Samira Banihashemi: Finding Somewhere to Belong

15 min

Samira Banihashemi (she/her) is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary theatre designer with a focus on sound, set and lighting design. We met in Kensington Market during the winter of 2021 to chat about identity, immigration and finding somewhere to belong.

Categorizing Identity

I think I just chose [she/her] pronouns because it’s easier, but I’m not sure if I always relate to she/her specifically, like, when people don’t ask and just assume. So maybe someday I’ll use they/them.

I like “queer” better than anything else. I think “lesbian” has a negative connotation in my brain, unfortunately. I feel like with lesbian, it’s a little limiting. I really love the creation of “queer” because it’s inclusive of all the others. For me, the adding letters thing felt like we’re using the same system of categorizing. [With “queer”], we’re not doing that thing, but we’re doing our own thing.

Being The Other

In Tehran, where I was born and raised, we used to live in an apartment complex. Tehran is a super organic city, like, streets going into alleys, coming to dead ends. It’s not the safest place for children to play. So being in that complex gave us a lot of freedom to be outside and do whatever with less interaction with cars. In that neighbourhood, everyone knew each other. It was three buildings and some green space in the middle. So, people in those three buildings all knew each other.

There was a football competition that was held by the mosque of our neighbourhood. I was a part of our everyday team, so it wouldn’t make sense for me not to be on that [competition] team. We went to register, and they asked my name, and I just came up with a name. And that stayed. It wasn’t a decision. It happened in the moment and just stayed.

In Iran, women have to wear hijab, it’s mandatory. Around the ages of nine or ten, girls are expected to wear hijab. But I didn’t want to wear hijab. I wanted to play football, aka soccer, with my friends. So, I ended up cutting my hair short and pretending that I was a boy. Even people in that little neighbourhood used to call me boy names so I wouldn’t be revealed. So, I can’t really differentiate my need of wanting to play [football] and having to [have short hair], from my sexuality.

In Iran, women have to wear hijab, it’s mandatory. But I didn’t want to wear hijab. I wanted to play football with my friends.

Samira Banihashemi

Schools are also segregated. So, I went to school with girls and all my friends were going to boys’ schools. So, I felt really different, “the other” in school as well—being the boy among the girls. I feel like all of those little things were stuff that became a part of my personality.

I liked boys and girls and I didn’t even know there was a name for it. Then in high school, around the age of fourteen, I came across the phrase “lesbian.” I realized that there are women who date women, as lovers. That’s a thing. I started to question, am I a lesbian? That was when I seriously tried to categorize myself. It was nice because there are other people like me in the world. But also, it was me trying to put myself in a category and find a meaning for my feelings that other people around me didn’t have.

The People Who Shaped Me

My middle sister was just a year older than me. She was such a troublemaker so all of the attention of my parents were always towards her. I could also take care of myself. It’s not very safe being a woman in Iran. And my sister has always been super sexual, had multiple boyfriends all the time. So, she required a lot of attention, of taking care of. Someone had to remind her to be careful. She was also very angry as a teenager and as a young adult.

I find that my personality was shaped around who she wasn’t. Because I wanted to not be like her, not cause the same problems for my parents, or not have the same impact on people, like her anger had an impact on me. I feel like, all my life, I have been a person that she wasn’t.

So, none of the adults or my parents really knew what was happening [with my identity]. My parents were super relaxed about all of us, who we wanted to be. I think it’s super brave of them, understanding that there might be dangerous stuff with what I’m doing. I didn’t even think about those things until long after I wasn’t doing them anymore. It was super brave of them to hold all those fears in themselves.

My mom was an alpha character in our family and would make all the decisions. I feel like a lot of my character, a lot of who I am is because of my mom.

Samira Banihashemi

My mom was an alpha character in our family and would make all the decisions. I feel like a lot of my character, a lot of who I am is because of my mom. My whole worldview of my relationship with love, with the earth and nature, because she used to go mountain climbing all the time. Her idea of life was, if you’re not in love, you’re not a human. It’s also in our culture, all these stories begin when a person falls in love with the other person, you don’t know anything about them before that. It’s really rooted in our culture.

