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Mahnaz Motayar
WALKING IN PEACE DURING WAR
How can ancient Persian history reveal enduring legacies of peace — even during a time of war? In this episode, we listen to Dr. Mahnaz Motayar, an Iranian-American writer and neuropsychologist with nearly 50 years of experience innovating creative therapeutic processes and guiding mental health education. Memories of her homeland provide a sense-memory of peace through the beauty of ancient architecture, mouth watering sweets, and the enduring poetry of legendary Persian poet Saʿdī (1210–1291) who inspired humanist ideals underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) centuries later. Listen to Motayar and learn from her fresh perspectives on the importance of valuing peoples, cultures, and land.
[Tomb of poet Sa’adi Shirazi (سعدیه) located in the city of Shiraz, in the province of Fars, Iran.]
Mahnaz Motayar (MM): My full name is Mahnaz Motayar. However, my nickname that I have grown up with is Naz Motayar. I’m a human being. I’m an immigrant. I have been in the United States for almost 50 years. And, my passion, and my vocation and my avocation has always been working with people to make life a little bit easier for them in whatever way possible with the circumstances that they are in. And I’ve been fortunate to be doing that, also, for 45 years.
Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): What do you get to actually do with your life force?
MM: My life force is truly about people, and community. My life force is about bringing peace, comfort, and ease wherever I am and with whomever I am. My career started as a public health educator, and then I taught at various universities for a number of years and then I started my practice as a clinical neuropsychologist. I loved all those pieces of my life, and I see that I’m a person who works better without borders. And, institutions right now, both academic and medical establishments, there’s a lot of borders. Not honoring the diversity of human beings, not just ethnic diversity, but every person has different desires, different strengths, different weaknesses. Unfortunately, in these establishments these days, you cannot acknowledge those. The focus of my life right now, is, promoting health and wellness through music and community.
“My life force is about bringing peace, comfort, and ease wherever I am and with whomever I am.”
AS²: May I ask you if you were in charge of how public health education was unfolding, if you were the author of that space, what it would look like?
MM: It would be very creative. It would create space for people to realize their own potential rather than just learning some information and applying it to the entire population. It would be very respectful, creating a space for people to transform themselves rather than just be lectured at, and saying you gotta take this protocol and apply it to everyone who has this illness. Or, if you’re teaching this course, you have to teach this and this. More of an experiential, interactive, engaging process, rather than just information and lectures.
AS²: How did you figure that out?
MM: Creativity was always a part of me. I always believed that creativity will allow us to reach each other in a more intimate way. If I could use an analogy, Amy, it would be like if you take a frozen food and just defrost it, then everybody can do that. But to cook?
AS²: Ha! Right. “But to cook.” I’m so glad to be here with the real chef.
MM: It’s an honor to be interviewed by a real chef.
AS: Do you have a favorite food ?
MM: I like sweets. There’s some Persian sweets that are really…
AS²: Which one?
MM: I love cream puffs.
AS²: Yes.
MM: I like Napoleon’s.
AS²: Yes.
MM: I can do without food…
AS²: …but not your sweets.
MM: In response to your question, I was just thinking, you and I can pick up the same recipe and it can come out totally different because of our own unique energies, because of the resources available to us. Because of so many other elements. We are to cook. We are to make food that is not tasty at all, and then play with it, and make it better and better, until we reach that place where we say, “Oh, this is it.”
AS²: I see. So health —mental health, physical health, education, public health education — should have that kind of openness and creativity.
MM: Absolutely.
[Image depicting Saʿdī (seated left) and Abu Bakr ibn Sa’d (seated right). Made in Mughal India, dated 1602.]
AS²: The next question is about your connections to place. What lands do you feel a sense of connection to?
MM: I was born in Tehran, Iran. And, to this day, my connection is to that land. I live in San Jose, California. I’m also connected to this land. But the place where I feel whole, and where I feel healed, and, strangely enough, where I feel at peace is still my homeland.
AS²: Absolutely.
MM: It’s very strange to feel at peace with a place that is totally out of peace.
AS²: I can understand that though because the un-peace isn’t natural. What I mean to say is, to say: “I feel at peace with my place where I was named, I was made” makes sense to me— even if it’s a place that right now, is not at peace. Because that’s not its authentic state. What is the peace of Tehran? What is that to you?
