LIFE ARCHIVES
KHOTAN R ASHIN HOSEINI Age: 24 years old , 08 / JULY / 1994 Sex: Female Nationality: Iranian Place of Residence: Cyprus
ABOUT ME WE ND E S DAY 2 01 9 / 1 4 : 21 P M / A P R I L
So Khotan, tell me a bit about yourself.
Well, I am a freelance Graphic Designer, I live with my boyfriend, I have 2 dogs that are of utmost importance in my life. I do all kinds of things because from one side, I’m a woman, I do.. my things basically like, to take care of myself. My hair is very important to me, my nails are really important for me, I care for them and it drives me crazy sometimes. From the other side I love cooking, my boyfriend loves what I cook for him and everybody else, I’m really good at cooking. Then we have my work which is a very big part of my life, sometimes it takes a lot of time, which I don’t have a problem with because I enjoy doing it.
What about your free time? What do you enjoy doing then?
On my free time, I am very good with creating stuff, except work I like painting, I like making collages, I make things for my house, I love hiking with my boyfriend and my dogs and we go everywhere, I also like sightseeing and I generally love exploring new things.
So you basically love your dogs more than your boyfriend?
Umm, probably, i think so! They’re my dogs, they are my babies... I love him too!
THE ACCIDENT F R I DAY 2 0 0 0 / 1 8 : 3 8 P M / M A R C H
Tell me about a pleasant or unpleasant childhood memory.
When i was young, i had a very, very close family friend of ours, that he was very close to me and he killed himself. And i was just 6 years old.
And that was?
That was in Iran. He killed himself. Not because he wanted to but because he was “high” and he fell from the window basically. So that was a very unpleasant memory, i always remember it because he was very close to me. He was very much older than me but we had a nice bond, let’s say. Yeah.. it was one of the first times that i actually felt.. sadness to that point because i haven’t really lost anyone close to me, so i don’t know how that feels like but that was a very.. sad experience.
It stayed with you basically.
Yeah I still remember it, with total detail, everything.
Do you mind telling me about how it happend?
He was the son of my mums friend and we used to be neighbours for a very long time. We used to live on the second floor and they lived on the 10th floor. We would always travel together, we had all the family things together because our mums were best friends. So i think on that time he was 18 or 17, something like that, like 10 or 11 years older than me. And yeah, he used to get high. On that time i wasn’t living there anymore, when this happened. We had recently
moved somewhere else but i used to go to our old house because that’s where all my friends were, so i was around there when the incident happened. What happened basically is, from what we know is that, he was with his girlfriend in his bedroom, and he was joking like “i’m going to jump i’m going to jump”, and then he actually slipped and fell. Another friend of ours who was living on the 7th floor was looking through his window at that moment.
So he actually saw the fall?
Yeah, he actually got scarred for life. I don’t think he would ever be able to look out of any other windows anymore.
So this joke actually became reality in an instant?
Yeah, and then he fell but he didn’t die instantly. So the guy that used to work in the lobby of the apartments found him first and we were all there too. I never went to see anything of course but I knew what was happening because the ambulance and cars started to show up. So he found him first and he was alive for a couple of minutes and where he fell was, our building had a front and back and his house and his bedroom was on the back side of the building. And where he fell was a parking lot, and between the building and the parking lot there was a green area. He fell in the green area.
MY FIRST COMPETITION F R I DAY 2 0 01 / 1 5 : 3 7 P M / N OVE MB E R
Any pleasant experiences that you would like to share?
And that was still in Iran?
My mum is an an ex-painter, she used to paint a lot when I was younger. That’s from where I got the artistic side of me! And then we used to paint together. We had a teacher who used to teach me and my mother at the same time, we used to do oil painting. This was also around the same time as the last incident I mentioned. I was about six or seven. Yes, that was still in Iran. And because of this and the love I have for art projects, I used to participate in everything art related when I was younger and I still do, so there was this competition where kids of around that age were expected to translate a work of the writer Hans Christian Anderson into visual art. So there was this one story called “The Emperor’s New Clothes” that I decided to draw for the competition. So one night it was just me and my mum, I was drawing my thing and she was drawing hers and it all seemed very normal, I wasn’t expecting anything, I just wanted to participate in it. And then suddenly two weeks after, I found out that I actually won the competition! And that was very unexpected and really amazing at the same time. It was the first time I won something art related. So it was a great experience. Then there was a whole exhibition about it and our works where presented in it and it was hosted in one of the most famous art houses in Iran. So they gave us gifts and a participation certificate.
