Forouz Salari (00:00)
Welcome to Grown Between Worlds, a podcast for adult children of immigrants and the people who love them. We're here to hold real conversations about identity, belonging, love, and life across cultures.
Miranda Ramnarayan (00:13)
And we're committed to creating a space that feels grounding, honest, and human. Each conversation here touches on sensitive themes, which may feel deep or tender. We invite you to listen or watch at your own pace and take good care of yourself.
Forouz Salari (00:27)
I'm Forouz. And I'm Miranda.
Miranda Ramnarayan (00:29)
And I'm Miranda.
We're so glad you're on this journey with us.
Forouz Salari (00:35)
Hi everybody, welcome to today's episode. Today's guest is Rayan Anton. He is a queer trans-Palestinian man and the child of an immigrant family who moved to Canada in the early 1990s. He is a registered social worker and psychotherapist working predominantly with queer and trans youth of colour, many of whom are also from immigrant families. He's also a parent to a young child and is often thinking about what it means to hold on to cultural identity for himself and to pass it on to his son.
in a society that is determined to erase Palestinian culture and identity. Welcome, Rayan We're so happy to you here today.
Rayan Anton (01:11)
Bye, Forouz Thanks for having me.
Forouz Salari (01:14)
So tell us a bit about what your personal connection is to immigration.
Rayan Anton (01:18)
Yeah, so as I said by bio, I'm the child of an immigrant family. we came here when I was two ⁓ and we came from Palestine. ⁓ And this might come up a few times in this conversation, but we came from like the parts of Palestine that we refer to as the 48 Land So the parts that are currently claimed by Israel. ⁓ So it's not like the West Bank, it's not Gaza. So which is why we had in many ways that the privilege to immigrate ⁓
But at the same time, as you can imagine, ⁓ so I call it a bit of a forced migration, because my family was definitely seeking safety. Yeah, so my family and I, came here when I was young and took a pretty long time to get Canadian citizenship for reasons that are complex. ⁓
Forouz Salari (01:53)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (02:07)
And again, because I'm from the, as I said, the 48 Land I did have the privilege of being able to go back and visit quite a bit as a kid. ⁓ while I didn't live there for years, I do have like a strong connection to the homeland and I spent a lot of time there and familiar with getting around. So yeah, I wouldn't say I'm an immigrant myself, but I kind of get the experience of living between two worlds. That part, yes. ⁓
Forouz Salari (02:35)
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I can understand that being so young, you probably didn't have ⁓ conscious or vivid memories of the actual immigration process and maybe the yearly settlement process. ⁓ But I'm sure you've kind of felt the impacts of it in different ways throughout your life. Yeah.
Rayan Anton (02:53)
Yeah, something
we talk about even in therapy sessions with clients is we might not have conscious memories of these things but they definitely played a role in our ⁓ in our formation in our nervous systems and also I think like growing up and seeing your parents go through immigration which is hard on anyone who's immigrated I'm sure can attest to this it's just a difficult process and seeing that ⁓ has an impact on the kids so that's why like child immigrants makes more sense for me.
Forouz Salari (03:06)
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So tell us now as an adult, what is the cultural, ethnic, or national identity that you claim, and how is your journey at arriving at this identity?
Rayan Anton (03:23)
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it's a really good question. ⁓ So now when I introduce myself, or like when I talk about myself, I say I'm Palestinian and a Palestinian settler here in so-called Canada. ⁓ And this is such an interesting question because over my life, it's changed so many times. I remember when I was a kid and we came to Canada, ⁓ I remember Palestine being like a...
constant topic in the home, know, we're Palestinian and you know talking about displacement and all that stuff. I noticed after the years went on and I think my parents were getting used to being here, I noticed they were talking about it less and I remember one time my mom saying don't tell anyone you're Palestinian and I can't remember how old I was, under the age of 10 and I remember being pretty confused about that because until that point it was something we were kind of proud of.