For my mom, it was romantic love [that was important]. But I definitely found love in my friends. When I was gay in Iran, I never had close friends. I was super close with my partners and when they became my exes, I remained super close with them. But I never understood sisterhood and platonic love until I was here. That was definitely something that came out of not looking at everything gendered the way it is in Iran. Because there’s a lot of patriarchal culture within the lesbian community in Iran. Which is exactly the same things that guys do and making the same mistakes.

When I was younger, I think I had a huge problem with self-image and how people see me. I think it’s a universal issue with teenagers and younger people. After I came here, I was able to fully be myself and didn’t have to be super masculine. I can be many things at the same time. One time, I went back to Iran, and all of a sudden so many people were interested in me, which was really new to me. I felt like the same person, but then I realized that if I’m in a good place and if I know my value and if I feel like I’m being seen, I will be seen.

Coming Out to Family

It’s extremely rare for Iranian queers to gain that much support, especially when they’re young. When I was eighteen, I was dating this woman; she was older than me, in her late twenties. I was talking to her about my family and my parents and my mom. She was like, I think you should seize the moment and come out to your mom.

It was really nice to be able to bring partners home and for them to be a part of my family without fearing–that never happened for me with my partners’ parents.

Samira Banihashemi

So that’s what I did. I told my mom, let’s go for a walk and I told her that I’m just like anybody else, but I like girls. She was like, I knew that. She said that she didn’t understand, personally couldn’t relate to it, but she supported me. I feel like my mom told everyone on that very day. I never technically had a conversation with my dad, but he’s always known. It was really nice to be able to bring partners home and for them to be a part of my family without fearing—that never happened for me with my partners’ parents.

Being an Engineer in Iran

My parents were never like, this is for girls, this is for boys. Those things never clicked in my mind. My dad worked in mining and I spent a lot of time in the places he used to work, which is in the mountains, and really loving what he does. My brother-in-law at the time was working for this oil and gas company. I was like fourteen, fifteen and I found that this is a cool job. That’s how I decided to be an engineer. I was good at math and chemistry and physics. I never thought that me being a woman was going to be an issue.

It was a huge issue. Because I couldn’t find a job. If it wasn’t for my brother-in-law, I could never find a job in oil and gas. When I did finally find a job, it was under the excuse of, oh, she’s going to be working in the lab. We were a contracting company providing personnel and equipment for drilling rigs. As a woman, you’re not allowed on those offshore drilling rigs, so it’s not feasible for companies to have a woman in their engineering teams. Even though lab people would also occasionally go to the drilling rigs, my brother-in-law was like, she’ll be the in-house lab person while everyone else is gone.

I never thought that me being a woman was going to be an issue.

It was a huge issue.

Samira Banihashemi

Our lab eventually moved to the south of the country so I ended up working in the office as a cementing designer, which made me the contact point between the client and our company. I used to go to their meetings and I was the only woman in their meetings. Sometimes when they were a more government-y company, they wouldn’t even let me in. So, it was a bit awkward working with all men.

There were definitely assholes, but there were definitely people who really supported me in my career, who were extremely helpful, who gave me chances. I even had a boss who gave me a raise for no reason. Later, another coworker of mine who also emigrated, he was casually talking about his salary and I found out that he was getting paid twice my salary. I was devastated because my salary was super high for a twenty-something year old woman in Tehran. I was rich, but they were getting paid twice as much, and being able to go to the rig and get extra money for being offshore and on a mission. That was super hard, heartbreaking. So now I understanding the reasoning of my boss giving me a twenty-five percent salary raise. 

Leaving Iran was a Given

The way the situation is in Iran is that you don’t want to live there. That’s the general understanding. If you know English or any other language, if you’re educated, and if a country that welcomes immigrants wants your profession, and you have the financial means to emigrate, that’s what you do. Like, [in Canada], you go to school, then get married, move to suburbs, have that life. In Iran, you go to school find a job, then you emigrate.

The way the situation is in Iran is that you don’t want to live there. That’s the general understanding.

Samira Banihashemi

I studied chemical engineering in Iran. It took me a few years to find a job in that field. As soon as I did, I qualified to emigrate to Quebec because I knew English and French. So that’s what I did. Freedom was a part of it. But if I wasn’t gay and if I wasn’t a woman, I would still have done it.

I always liked Canada because of Road to Avonlea, the TV show. It was extremely popular in Iran when I was a teenager. That was my first interaction with Canada. That show and Anne of Green Gables. So that’s nice and colonial.

