Traveling in America Means Confronting Its Shitty Past

Even by train, a traveler in the states faces the USA’s terrifying past. (Daphne Fecheyr)

BY DENA ROD

What started as grief and loss over Iranians fighting for their freedom shifted into gratitude. I was a US citizen. That gave me an untold privilege that has always echoed throughout my entire life. 

When traveling to Iran became an impossibility rather than a high-stakes travel goal, I had to come up with a new itinerary. I asked myself what would feel as epic as a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the motherland? Well, what about the land I was planted in? I had never traveled across the United States, my country of birth and citizenship. I always resisted my Americanness as it separated me and marked me as different from the immigrant Iranian community that I grew up in. 

“You’re an American, you’re a U.S. citizen,” my father told me anytime I would try to make a proclamation around what things were like “back home.” As those words landed in my body, guilt rose up in response. He never let me forget I was born in the United States and for good reason. I could move through borders with an ease they couldn’t with their papers and accents. I could visit US territories without any trouble, unlike visa or green card holders. The cost of any kind of privilege is guilt. 

So I would face my guilt as an Iranian American by moving through America. What’s more American than taking a cross-country road trip? I’ll tell you: taking a cross-country train trip. Taking the train was how settlers came to the West Coast in droves, and the joining of the transcontinental railroad is a piece of American history I could participate in. I would take Amtrak from San Francisco to Chicago, stop in Chicago for a week, take Amtrak from Chicago to New Orleans where I would meet my wife Diana, eat as many oysters and po’ boys as humanly possible in a week, then fly back to SF. It was time to meet the plains and the swamp of America. 

But having a Sagitarrius who has filled up two passports as your best friend comes in handy and also makes you change your travel plans. You see, as fire signs, they’re always on the hunt for a new adventure to feel something. Late one night, I received the following text from my best friend, world traveler extraordinaire, Becky. 

“Hey I know this wasn’t exactly what you planned, but Lindsay invited me to stay on her boat while she & Paul are docked in the US Virgin Islands. Are you down?”

Listen, when someone asks you if you want to stay on their boat, you don’t ask questions. You just say yes and then the rest of the questions come later as soon as your brain catches up with your mouth. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. “Yeah sure. Why not?” 

My initial itinerary needed to be flipped. All we had to do was fly to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It seemed very obvious to me what would unfold after the U.S. Virgin Islands. Becky and I would head to Puerto Rico for a few days. I would then fly from Puerto Rico to New Orleans to meet up with my wife, take Amtrak up to Chicago for a week to be by myself, then take Amtrak from Chicago to Green River, Utah, where my boyfriend would pick me up and take me to Moab, a place where they grew up coating themselves in red dust. 

With my travel plans reversed, it dawned on me that I was tracing a trajectory that was uniquely American. It was the history of Black Americans from the TransAtlantic slave trade to the Great Northward Migration amongst their diaspora. I’d start in the U.S. Virgin Islands — only known as such thanks to Christopher Columbus — before heading to Puerto Rico, the oldest colony in the world, then to the Southern United States, then up north where the Great Migration took place, then returning west.  I would be traveling through lands where the history of imperialism was paved by indigenous genocide and enslaved Africans. I would be an American citizen using my privilege to travel to lands with a history their descendants are still grappling with. 

You see, facing America also means facing what this nation-state’s government did to form itself into its current bordered shapes. It meant owning the guilt for the freedom I was wallowing in and exploring. It meant understanding that a lot of people were and are still fighting for their lives to have their own freedom, bodily autonomy or otherwise. 

After all, to be American is to tell yourself you are self-made when mostly you’re anything but.

So I would take a train. But first, I would get on a boat. Becky and I were about to experience #BOATLIFE. 

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