So then to be told, don't tell anyone in Palestinian, no explanation, was pretty confusing. I can't remember, I was like, well, what do I tell her that we are? I don't remember what she said. I think she said you can say you're white. And I was like, well, are we white? Anyway, a whole conversation about that. And then I'm a relatively like, I do look white, like, you know, could pass in many white cultures.
I think for many years when I was a kid, I didn't not identify as Palestinian. And I just, I didn't identify as anything, weirdly. just kind I think I knew I was Arab. So the word Arab also got floated around as a more like an umbrella term that I fit into, but was not as vulnerable as Palestinian. So I...
Forouz Salari (05:05)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (05:14)
So these days I do identify as Arab, as Palestinian, ⁓ and those words both feel accurate for me. ⁓ Sometimes I will ⁓ say that I'm also like from a Christian Palestinian background, ⁓ which is something that is like a tricky one because on the one hand it is an accurate description of who my family is and it does feel culturally significant. And there's been a lot of erasure of Christian Palestinians ⁓ in like media and
And I also don't want people to assume a Muslim just because I'm not and I would be falsely claiming that but I usually don't say that I'm Christian Palestinian because that has also been a narrative that's been used to boost Islamophobia. There's like a and I would not want to be you know to me like Christian and Muslim Palestinians are both just Palestinian and that's how I experience our culture but in the Middle East Christianity has also been used.
Forouz Salari (06:00)
Hmm.
Rayan Anton (06:14)
in a superiority sort of way, I think. So anyway, that's a very long answer to my identity. ⁓ So these days I just say Palestinian.
Forouz Salari (06:25)
Okay, well I appreciate you sharing that. You're right, like there is so much complexity to our identities and they are very multifaceted and it's hard to kind of find just one or two or a few different words that accurately represents who we actually are and even like accurately and effectively communicates ⁓ any real thing about us. Yeah, yeah.
And I can relate to kind of that conversation of don't really talk about kind of where you're from. I think for me, for my family, was after 9-11 that we had, we started to have this conversation when I was a teenager around don't necessarily identify openly as Iranian just let, just don't talk about it at all. And so I remember for the majority of my
adolescence because of kind of the rise in Islamophobia and kind of discrimination against people from the SWANA region, the Southwestern ⁓ Asia and North Africa, or also many people call Middle East, that it didn't always feel safe to claim my Iranian identity as well. because like you, also very white passing.
⁓ I kind of didn't say anything and for many, many years I was often read as, ⁓ you know, from ⁓ South America, from Central America, ⁓ from, I was read as like Portuguese or Spanish or Greek or Italian and I didn't really correct people for many years until I was like an adult, even in my early adulthood to finally be like, no, I'm of Iranian descent. I immigrated from Iran. I have...
Rayan Anton (07:56)
so many places.
Forouz Salari (08:16)
conscious memory of that. I'm settled like you in Canada and I have Canadian citizenship as well. So I guess I'm Iranian Canadian.
Rayan Anton (08:25)
I didn't know that you had such a similar experience with that part. It's good to talk about these things. I don't think I had friends who understood that experience growing up. To your point, I think I understand now why my mom said, don't tell people you're Palestinian. She didn't explain, which is not her fault. She's probably doing her best. But it was probably because of 9-11, which is why I also back to the religion piece because...
Forouz Salari (08:44)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rayan Anton (08:50)
You know, in a way, although I'm not Muslim, I do kind of in some ways experience Islamophobia because people just assume I'm Muslim and therefore I sort of experience it, even though I'm not technically. So I think it well, I mean, you know, I think Islamophobia since 9-11 and before it, I'm sure has affected a lot of people, even like South Asian people who are like Hindu experience Islamophobia because everyone just, you know, white people lump all sort of brown people into like one category. ⁓
Forouz Salari (09:12)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's this definitely this like conflation happening between these different kind of identities, regions of the world experiences. ⁓ And a lot of it is is like very much fear based right ⁓ in the cultures and communities and countries and societies that we settled after immigration. Yeah, yeah. Okay. ⁓
How do you think your immigrant background has shaped the choices that you've made in love, career, or life overall? And has that influence shifted over time for you?