“The peace of Tehran is the hospitality of the people. The peace of Tehran is people are willing to help and reach out to each other. The peace in Tehran is amazing beauty in buildings that are thousands of years old. The peace in Tehran is generosity of its people. The diversity and a strong culture that is based in community.”
MM: The piece of Tehran is the hospitality of the people. The peace of Tehran is people are willing to help and reach out to each other. The peace in Tehran is amazing beauty in buildings that are thousands of years old. The peace in Tehran is generosity of its people. The diversity and a strong culture that is based in community.
AS²: I’m so glad to hear that that’s your definition of beginning. That you were born into a place of welcoming and community care and ancient architecture. And that that place is Tehran.
MM: One of my favorite quotes that actually brings me peace is “when we replace an I with a we, even illness becomes wellness.”
AS²: Yeah.
MM: And whenever we are held, and cared for, and we were made to feel safe, there is much more potential to feel at peace. If god forbid, I consider you my enemy. How can I feel safe or at peace if I have an enemy?
AS²: Right. We’ve been in a writing group together, and it’s been so wonderful for me just to hear your work, and you’ve heard my stuff, too. And I thrive so much on just knowing that you have a foot in a region where my mother’s family is. That a lot of people wouldn’t even be able to imagine. And that we share this understanding of, like, how do you create a space of wellness? How do you create a space of peace? And I believe that people have always been doing that somewhere, and we don’t hear enough about it.
MM: People are doing it here. And we don’t hear about it. They’re definitely doing it in the Middle East right now.
“Whenever we are held, and cared for, and we were made to feel safe, there is much more potential to feel at peace.”
AS²: Yes.
MM: And we don’t hear about it, because there is a segment of society that does not want people to be together. They make profit by separations, by divisions, by disentanglements. And I think it has always been that way. The intensity of it has changed. And, my prayer is that this intensity will wake us up.
AS²: What would you like to have awoken?
MM: That we are all human before we are anything else.
AS²: Absolutely.
MM: I mean, if I don’t know where you’re from, Amy, and you don’t know where I’m from. How would we treat each other?
AS²: Well, we might treat each other from the face value of how we behave, what we say, how we show up, what we feel. And, you know, we know, specifically. You were born in Tehran, my mother was born in Jerusalem as a Jewish person. And I delight in you. And I always love when it’s your turn to read. I love to listen. And I can’t see why people couldn’t come to that kind of a place with people from different nationalities, if they knew each other, if they actually got to know each other at their best.
MM: I was working at the VA hospital and this young man came to my office and looked at me straight in the eye, and said, “I cannot work with you.” Right. It was our first session together. And I said, “I respect that. It would just help me greatly if you tell me why. Because you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.” And he said — it was during the Iraq Desert Storm War — he said, “You remind me of the people I had to kill.” I said, “I would be happy to go and arrange for another therapist to see you. And I would appreciate a chance if you just sit and have a dialogue together. But if that’s really hard we don’t have to. And he agreed. And we sat down. And we had the most amazing conversation. I’m sure it must have been very difficult for him. But he gave it a chance. And the only reason, probably, that he did give it a chance is because I gave him freedom to choose. We are to give each other freedom. In everything. In conversations, in interactions. Freedom. Respect. Empathy.
AS²: The benefit of the doubt? A clean slate, just a fresh beginning. Right? I’m going to meet you in this moment. And not with this legacy that my family, or myself, may be carrying. We sometimes turn to ancient stories as an excuse for bad behavior now. Instead of taking responsibility for good or bad behavior now. And we are ancient people. But we’re also people who I would hope that one thing we have in common is that we want futures for our children and our grandchildren, and for the land.
MM: The land is never gonna forget.
AS²: The land is never gonna forget.
MM: History may forget. People may forget, but the land is never gonna forget.
AS²: Forget what we’re doing to it now, what people are doing to it now.
MM: Or what happened to its people.
AS²: Tell me more. My first reaction was, Oh, it’s the oily rain, it’s the bombing of the oil fields, it’s dropping toxic ships to the bottom of the sea. What are all the aquatic life saying? It’s all the other living things in the region. But maybe you have something else in your mind.
“The land is never going to forget. I consider land a living thing, a living being. Land, like our body, does not forget.”
MM: I consider land a living thing. A living being. And land, like our body, does not forget. Our body remembers what we forgot. I see the land as that kind of a space.
