Artist Ali Banisadr on his grandmother‘s house, Tehran

My grandmother’s house. I grew up in Iran until I was 12, so I was born in ’76. So, I lived there ’til ’88. It was, like, a big place, three floors. There was roof. There was backyard. I mean, it wasn’t luxurious or anything. It was just old and big. The backyard, I remember, there was, like two little swimming pools with swans, and there was, like, animals, like chickens and birds and things like that. On the roof, there was, like, a shed, and inside the shed, where, like, me and my cousins would go inside of, it was full of birds, and there was a lot of them. And when we would go in there, they would get scared, and they were, like, flying around everywhere. And we would just cover our faces and just, like, walk through and just, like, having, I don’t know, having this abstract kind of, like, memory of, like, birds’ wings and flying and stuff. I think maybe, after a while, they maybe got used to us. I can’t remember. But then, like, in the backyard, we had, like, other birds, like song birds and chickens. I mean, you could just, like, hear birds all the time singing and stuff. I would go over there all the time, and like, you know, maybe my cousin was there, maybe my uncle was there, maybe, like, so-and-so. And then you would always kinda, like, walk into a situation, where people are sitting around the table, and they’re just, like, talking about something. Someone’s cooking something and someone’s eating and the smell is just, like, traveling through the house. Like every part of the house you would go to, there would be something different happening, so like, it just felt like there was all these different worlds within worlds, you know? Had all these different dimensions to it and different, like, old dressers that you would open up. And, like, there was like an old box, and you would open it up and there’ll be, like, old photos and, like, books and, I don’t know, like some porcelain sculptures. And we’re like what is, whose, whose was this? And who are these people? So like, there you had a box of memories, whenever I was there. Like it just felt like I went to a totally different zone or something, like I entered a different portal where everything felt fine and safe.