Rayan Anton (09:55)
I also have a great question. ⁓ Yes, so I feel like there's many points in my life in which it has affected it in different ways. I will say ⁓ something we haven't talked too much about also is internalized racism because I think that's also been part of it. I think when I was in my younger years, know, around like grade school, I think especially with comments from a mom saying things like don't tell people you're Palestinian.
Forouz Salari (10:11)
Mmm.
Rayan Anton (10:21)
I definitely would say in retrospect experience internalized racism and kind of sort of also perceived myself as sort of And I think that influenced my decisions. And at the same time, the other part of me, which we haven't talked too much about is my queerness. And ⁓ which I was aware of from a very young age, maybe age 10. ⁓ And that definitely took up a lot of space for me. And
At the time, and still, there's this notion that ⁓ only white people get to be queer, which is literally a quote from my mom. She's like, we don't have this back home. And I was like, yes, we do. We have queer people everywhere, obviously. So at the time, ⁓ I was very much distancing myself from the Palestinian immigrant family part that I felt a bit of shame around. ⁓ My parents both have accents, and it kind of felt like...
Forouz Salari (10:55)
Hmm.
Rayan Anton (11:17)
They didn't really get things here. ⁓ And that was very sad in retrospect to have created so much distance. And at the same time, my queerness was feeling very important to me. So I made a lot of life decisions on, I need to find a place where I can be queer. It doesn't feel like that's my family. ⁓ So I went and I ran away to university in like a very white sort of town ⁓ and just sort of pretended to be white for many years. ⁓
So yeah, immigration family influenced me that way. I ran away from it for a while. But then I spent five years in that sort of setting. And then I realized something else was missing. I was like, wait a second, something doesn't feel quite right. I don't feel like I really belong here either. Look, I found a big queer community and that was really awesome and really formative. And I'm glad I found them. But then it was a mostly white queer community. And then I something else was missing. I thought, okay, well.
Forouz Salari (11:54)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (12:17)
So let me go back to the GTA, know, ⁓ where my people are, where there's more diversity. ⁓ And then it was when returning here and then I, the pivotal moments of my life were finding other queer Arabs ⁓ and that just changed everything for me. That made me feel like I can be queer and Arab. And that was the first time in my life I would think I felt like I was living actually authentically and not in fear of something.
Forouz Salari (12:48)
Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I think what you're touching on is that we sometimes need a bit of spaciousness from different influences or different aspects of our lived experiences and identity to be able to have the opportunity ⁓ and sometimes the safety to really
better understand a different aspect of our identity and kind of lean into it more and bring more nuance to it and clarify it for ourselves before kind of starting to integrate it into other aspects of our identity as well. Right? Like this like Venn diagram of who we are, that it takes us some time to, you know, really.
distill out all the different parts, understand it, feel through it, and see the interconnections between it before we kind of land in that middle of that Venn diagram and can really kind of start to claim and ⁓ express all these different multifaceted parts of ourselves together.
Rayan Anton (13:48)
I agree, some of my space is the thing that you need to get perspective. It's hard to, I'm sure there's an expression somewhere, it's hard to see the thing when you're like drowning in it, you know? So yeah, I agree with you on that.
Forouz Salari (14:00)
Yeah, yeah, thanks for sharing that. ⁓ And how was this perceived by your immigrant family and community when you did take the spaciousness and then also when you kind of came back into the GTA, into the Greater Toronto Area?
Rayan Anton (14:14)
Yeah, they found that very hard. ⁓ to them, know, it comes, something that I realized is that as a younger person, you know, there's a lot of cultural values that are in Arab and Palestinian culture that are actually really beautiful values. Like something we haven't talked much about is like collectivist culture versus more individualistic culture. And I'm realizing now that a lot of these...
Forouz Salari (14:16)
Hmm.