M Y TAT TO O S Do you have any tattoo’s that have any meaning to you?
You grew up with her basically.
Yes, well I have 3 tattoo’s on my body. The first tattoo that I got is located on my wrist and it’s my mother’s birthday in ancient Roman numerals. And of course it’s the most important tattoo for me because it was my first one and it’s about my mum. I have lived with my mum all my life. My parents were divorced so she is the most important person in my life. Yes, I was always with her. So, I have 2 more tattoo’s that are very important because they are about my personality. One of them is a butterfly, which is on my other wrist. Butterflies for me represent beauty, delicacy and freedom. And that is how i see myself! I see myself as a very free soul. And on the other hand I have roses. Roses for me represent beauty, but it’s not just beauty, it has two sides to it. First of all it’s feminine, very feminine which I also see myself as. I’m a feminine person. Then roses have thorns, so I also see myself as someone who can be bad if I need to be, and I don’t really open myself up so easily. So yeah, all three of them are really important to me and it’s not just something meaningless to me.
DISCONNECTED M O NDAY 1 9 9 5 / 1 2 : 1 3 P M / JA N UA RY
Tell me about an experience that changed you, that has formed who you are.
Well, i can tell you about the fact that my parents got divorced when i was 1 year old basically, so I don’t have any memories of that. But then, it’s about the fact that I grew up with my mum, and up to when I was 7 years old my mother had a lot of issues because she needed to get my custody from my dad. So she had to go through a really hard time to be able to do it because my dad wouldn’t give it up, and he wasn’t even in Iran at that time! He was in America. He had moved as soon as they got divorced so I basically grew up with my mum and she was a mum and a dad for me. To some people this is a sad experience, to me it is not. This helped me in many, many ways. It made me the person I am today. I’m very independent and I have been for a very long time, and it’s about everything. I mean, also in my mind i’m independent. I can do a lot of things on my own, let’s say emotionally as well. I’m very sensitive, but then I am also very close. So I don’t really need other people if they are not there, but it would be nice to have them. So this was a very important factor for me on shaping who I am and I have experienced many things earlier than other people. So, first of all, I was living in Iran, and when you’re an Iranian and living in Iran you actually grow up faster than other people in other countries. It’s the way that our country is. It’s not just about me or my family, it’s the way you have to deal with different situations. You have to deal with stuff way sooner, and you have to take care of yourself. For example, if you compare a 17 year old iranian with a 17 year old, let’s say Cypriot, they are going to be at two totally different stages of their lives.
You still keep contact with both your parents?
Yes I do, but for many years I was avoiding my dad. I didn’t want to have any connection with him because he wasn’t really trying. He was trying but he is a very selfish person and he doesn’t listen to other people. So he thinks that whatever he says is the way that it should be. That’s not correct and it definitely doesn’t work for me because he wasn’t there. You can’t just force yourself into my life. I was trying to have a good relation with him maybe from 2012 to 2014, but it didn’t work out. It ended really badly. We had a very bad fight so I told him “From now on you will not hear or see me until I feel like it and I will make you regret it”. And I did! Up to maybe a year ago I didn’t have any contact with him until last year he started really trying and i’m very open to that. We started communicating and he started giving me his ideas and i started listening to some of them, not necessarily accepting them. Now it’s actually better. Now we do have a connection more or less, we talk sometimes. So now I can actually say that I do have a connection with him. I invited him to my graduation so, that’s something new! I haven’t seen him for 9 years though.
So you don’t really remember him?
I do remember his face, I have seen pictures but I haven’t seen him for 9 years now and I have only seen him 3 times in person.
Do you have any pictures of all of you together?
No I don’t.
So it’s just you with your mum and you with your dad basically.
So he is not someone that took part in your life. He’s just someone who existed?
I don’t think I have anything with him. Unless it is really old. I went to him 2 times in America for 3 months each time. I must have pictures but it wasn’t something pleasant for me to keep let’s say. Yes, exactly.
CR ASHED T H U R S DAY 2 01 7 / 1 9 : 2 4 P M / F E B R UA RY
Do you have any experiences that scarred you?