AS²: I agree.
MM: In these busy, chaotic, complex, rushed lives that many of us are living right now. We don’t even pay attention to what we are stepping on. And now, with what’s going on and different ideologies, and different experiences, we’re stepping on each other with our words. By the way, I think we have an acronym. And I’m gonna use it. We were just, we were just talking about it, and we said, respect and freedom.
AS²: Respect, empathy, and freedom are the true referees of a fair game. Oh, I’m so with you on that. I’m so with you on that. I understand that when I ask, “what is your inheritance of peace?” it almost might seem innocent, perhaps. But, I personally have chosen to not reach for hatred, not reach for war. I must have become this way somehow, and I assume I’m not the only one. So, I’ve been asking people. You’ve already said it’s Tehran, which is really beautiful to hear right now, that your memory of that place for you still feels so rich and so full.
MM: In order to accept that inheritance of peace. I am to be at peace. If I’m not at peace, that inheritance has gone wasted. You know, it’s kind of like we all inherit a lot of things in our lives, but we don’t use it all. We don’t want it all.
AS²: Right.
MM: For me, my inheritance of peace. Have come from my family, my community in Iran, even to this day. You can’t imagine when we can connect. Which is very difficult right now. A friend of mine, who is our age, and her parents are in Iran. Right now, they are in their 80s. And she was in tears two days ago. Both parents are involved in social work and NGOs and he said, “My 86-year-old father was putting me at peace.” This is someone who has been imprisoned five times. This is someone who is being bombed right now. And he calls his daughter and puts her at peace. Don’t worry about us.
AS²: Having family in the middle of a war zone though, they do do that. My family does that for me, too. I know they’re not sleeping. I know they’re hiding out, they’re underground, they’re in bomb shelters, and they always want to make sure no one else is worrying about them.
MM: Because taking care of each other is at the foundation of both our cultures. That part of me is the culture of sanctuary.
AS²: I relate with that word a lot, too. And I have said, I want to be a sanctuary.
MM: I’ve traveled back home many times since the regime was changed. And this is my personal experience, I’m not saying it’s that way for everybody.
AS²: Sure.
MM: This is just my own personal story. At times when I went back home, I literally was a foreigner. I didn’t know how to do things. And everywhere I went I was treated with such integrity.
AS²: I have to ask how your people are there right now because we haven’t really talked about it. You talked about your friend. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
MM: I don’t know how most of my people are right now. Because there is no connection.
“Taking care of each other is at the foundation of both our cultures. That part of me is the culture of sanctuary.”
AS²: Right.
MM: There’s no internet connections, and phones are… If you can purchase cards, which are expensive, then you can call out from your home. But not everybody can afford that. I have relatives who are not affluent. And even meeting their basic needs right now, I can’t imagine how they are doing that. I am a student of many teachers back home where I have no idea where they are because we were meeting online. Everybody there is our people. Everybody in Israel is my people. Everybody in Lebanon is my people. Everybody in the U.S. is my people.
AS²: Absolutely.
MM: When we say, “my people” the meaning of it is not an ownership.
AS²: It’s not a wall. It’s not like my people that are not yours, or your people that are not mine. In the language of recognition of international human rights, it speaks directly to the human family. And it’s sad to me that the human family had to put themselves through such torturous conditions to get to that awareness which is who we really are, in my opinion. But I’m sad for so much suffering. I wish we could have that understanding without the suffering.
MM: I feel like there will always be suffering because without it, we human beings won’t learn anything. It’s sad to say that. My wish is: let this suffering bring us together. Are you familiar with that poem, from Persian poet Saadi? That’s on top of the United Nations building.
[“Bani Adam” written by Saʿdī (1210–1291) woven into a Persian carpet that hangs in the United Nations-New York]
MM: I know it in Farsi.
AS²: Let’s hear it in Farsi.
MM: “We are part of each other.” [Naz reads poem “Bani Adam” by poet Saʿdī]
بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکر اند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوى بهدرد آورَد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نمانَد قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بیغمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی
banī-ādam aʿzāy-e yek peikarand
keh dar āfarīnesh ‘ze yek goharand
cho ʿozvī be-dard āvarad rūzgār
degar ʿozvhā rā namānad qarār
to k’az meḥnat-e dīgarān bī-ghamī
nashāyad keh nāmat nahand ādamī
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
MM: Isn’t it fascinating that a poem from Iran, is on top of The United Nations Building?