Rayan Anton (14:37)
things that experienced as like bad pressure were really kind of collectivist culture values, but they were being used in a way that was not working for me. So I think for me, like to leave home at the age of 17 or 18 was, you know, unspoken of in my family, you know, it was, only left home when you were married and you had saved for a down payment and, you know, things like that. so, you know, I mean, by then I was already quite the rebellious child. had to, ⁓ you know,
Forouz Salari (14:57)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (15:06)
Lots of things. I think they probably weren't surprised at that point that they saw that coming. But yeah, it was a big grief and a big loss for my family. There was lot of confusion and they tried to stop me many times. But I was pretty strong-willed and so I did that. And then when I came back after five years, wow, they didn't recognize me, partially because I also started transitioning gender-wise at the time.
Forouz Salari (15:32)
Mmm.
Rayan Anton (15:33)
So it's kind of like I went one way and I came back as kind of a totally different person to them.
Forouz Salari (15:42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it was challenging for both you and for them because the spaciousness that you needed to take kind of, think it highlights kind of what happens when we immigrate and leave our communities and extended families in the countries that we immigrate from that our sense of each other kind of gets frozen in time in a way.
Rayan Anton (16:10)
That's true, yes. ⁓
Forouz Salari (16:10)
right? And so
even, and you kind of re-experience that even with your own family after immigration, because you took this five year ⁓ time away in a different town, and we're kind of exploring a different aspect of your identity, your queer and trans identity.
Rayan Anton (16:27)
Yeah, it's a good reminder about also, yeah, even though I was young when we first came to Canada, I have a lot of memories of also leaving back home. And I remember, I think I was maybe 18 years old. Well, I was 21 years old when I last went to Palestine. And I remember being in the airplane, flying back to Canada and crying, which I don't cry very much. was a notable moment for me. And something inside of me was like, this is the last time I'm gonna see these people. And thinking that and...
like the, you know, and you could see it coming because, you know, when we first moved to Canada, we would go every year, every two years, and then was every four years, every five years. And I was like, okay, something's changing and this would be like a bigger divide. And I was right, that's last time I had been there. So I do plan to go back, but I mean.
Forouz Salari (17:18)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (17:19)
But ⁓ you're right, think there's also like a fear to go back and my mom's talked about this. In my mind, I'm gonna go back and everything's gonna be the same. I know it's not, but in my mind, I'm like, my grandparents farm will still be there and I will still recognize the streets of Haifa and ⁓ my family will still have all this time for me. But the reality is it's been 15 years and probably none of that is true. ⁓ So, well, I am gonna go back.
mostly preparing for it to be quite different, unfortunately.
Forouz Salari (17:53)
Yeah, yeah. What does that preparation look like for you?
Rayan Anton (17:58)
Hmm. Yeah, a bit of like a bracing, preemptive grieving. Like I don't want to get there and then be sad for the first time. So I'm kind of like, I guess, preemptively grieving the things that I think I'm not going to see. I'm also leaving some openness. Maybe there'll be some new experiences that I didn't have before that I'll get to appreciate, of course. Yeah, but like, yeah, I cannot bring back the past. So I guess preemptively grieving is the answer.
Forouz Salari (18:26)
Yeah, and perhaps the grieving, this kind of like preemptive or anticipatory grief, ⁓ is actually making some room for some new possibilities and new memories to be formed as well. Yeah, I think grieving is a significant part of I think the immigrant experience.
Rayan Anton (18:39)
shoot.
Forouz Salari (18:48)
⁓ for many generations of immigrants in different ways. ⁓ But in particular when you have ongoing ⁓ or at least to some degree of connection back to a homeland, ⁓ that when we are apart from it,
those places don't actually freeze on time, right? They go through their natural changes constantly. And then even more so when there's also geopolitical issues or environmental issues kind of impacting them as well. So these images that we have in our mind and that are connected to how we see ourselves and the divisions that we have of our lives and our lineage are not as nuanced.
because they're not necessarily changing in time with the things and the people that are changing from the places that we've left behind.