Well, I have a kind of a recent experience which was two years ago on Tsiknopempti actually! I had a really bad car accident. I was driving back from the gym and I had to see a friend, so I was in a hurry. It was exaclty behind Debenhams, it’s a couple of junctions but there are no traffic lights. Also the street was poorly lighted and there are no traffic signs, basically there are signs but they are all covered by trees and plants so you cannot really see them. So I was getting close to this junction and there was a stop sign, I didn’t see it but I knew that I had to stop but I was in a hurry. So I made the stupid mistake of not stopping, instead I slowed down. When I was in the middle of the junction I looked to my left and there was a car coming towards me and the person who was driving the car also panicked and instead of slowing down she drove faster. At that moment I thought to myself, if I stop now she will hit my car on the left side and it will be very bad, so the only thing I could do is drive faster to pass her or she will hit me on the back side of the car. Well that was what i was thinking until I drove faster and it didn’t happen as much as I wanted to. She hit me so hard on the left door that my car flew from the middle of the junction to the pavement where there was this wire that holds in place the electricity pole and got stuck mid-air. Then there was a huge explosion which I didn’t really understood why it happened. At that moment I thought it was the engine or something car-related and I just panicked and I wanted to get out of the car because I was stuck and my car was hanging. After the explosion all the lights went off in the area. Then I tried to open my door and the door wouldn’t open! The good thing was that my window was working properly so opened the window and slipped out of the car. For the next couple of minutes I didn’t know what happened and I was scared because I didn’t understand the origin of the explosion. Was it my engine or the electricity? Then I saw the other lady coming out of her car and everyone was looking for the driver of my car and I was like “I am the driver”! Nothing happened to me, I didn’t even have a small scratch. The lady had a broken arm, but the worst part wasn’t just the accident. Of course it was the worst accident that I have ever been in, I had 2 other accidents. The worst part was that I didn’t have anyone here, my mum was not here and I didn’t know who to call. So I came out of a big state of panic and I called my friends and they came over, but it was very hard because when something so shocking and big happens to you, you turn to the closest person to you. I didn’t have that and I couldn’t call my mum because she would panic! My accident was so bad that nobody believed that nothing happened to me! My car was a total loss and the way that my car was when they came to pick me up, they were looking for my car and then they see it hanging on the pole. I had a very hard time getting over it. I couldn’t drive for 2 weeks and I still panic when there’s a car approaching on my left side. It was very hard to get over it and the other part was that I had to call my mum and she wasn’t feeling very good about it so she booked the first flight back home.
THE PARTIES Any decisions you don’t regret?
Because bars and clubs are illegal due to religious reasons?
Yes, but in order to tell you about it I must give you an introduction! So I was living in Iran at the time. Iran is a different country, it’s not as close as they show it and it’s not as open as we try to make it. But there are things that you have to learn your way through it or around it and we do everything but in different ways. Back when I was in Iran in my teenage years I was a very outgoing person and I used to party a lot! I’m talking about big parties. Because in Iran we don’t have any clubs or bars, we have private parties.
Yes, because of the law and because we are muslims and the majority of the country is muslims so nobody is allowed to drink, but i can tell that 80% of the people drink. Well that’s just a law and that’s how it is but everyone knows that everyone else does it. Even the government, but it’s just that we try to ignore it and try not to do it in public. So instead of clubs and bars we go to private parties but most of these parties that i’m talking about are not open to everyone, you have to be invited or guestlisted. So there was this specific time that at all of these parties that I used to go with the people I used to hang out with, the police was showing up. This is a normal thing, sometimes when you are loud the police shows up, you give them their dinner or money and they dissapear. But there was this specific time that they were not dissapearing anywhere. They would come, arrest everyone and take them to jail. That was the time that we knew that it was happening and for a couple of our parties they would show up. At one of them we had already left the house, so when the police caught up to us and they made us stop. Then they checked but we didn’t have any alcohol and I started lying to them a lot. I told them that we weren’t there and at some point they believed me and they let us go. So we knew that all of this was happening but we didn’t care because we were young and stupid! The next week came and we got invited to another party, by we i mean me and my other 3 best friends. We got invited to the party and we were like “Yes, of course we are coming!”. And so we went to this party and to be honest it wasn’t even a good party, that’s the thing that always pissed me off. We went there and stayed for like 10 minutes and we were like “Guys let’s go home this is a disaster”. We decided to go to another party and as we were ready to leave, the door opens and the police shows up. This was the 3rd time that this happened to me, the first 2 nothing happened but the 3rd they actually arrested me and took me to jail! It was public holiday so we had to stay in jail for an extra day and so i slept in jail for 3 nights. It was a very bad decision, my mum almost had a heart attack but for me it’s actually a good experience and a good story as well! The bad part is that it was a room of 2 meters by 1 meter and it had 6 people in it!
I WOUDN’T CHANGE ANYTHING FROM MY PAST OR THE DECISIONS I’VE MADE. I’M A RESPONSIBLE PERSON, AND I STAND BY ALL THE DECISIONS THAT I’VE MADE.