Experiencing Racism for the First Time

I’m Persian in Iran, which is a majority ethnicity. That’s a plus. I lived in Tehran, which is the capital. I had access to education, access to learning languages, which many people don’t have. Also, the privilege of being a relatively free woman and homosexual. These are huge privileges. When I came to Canada, I wasn’t aware of the racism around here. It was super shocking to experience it. I was like, I’m going to go there and find a job and be successful. That everybody would be like, where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you! But they looked at my last name and they couldn’t pronounce it, so [they didn’t want to hire me.]

When I came to Canada, I wasn’t aware of the racism around here. It was super shocking to experience it.

Samira Banihashemi

If I could go back, I would never get up and come here the way I did. I would definitely find someone to stay with. Definitely. Because I ran out of money super fast. I would definitely go work in a café or something, the first day I arrived, so I don’t have to spend money out of my pocket.

My first time I walked in Montreal—that’s where I landed—it was a super long flight, I was waiting for my room to be ready, so I went out to get something to eat. The first thing [I noticed] was how quiet everywhere was. It was downtown, but it was still super quiet. In comparison with Tehran, which is always this soundscape of “woooo.” And everyone was looking at me and smiling, which was super weird.

I arrived in Montreal in September, and I came to Toronto in January. I was coming out of a very intense relationship. I was not working, which is really uncharacteristic of me. And I was running out of money and not being able to find a job. And being in Montreal all alone in the winter. It was too much. I wanted to go back. I was like, I’ll [go home] and come back in the summer.

But I had a friend in Richmond Hill who was like, don’t go back home, come to Toronto, I’ll find you a room, I’ll find you a job at Tim Hortons, just give it a shot. So I went to Richmond Hill, which was terrible. Terrible. It was so bad. The first chance I got, I moved to Bloor and Yonge. I was so traumatized by the whole suburbs.

Work in Canada

When I was still living in Richmond Hill, I got a job at a company that sells quality control equipment. My chemical engineering background and working in oil and gas in the cementing department really helped me get that job. The company was really weird. I don’t even know if it’s legal or not, but they would tell their customers that the equipment is made in Canada, but really, they were made in China and other places.

I had a manager who asked me to change my name to a non-Middle Eastern name, like to a white name. I didn’t know that was illegal.

Samira Banihashemi

I had a manager who asked me to change my name to a non-Middle Eastern name, like to a white name, so I can gain people’s respect or something like that. I didn’t know that was illegal. I didn’t know that is super wrong. That was their strategy, hire people new to Canada, people who want to have a job so they can apply for PR, vulnerable people. I was there for a few years and I kept trying to find a job. I didn’t know that networking is a thing and is the thing.

After a few years, I wanted to go back to school. I paused for a second like, now that I’m giving myself this chance, maybe I should reconsider what I want to do in life. Someone in my choir asked me to do stage management [for our concert]. After I did that a couple of times, I was like, okay, maybe. So, theatre production became the thing. In my heart, I don’t feel a lot of difference between engineering and producing a show, because that is also super technical. A lot of things I learned in engineering school, I use in my work. Like, mechanics and statics, rigging stuff, electricity.

Discrimination in the Theatre

In theatre school, I fell in love with lighting and sound, but I also got a chance to do carpentry, wardrobe, sewing. All of these things are super gendered in Iran, so breaking those stereotypes for myself and being able to do all of that without judgement was great. Another great thing was seeing how comfortable eighteen- or nineteen-year-old people are with their sexuality, especially boys. They’re comfortable being straight but also feminine. It was super nice, seeing men hug each other, really giving love to each other as straight men.

One of the reasons I applied [to work at] Buddies in Bad Times is because I felt like I’m not really embracing my queer identity as much. It’s really, really, really nice not to have to work with men all the time. Also not having gender roles, and everyone is my height. They understand how my body works and my limitations. This is a huge weird thing when I tell a guy, I’m not comfortable on that ladder. They’re like, you can reach it. And like, yes, but I don’t feel comfortable. You don’t have to explain that to five-foot-two people because they’re experiencing exactly the same thing.

I find that being queer is generally much more acceptable than being non-white in this [theatre] world.