Rayan Anton (19:44)
And it's complicated because you can understand wanting to hold on to them. But if you hold on too much, well, know, there's room for disappointment there. know, grief is interesting because I even have, for example, like friends and clients who grieve a homeland they've never been to. And when they talk about it, it almost feels like the same grief that for people who have left their homeland. And this is maybe the intergenerational grief part as well. I mean, there's the grief of like being
Forouz Salari (20:00)
Mmm.
Rayan Anton (20:12)
person of colour here in this land that they experience and walking around and not getting to see a culture that resonates with the one that your family had. ⁓ But also I do think we take on our parents' grief, know, ⁓ seeing all of our parents listen to the music from back home or talk to their loved ones on the phone and cry and miss them and we acquire that grief from them as well.
Forouz Salari (20:38)
Yeah, what does that look like for like some of the clients that you work with and how do they how do they find a way through it if at all?
Rayan Anton (20:47)
Well,
mean, yeah, diverse. For example, I have some friends and probably some clients who did for the first time in their lives go to visit their homelands as adults for those that it was possible for if not everyone has that option, especially some Palestinians who were not born there like I was.
Forouz Salari (20:58)
Hmm.
Rayan Anton (21:07)
privilege to do that. yeah, so some people have managed to go back as adults and from what I've heard it's been a really remarkable experience, something they really valued. And then for some clients who can't go back, or some friends who also can't go back, yeah just more grief I guess. Sometimes I think folks like that have like an imposter syndrome, they're like am I really Palestinian or Iranian or whatever if I've never even been there.
And even I can ask myself the same question, like I'm Palestinian, but I'm Palestinian here. know, or in a way, I'm Palestinian until the age of like 10, because that's the time I actually really spent there. But I think, you know, one can be Palestinian or anything in many different ways. There's no one form of it. You know, I'm definitely Palestinian living in diaspora, which is different from being Palestinian living in Palestine. Although we have, of course,
Forouz Salari (21:54)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (21:57)
roots in common, but the lived experience is pretty different.
Forouz Salari (22:02)
Yeah, yeah, I can definitely relate to that. The imposter syndrome as well, even though, like you, I was born in Iran, I was, you know, eight years old before we left, nine before we arrived in Canada. ⁓ And yet, you know, I don't necessarily always feel Iranian enough for a lot of like Iranian spaces, ⁓ even in the diaspora, like Iranian community spaces. Yeah, even even here, I don't necessarily feel.
Rayan Anton (22:26)
you've been to Jasper.
Forouz Salari (22:30)
⁓ I may be expressive enough of my Iranian-ness or maybe connected to it in ways that other people seem to be ⁓ that I don't know seems to I at least in I get the sense that I'm maybe not doing it right.
Rayan Anton (22:51)
Yeah, I got that feeling. Yeah, it's an interesting... We value that there is a culture to it, that it looks like, and at the same time, no one should ever feel like they're not actually the thing that they are. You're nothing but Iranian. Obviously you're here now, your blood and your roots and your family is Iranian. yeah.
I mean, but this like, in a way, this is an interesting question. I think I was just thinking, I never made this relationship in my head before, but I think about like gender as well. So I'm a trans man and I like identifying as a trans man because, well, for so many reasons, A, it's accurate, B, I...
Forouz Salari (23:24)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (23:33)
As someone who has the privilege of kind of passing all the time, I want to take up space for trans people in the world because I have the safety to do so and I like to do that. this may be a controversial topic, but some people ask, what is a real man? Are trans men real men? And it's a very interesting topic because, I mean, my views on gender are much more broad than that. I don't really believe in anything like that. But, know.
Yeah, I consider myself a real man in the sense that like all trans men are real men But I also like don't because I don't have the exact same experience as cis men, but not in like a less than way It's just like these are two different paths to the same man social structure, you know I wouldn't say I'm exactly the same as cis men, but I'm definitely still a man You know, and I feel comfortable with that the same way as a Palestinian here I'm not exactly the same as Palestinians there, but we're both still Palestinian just
different experiences I So yeah, I guess I my gender in Palestinian in similar ways.
