12 Grey Lemons
A Persian grey lemon is debatably both and neither a fruit and a spice. According to Nisan Haymian, a sharply clad artist commissioned for this year’s Elastic City Festival, the lemon’s vague status allows it to easily cross through international borders.
The Persian grey lemon technically evades U.S. Customs and Border Protection protocol, explains Haymian.
This simple fact serves as the metaphor guiding Haymian’s public walk through the cultural Persian presence in New York City. The walk is a part of Elastic City’s free 12 day New York City-based participatory walk series. According to the festival’s director, Todd Shalom, he hopes Elastic City will make participates realize the ongoing poetic exchange between humans and the places they live in and visit.
“It’s a push and pull between a concept and a place,” Shalom says.
Shalom first started Elastic City in 2010 after conducting similar walks in an interactive format in cities from San Francisco to Buenos Aires. Shalom says that over 80 artists have given walks in the past five years.
Haymian greets eager walkers at Café Nadery, a dimly-lit snug café in Greenwich Village where one could imagine intellectuals chatting over a glass of wine. According to Haymian, it is one of the centers of the Persian community in New York City.
The walk participants range from an elderly professor on sabbatical to Brazilian natives to a petite woman who works in publishing. The twelve strangers sit around a table drinking steaming Persian tea and listen intently as Haymian introduces what the night will have in store in a calm, soothing voice. His walk will entail a “search for Persian culture” and is appropriately named “Twelve Grey Lemons.”
Then it’s time to begin.
Walkers head down West Eighth Street as Haymian swings around his moustache-embellished tote bag and instructs participants to think about how they identify themselves.
“Feel the way the cement is under your feet!” Haymian yells as he leads the way to the first stop – a costume shop.
In the shop, all choose an item to put on. One woman chooses big red clown shoes. Another drapes a feathery pink boa around her shoulders. No one is told if this relates to the “think-about-your-identity” instructions.
Then everyone hops on the subway headed to 28th Street. Haymian tells each person to imagine a completely new identity. It can be anyone: someone you know, someone you wish to be, someone you hate. Sonya, a curly-headed woman with beaded earrings and a printed button-up, becomes “Martin”, a 25-year-old indecisive recent graduate who works at a skate shop. It is later discovered that “Martin” is Sonya’s current roommate.
The point of the exercise? Going along with his theme of hybrid identity and urban immigration, Haymian says that the city is a big stage. You can be anyone and no one would know any better. Similarly, “immigrants need to embrace a new identity when they come to New York.”
Next on the walk is the NoMad Hotel, where Haymian uses a vintage map of the Middle East on the second floor to explain his own family’s immigration story. Then a spice shop on 28th Street lined with countless jars of nuts, candy and dried fruits.
Haymian explains how Persian cuisine is his own way to “carry on my traditions in a quiet and personal way.” He laughs as he shares his grandmother’s Persian cooking secrets involving grey lemons and asks that everyone choose something from one of the jars and recount why they did so.
A man named Saul eats an M&M. He says it reminds him of the first time he was actually allowed to consume the candy – in 1993 when M&M’s were made kosher. Craig, the college professor, eats a chocolate-covered pretzel that reminds him of the “chocolate jumble cookies” his grandmother used to make at Christmas. Sonya’s dried strawberry reminds her of childhood as well.
Next participants walk in a single file to the three-story Mergerian Rug Gallery. Haymian uses the gallery as a reference in explaining his grandfather’s Persian carpet business and the origins of his last name.
Haymian says that his Persian heritage is a part of his identity he would like to reclaim. He was born in Israel and, due to his Israeli passport, is currently unable to visit his father’s homeland. A woman named Barbara says she wants to reclaim her birth last name. She has been married and divorced twice.
“What am I doing with this name of this person I don’t want in my life?” Barbara exclaims.
The night is getting cold. Participants walk briskly to the last stop on the immersive walk. At Ravagh Persian Grill on 30th Street, Haymian leads a kind of debrief over traditional basmati rice flavored with barberries, fava beans and sweet and sour cherries.
“There’s so many places like this you wouldn’t know about unless you had a reason to know,” Barbara says.
Haymian responds to a question about the walk’s genesis. He explains how he wanted to convey a sense of urgency with his walk’s theme.
“Politically, Iran is urgent,” Haymian says. “Personally, Iran is urgent.”
Haymian has spent 15 years with a Persian last name and 15 years with an Israeli last name. Reclaiming his identity is an urgent matter, he says, even if this means embracing multiple identities.
One of the participants named Rachel says she has been on multiple Elastic City walks. Each is very different, yet also somehow similar.
“They make you aware of not only the world around you, but where you are in that world,” she says.
Before everyone leaves the restaurant to get back to their regular lives, Haymian pulls out a small glass jar filled with 12 dark balls.
Everyone departs with a small, grey Persian lemon in hand.