Samira Banihashemi

I find that being queer is generally much more acceptable than being non-white in this world. Just the mere fact that gay marriage has been legal since 2005. It’s a generation of legally, like, having that in your pocket. I feel like it has a huge impact on people, like they don’t care anymore. But in terms of race, I personally think that working in a place with all white people, white-majority companies, it’s really complicated. I needed to develop a language to communicate with them. It didn’t happen naturally to me. This has happened to me more than once. I say something, but people are interpreting it differently.

Right now, with the example of Soulpepper, they hired a Black artistic director, who is amazing. But if you look at the programming of Soulpepper, they’re still hiring the same directors, who are hiring the same designers, who are hiring the same actors. It’s not like because you’re a person of colour, then you’re giving other people of colour chances.

When Black Lives Matter happened, the Designing the Revolution program had workshops around how to lead non-white people. There were forty people attending. Now that things have eased down, they had a workshop about anti-oppression. Everyone who attended was non-white. So even though there are people who are trying to change things, they can’t attract people. There isn’t a lot of willingness to know more. That’s very frustrating.

Privilege is Relative

Technically, Persians are Caucasians, so there is a lot of fascism among Iranians. They even call themselves Aryans, because some Aryans went to Germany and some of them went to Iran. Actually, during the Second World War, that’s why Hitler didn’t touch Iran, because he thought that Aryans lived there. Some people from Iran would say, “I’m Persian.” That’s super exclusionary of any other ethnicities that live in Iran. They’re like, I’m Persian, aka Iranian. That’s not correct. There are a lot of other ethnicities living in Iran.

Iran never got colonized in the contemporary era. We were the colonizers. Like, Kurds are a huge population, but they’re spread around different countries, like Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria. None of these nations let them be united and have their own language and culture and all of that. There’s a lot of people, especially among my group of people who are mainly from the capital, who don’t even know this exists. Like, you speak Turkish, but when you go to school, you have to speak Farsi. Like, not being able to practice your own culture and language.

I had an ex-partner who said there’s not racism in Iran. It’s like, okay, of course, there’s not racism for you.

Samira Banihashemi

I had an ex-partner who said there’s no racism in Iran. It’s like, okay, of course, there’s no racism for you.

I used to watch and love Sex and the City when it just came out. And now I’m like, the fuck is this privilege? Who can even relate to them? In the new series, they’re really trying to be inclusive and sometimes they recognize that they’re not doing a great job. But the Black people they show are also super Manhattan, super rich people. In Iran, I could relate to these people so much more than when I’m here. Also, with The L Word. When I was in Iran, watching these LA bougie lesbians, I could relate to them. But right now, I can’t. I’m like, what are these people? Like, you don’t understand that you will be othered by the same people that you like in these films.

I Can’t Belong to More Than One Place

I was super nostalgic about Iran for the first few years. I feel like it’s kind of a defense mechanism that I don’t feel that nostalgic anymore. I try not to romanticize the places I missed, my extended family that I missed. I feel like I have blocked all those things because I can’t belong to more than one place. It’s really too much. I don’t think it was conscious.

I was super nostalgic about Iran for the first few years. I feel like it’s kind of a defense mechanism that I don’t feel that nostalgic anymore.

Samira Banihashemi

One day, I was walking in Queen Street, maybe four years into my immigration, that I felt like I belong. I finally felt like I’ve been in this place before, I’ve made some memories. Naturally, I started relating less to Tehran, not feeling nostalgic about the places that I loved and use to go to in Tehran.

Also, stuff in the Middle East is really fucked up. If you want to engage with them, if you want to be aware of what’s happening, it’s really too late. It’s really weird to be in this society, walking around the streets with all of those words in your mind, interacting with people who have no idea what’s happening in your life. It’s an extremely weird split of realities.

Especially when they shot that airplane. It was coming to Toronto. I knew people who knew people on that thing. And to this day, there are new things coming out of that, like why that happened. All of that was just, like, so bad. And then you just walk in the street, devastated by the nationwide trauma, but people around you have no idea and you have to be a normal person. You have to be an everyday person when you’re dealing with this.

If my dad wasn’t in Iran, maybe I wouldn’t want to go back indefinitely. Also because of the government. I don’t do anything political. But still, every time I go back, I delete all my passwords. I do stuff to make sure that if they question me, I will keep all my friends safe. Because I have a lot of friends who can’t go back because they’re political. That’s a huge stress that I’d rather not go back if I don’t have to.

Feature image by Eileen Liu. This interview was supported by Community One Foundation.