Forouz Salari (24:35)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a really ⁓ interesting kind of comparison that you just made. That there are different pathways through which we arrive at the same identity, but our lived experiences even while claiming the same identities could be vastly different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I often, I think, wonder about
Rayan Anton (24:54)
for anyone honestly.
Forouz Salari (25:01)
What is kind of like that quality of difference between people who chose to immigrate in adulthood, even if they were, you know.
forced to flee a particular place when that experience was done in adulthood and they had more conscious awareness of it and some level of kind of consenting and decision making. What is that difference compared to those of us who came as kids and as teens that were kind of like brought?
brought with our families perhaps, or then we're born in these new societies within our immigrant families? Like, what is that difference? mean, can answer it to a degree. I think I more notice it when I talk to folks who might actually be in the same age group or generation as me, but.
they immigrated as adults compared to immigrating as a child like myself. And I wonder sometimes if my, the way in which I'm expressing my Iranian identity or the way that I'm not expressing it, maybe outwardly enough, is maybe activating some grief for them. And I wonder if a part of that, if that's a part of why
there might sometimes be this disconnect between us as well, that we do have very different lived experiences and that for them perhaps witnessing someone growing up in a diaspora and not enacting or living or practicing all the different aspects of the culture, that it can be painful for them to witness.
Rayan Anton (26:32)
imagine that's true. that's interesting. At the same time, them coming here and enacting those things might also open them up to more discrimination, which is something that we don't have to deal with. ⁓
And you know, think, I I'm not an adult immigrant, so I can't speak to it too much, I do have many folks who are. And there's also many stages of like grief there, like the first year that you're here, the first five years. And then, you know, I was talking to my mom one day and she has been here for, how old am I now? Anyway, over 30 years, because she came when I was just born.
And she looked at me one day, she said, you know, I think I'm like kind of Canadian now. What does that mean, first of all? But she was like, well, I've been here, like half my life has now been in Palestine and half of it has now been in Canada. At this point, I don't really feel like I'm like, I do feel like part of me belongs here now also. And when she goes back there, she's like, ⁓ don't recognize this place anymore. I don't belong here either.
Forouz Salari (27:17)
You
Rayan Anton (27:39)
Anyway, it's interesting to see how her experience of immigration over the years has shifted also.
Forouz Salari (27:46)
Yeah, and that the experience of belonging shifts over time. Yeah. And that in order for us to be able to survive anywhere, we have to be able to kind of cultivate some level of belonging because we rely on one another for survival, whether we're consciously aware of it or not.
Rayan Anton (27:49)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yes.
Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, which is why I think when maybe immigrants first come here and they see folks like us who are so kind of whitewashed, it might feel confusing, but then after you're here for 20 years, yeah, it's hard to fight every day, you know.
Forouz Salari (28:22)
Yeah, yeah,
I think there's room to practice our cultures and our religious and spiritual backgrounds in different ways in a host culture or society that we've settled into. But also the demands of daily life and the structures of another society don't make that as easy necessarily, right? Even for like something as simple as for instance, practicing holidays.
right, that we don't necessarily have, unless you are practicing Christian but also have the exact same Christian holidays as our practice maybe in North America, ⁓ you don't necessarily have the exact same experience and connection as others do here.
Rayan Anton (28:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, even being from a Christian background, it's different. We celebrate Christmas Eve, which other Orthodox Christians do, but also, I think a lot of our church masses are in the evening, and they're an Arabic-speaking church. So even though we're Christians, we still have to find a way to bring our culture with us here. In Palestine, we don't read the Bible in English.
Forouz Salari (29:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, language is a part of how we experience and express the different parts of ourselves as well. even like the example that you're giving of like reading the Bible in Arabic is going be very different than reading the Bible in English or in Latin or any other language.
