) of activism among Iranians abroad during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement has also shown that hope, collective memory and identity play a part in their political action. Of course, not all children of immigrants long for Iran; not everyone who does becomes politically active; and not everyone shares the same vision of the country’s future. Nor are the motivations of the two generations necessarily opposed. Some use their own freedom to be a voice for their peers in Iran.

My homeland is my longing

Now I understand why Princess Noor Pahlavi’s words made me stop and think. The first generation may long for a homeland they lived in and left behind; some in the next generation long for a homeland they have not yet had the chance to live in. One preserves a memory; the other wants, one day, to make memories of their own.

Perhaps one day these young women and men will be able to travel to Iran without fear, see its alleyways with their own eyes rather than in photographs, and lay their hands on the soil whose name they have heard for so many years. On that day, ‘My homeland is my longing’ may no longer be merely a sigh from afar; it may mark the beginning of a meeting for which several generations have waited.

And what could be a more human wish than that no child should have to seek their parents’ homeland only in their memories?