"The more I think about it at this age, I was very fortunate because I got two very different yet intervening parts of what it meant to be a Parsi, what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to be a Parsi in Mumbai and a Parsi in Karachi. The communities were different; I mean in Karachi we knew everyone at least when I was growing up. I feel very blessed in some ways. If somebody said, are you a Pakistani or Indian, I'd say I'm an Indo-Pakistani. That's what I'd call myself because that is who I am culturally."

"Having an entire community, we understand each other right. We understand our upbringing, we understand the similar housholds we grew up in, and we really understand our background and who we are today as people because not a lot of people know about Zoroastrianism so it's always great having a common bond with people who you've grown up with and have that upbringing in the same way."

"I feel like I'm more Zoroastrian in my philosophy now than I was then. Yes, while I had all the trappings of the cultural stuff that makes me Parsi, in America, I'm more Zoroastrian in beliefs and in ways that matter that are not cultural. It's not about wearing the Sudreh Kusti or it's not about going to the fire temple or praying everyday several times a day or covering your head while praying. Those are all just sort of external and physical things. I think internally, the way I live my life is more Zoroastrian here than it was even in India."

Teshtar: "Oh what a lovely home I had, what a lovely home. I wish it was there. In Bombay, it was in Shapur Baug, which is a Parsi colony. We practically grew up with our neighbors and you knew everybody's neighbors, relations, and relatives. And everyone played together, ate together."

"My name is very different. The challenge is only Iranians can relate to it. If I tell a Pakistani that I'm from Pakistan and this is my name, they literally go, what kind of a name is this? And same with the case with Indians, if you tell them I'm a Parsi but my name is so and so, I have to explain to them, I was born in Iran and this is my original name. My parents were Iranian. But obviously I can relate to all of them, even if I'm sitting with Iranians, I can speak Farsi. I can with Indians, also with Pakistanis so I mean the language is not the issue, but it's really a difficult issue because of my name."

"Now we've been her for a while, what we've noticed is that there has been a realization that we are not doing this for ourselves, we are doing this for the next generation. So, the children don't see themselves as Indian, Pakistani, Iranian. They see themselves as American Zoroastrians. They speak English, they want American food, and that is why we have to curb this desire to look inward to ourselves and we have to be more all-encompassing and inclusive. It's for the sake of the next generation."

"It's this feeling of empowerment that as an immigrant I always felt like I'm in the US and now I just have to be here. I can't go back home and I had to like kind of disassociate my sense of home. And now it's not that way anymore, and I feel really grateful for that. There's a lot of me that will always live there and a lot of who I am is determined, was determined or was influenced, it was inspired by my life there."

"Living through that experience, not knowing whether I would have to go back to Pakistan and live apart from my husband, when we had just been married, it did weigh on you a lot. You know I was twenty-five years old when I left Karachi, twenty-seven when I got married, twenty-nine when I went back, but those four years in some respects were difficult in how much I missed my family."

"Living inside a Parsi colony is weirdly calm and you leave all the chaos behind. One memory that I have is pretty distinct. There was an Agyari or a Parsi Fire Temple that was in the same complex and every time the gehs changed, the gehs being the time of the day, the bells would ring. And the bells signified where the gehs were. So if it was early morning, there were a certain number of bells and if it was afternoon, there are a certain number of bells and I have this soundtrack in my mind of hearing this when I was growing up."

"SO 'Zara-who? Zoro-who?' was the typical response… We can make the change in society that we want to see by gentle teaching, by gentle sharing, by even encouraging people to participate in our food. Start first with our food, then understand our practices, then understand my Haft-seen table that I put out at Navroze."

Sharmeen Mehri (she/her) is a Pakistani international Ph.D. student in the English department at the University at Buffalo. Her research focuses on postcolonial theory and literature with an interdisciplinary focus on archival and visual studies. She completed her Master’s degree at Hunter College, CUNY where she was a dedicated writing tutor and teacher of writing and rhetoric. Her research project will seek to examine and preserve the migration experiences of Zoroastrian South Asians to the United States. With a specific focus on the narrative of assimilation or dissimilation, she will carry out and collect oral interviews to highlight an often-overlooked minority group in the South Asian diaspora. By recording a diverse range of voices, this archive will document how Zoroastrians preserve or adapt their cultural expressions within the context of the broader American immigrant experience.

The Archival Creators Fellowship Program is made possible with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Read Sharmeen's writings about her fellowship project in TIDES:
• A Quotient of Sweetness

Learn more about the artists Zara Contractor and Leea Contractor.

Contact Sharmeen Mehri for queries about her project.