Rayan Anton (29:57)
Speaking of language, I was curious, do you speak any language other than English still? Because you came here when you were older.
Forouz Salari (30:03)
⁓
I speak Farsi, yeah. speak, I would say like I speak Farsi fluently, but the reality is that, you know, I speak it with family and I have some clients who in sessions with them, our work is fully in Farsi. For me, what I've noticed is that the hardest part is often,
Rayan Anton (30:10)
Okay, listen.
Forouz Salari (30:25)
translating certain professional or professional terms and things that we use in therapy into Farsi effectively. And so I'm either using way too many different words and sentences to explain one concept or word, or I'm just kind of doing the kind of like Finglish thing where I'm saying it in English, but maybe with like a Farsi accent while I'm saying it. ⁓ And yeah.
Rayan Anton (30:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, you put in the English word. Yeah, yeah. ⁓ Yeah, that makes sense.
Forouz Salari (30:53)
So that's been kind of like my experience. And sometimes I think, you know, just kind of like switching channels can be hard in different spaces and even at different points in time where, for instance, my spouse is English speaking. so...
At home now, I primarily speak English. And when I connect with my parents, if I'm connecting with my parents in the presence of my spouse, we're mostly also speaking English to kind of like be inclusive of my partner. But then we also may have our own like side conversations sometimes in Farsi. And my brother as well, because he was around your age when we arrived in Canada, that...
Rayan Anton (31:18)
you
Forouz Salari (31:33)
our relationship has primarily been in English. We do sometimes speak in Farsi together, but our relationship with each other has primarily been in English.
Rayan Anton (31:36)
Okay.
interesting. You speak to your parents
in Farsi and your brother in English and as a family I guess you have to speak English.
Forouz Salari (31:47)
As a family, we would speak in Farsi. think as teenagers, my parents always spoke to us pretty much in Farsi, but we would maybe respond to them in English. And then the older that we've gotten, the more we've maybe tried to make sure that we are responding in Farsi and trying to keep up with the practice. Because yeah, I think if you don't have the opportunity to use it, eventually it starts to fall away.
Rayan Anton (31:54)
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I definitely had that experience. My Arabic is like at grade one level now, which is actually the age that I anyway, that English was introduced to me technically because I didn't go to school until a bit older. And yeah, I remember in grade one being put in ESL classes and...
Forouz Salari (32:25)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (32:34)
Even as I had one of my earliest memories is of being in ESL classes and I'd been confused. I speak English, clearly not well enough because I was there. And it's funny to think now I struggle to speak Arabic, even though, yeah, you don't if you don't practice, you lose it. That's for sure. Yeah. But this is an interesting topic. mean, back to your question around like how has immigration affected your decisions in life? And one of the questions you had was around love.
Forouz Salari (32:50)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (33:00)
That's an also interesting one. I remember back when I was pretending to be white and I was also around a lot of white people, I ended up just dating a lot of white people. And I remember when I came back to Toronto and I was like, okay, hold on a second. This is not feeling good. Something's feeling off here. And I remember like making more of an active decision to like not only date white people. yeah, and that's like a big part of also.
Forouz Salari (33:07)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (33:28)
have so many thoughts on that. it's funny because even my, I mean, I'm polyamorous, so I do have multiple partners throughout the years, but my current partner that I live with and have a kid with and we share a home and everything, I remember when I first met them, I overheard them talking to somebody and they're like, oh, I'm Moroccan. And I was like, whoa, like a queer Arab. And I was like, excited to hear that. So I remember being interested in that and that piquing my interest. But then even still,
because they're so distant from their Moroccan side and don't speak the language, know, we're raising a kid together and he's not gonna know Arabic. I tried, I tried to teach my kid Arabic. He did know how to count to 10 ⁓ when he was younger, but after a while, you know, it was like almost like looking at myself. He looked at me, he said, I'm not speaking that. I was like, my God, that's what I said to my mom when I was like 12. He's only two when he's telling me that. Even at the age of two, he was aware.
