The Unfamiliar

Hasti Hashemian 

February 4, 2023

ESLITNG 100 

The Unfamiliar 

 in Chicago everything is different, the streets, the faces, the sounds, the weather, the words flowing around me, and how people act in certain situations. It is all different from what I know and I’m used to. Tehran, the capital of Iran, is where I was born and raised, so I know my way around that city very well. Growing up, I lived in different neighborhoods. I spent hours walking those streets first with my mom, and as I got older with my friends, just talking and looking around. We would walk so much that my feet would start to hurt, but I didn’t mind because it was always my favorite thing to do. I know Tehran, and everything is predictable for me there, and that is why that city gives me a feeling of safety, a feeling I have yet to experience ever since I moved to Chicago. 

When I was living in Tehran, I was able to memorize paths very easily. Ever since I was little, I was good at remembering the addresses of places I visited even just once, but coming to Chicago it has been a hard task for me. I feel like all the buildings mostly look the same, and all the streets have the same length and size. Even though I use maps on my phone most of the time, I am unable to find my way around, so I start walking in the opposite direction, that has rarely ever happened to me before. This is probably because of Tehran’s mountains, which cover the whole north side of the city. However, Chicago does not have mountains to tell me which way is the north. When I’m trying to hurry to a place, I get stressed by the unfamiliar, and something like that did not happen to me back in Tehran.

Because moving away from the place a person has grown up in can also leave someone searching for details more like what they have known their whole life. I have been doing the same for the past few months, I find myself looking for similar to mine in the crowds, and the red-bricked houses of Tehran I miss, finding hyacinths in flower shops that remind me of Persian new year. Just listening to the different languages around me hoping to hear a familiar word. Doing all of these would make me feel like I’m surrounded by the same predictable place where I know and have learned how to deal with everything that comes my way, interestingly enough, unconsciously, I used to find comfort in the same surroundings I wished to get away from.

Therefore, being in a new city has changed me. It made me hyper-focused on my surroundings and everything going on around me. When I’m outside in the city and while I’m fully aware of the fact that I should not stare, sometimes I can’t help but look at the lives of the people around me. I still look for bits of relationships I love and have lost close contact with by coming here to The United States. like two girls sitting on the train whispering and laughing about something only the two of them know or a father and daughter just walking down the street together.

Although everything is different in the city of Chicago, it has made me step out of my comfort zone. Now I try not to predict things that are out of my control. It made me aware of all the things I walked past all my life and didn’t pay enough attention to. it is the things that represent a normal way of life in Tehran. Now I get to walk new streets for hours. Even though I find all of them to be the same, I try to find my feeling of safeness in the unfamiliar.