that this language, not the language to speak at school, and it's somehow less cool or something like that. ⁓ So even before he has a grasp of what racism even is, he's already rejected the language, which is wild. We'll see where he goes. We'll see if he desires to learn it at any point, I'm not sure. Probably not until he's old enough to understand this stuff, and by then it's not too late, but it won't be easy. So it's an interesting topic around
Forouz Salari (34:38)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (34:54)
I think most of us of this generation date outside of our original cultures because, I mean, we don't want to just be dating our own people all the time because there's beauty and diversity. But it does make raising kids not harder, but it does kind of, you have to kind of think about what the culture of the home is going to be and you don't get to pass on the same traditions. There is some grief around you won't get to pass on the same traditions that our parents were able to or the same language.
Forouz Salari (34:59)
Mm-hmm.
Rayan Anton (35:24)
But that's why our kids will just have to understand who they are in a more multifaceted sort of way than someone like me did, I guess.
Forouz Salari (35:31)
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that because you're right, we have to make lot more intentional choices and we end up being and have to be selective in some ways about what we do integrate and bring into our households and into the families that we're forming, the new families that we're forming.
⁓ How do you and your partner as you're raising your kiddo, ⁓ how do you select what things you kind of integrate in and what things you may or may not?
Rayan Anton (36:01)
Hmm, yeah, that's a question. ⁓ I think I just bring in the things that feel true to me, you know what I mean? You know, some of the food, I started cooking the traditional dishes again, and ⁓ I got some good kids books on, well, it's the thing, the kids books on Palestine, but they're all about the Nakba, you know, it makes sense. some of them do incorporate more cultural elements than not just the catastrophe. ⁓ But... ⁓
And some of music. I grew up with lot of music in my family. So I do try to bring that in. Yeah, and then my partner's side. mean, the Moroccan side is a bit lost, unfortunately. ⁓ So, ⁓ It's a bit hard.
Forouz Salari (36:42)
Yeah.
think you raise a good point around that, especially for a child, the way that they interact with culture is through things that they can understand and have some kind of a tactile relationship with, whether it's food that they're eating, whether it's music that they can dance to perhaps, or books that they can hold and see and read and look at pictures of.
like imagery and definitely I think is a big part of it. And then.
Rayan Anton (37:17)
sure as he gets older,
we'll have more complex conversations about culture and race and all that stuff. Yeah.
Forouz Salari (37:21)
Yeah.
Yeah, of course, right? And as he's kind of understanding his own mixed identity and all the different things that come with the different lineages. Yeah. Very cool.
So to wrap up our conversation, if there had been a guidebook for immigrant kids or teens, what's one piece of advice or wisdom that you would want included in it?
Rayan Anton (37:37)
Yeah, sure.
So I think I would say that you get to decide what it means to be you. You get to decide exactly what that looks like. Your family doesn't decide for you, society doesn't decide for you, either to your friends or partners. You get to take your time and understand all the different places you've come from and who you are and figure out who you are. Yeah, and no one else gets to decide that for you.
Forouz Salari (37:57)
Mm.
Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, so you're kind of letting folks know to give themselves permission and spaciousness in figuring out who they are and making a decision about what identities to claim.
Rayan Anton (38:28)
Yeah, they could re-understand it differently over the years and keep re-examining it. ⁓ And that's okay too. Yeah.
Forouz Salari (38:38)
Well, Rayan thank you so much for being a guest on Growing Between Worlds and for sharing your story and your wisdom with us today. Thank you.
Rayan Anton (38:45)
Thanks Forouz, it was so nice talking to you.
Miranda Ramnarayan (38:50)
Thanks again for listening or watching this episode of Grown Between Worlds. We're grateful to share this space and community with you.
Forouz Salari (38:58)
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Forouz Salari (39:15)
Grown Between Worlds is sponsored by Forouz Salari Online Counselling & Consulting.