AS²: Well, the poetry from the region. is ancient. And the whole world turns to that. The whole world will quote Rumi, or will quote Hafez. But then, do we really study each other? Do we really study each other’s poetry, each other’s culture, each other’s roots? No.
MM: And we don’t necessarily have to “study,” but listen and ask for the stories like you do. You know, I may not have time to go study your culture.
AS²: There’s so many aspects of every culture. Both you and I are educated women, and we’ll probably go to our grave not knowing all the things we wish we could learn. At least I feel that way. Maybe it isn’t just knowing, it’s listening and enjoying and valuing.
MM: It’s valuing! How come you and I? I didn’t know you, you didn’t know me, and now you’re on my list of gratitude.
AS²: And you’re on mine.
MM: When this war started…
AS²: Yeah.
MM: I am blessed to have many wonderful Jewish friends. And as soon as the war started, all these messages: “We’re still friends, right? We’re still friends, right?” And I’m going like why wouldn’t we be?
AS²: Oh, Naz. When I was in Ramat Hasharon in October 2023 one of the first people who texted the cousin I was with was her friend from Iran. They had met when they were both on vacation where they had started talking and learned that he really loved this one particular Israeli artist, but he didn’t have access to listen to them because of blocks. It just so happens that my cousin knew the artist he liked and called the artist on the phone so they could talk. They became fast friends. On October 7th, this Iranian friend texted my cousin right away. She said, of all the people who could reach out to me now, this one matters most. Is there anything else you would like to share? Anything that you pull from for strength? You once said to me something to the effect of “you can’t live with the war inside you.”
MM: It’s not my war. And the war…wars. They enter those of us who have deep compassion and empathy for others. And, but these wars are to stay outside of our bodies because when they’re in our bodies, we’re not well. The wars around the world. Yes, I may sit here, I may smile with you, We can chuckle, we can do all of that. But inside of me, I know that my wonderful cousin may not have food to eat tonight. That’s how war enters me. I don’t know who’s alive right now? My mother-in-law passed away, and we didn’t know because there was no connection. We found out, four days later that she had passed away. I have friends here who have mothers back home that are alone and they’re elderly. They’re all my people.
AS: Of course. I’m not sure if everyone understands who doesn’t have family somewhere else, or a family somewhere else in a place that’s effected by war. You can’t just find them, you can’t just go. You can’t just bring them here. You can’t just go in. You can’t just go out. There should be, I believe, more respect for immigrant families that have to negotiate this kind of thing because the distancing is dehumanizing. The boundaries and borders are dehumanizing, and it’s a lot to carry. How do you process an experience that is inherently toxic or negative and harming and somehow not come out the worse, come out the better? You’re a healer. You’ve studied mental health. You’ve taught mental health. You’ve treated people who have had to live and experience war. Do you have anything you would like to share about choosing to bring your peace with you instead of other choices that we have?
MM: It goes back to that life force that you were talking about a little while ago. If that life force is diminished, we first are to heal that life force. Connect with it. Allow people to feel it again. Just the fact that we are alive. For those who still have the will to live in light of what is going on. That life force is still there. The light is on, even though dimmed. And to get to that life force. I cannot tell you how many patients over the years I have seen where my ethnicity becomes the entire focus of the session.
AS: What?
MM: Yeah. But I’m not interested in war.
AS: This is a really troubling thing. There’s too much storytelling about war that keeps it in place. That are fictions to bring people into nodding of the head that it’s okay. I think if we dehumanize whoever this is happening to, or we also say the land has no value. What you just said is really sad to me. It’s not okay to not know a place and to believe the worst of it.
MM: We both have been in education. Education often is about right and wrong, correct and incorrect. You answer correctly, you get a good grade. You answer incorrectly. You’re left behind. When people tell me the things that they do, that you’re talking about that’s “not okay?” Oh. I don’t tell them it’s not okay.
AS: Because you’re a better… You’re a therapist!
MM: Outside of a therapeutic session, even if you and I had a disagreement. I can say it’s not okay for me. But I cannot say it’s not okay for you. Because as soon as I say that, we have entered a different field.
AS: When you spoke about the person who said, “You cannot be my therapist because you look like the people I had to kill when I was a soldier.” My first reaction was different than yours.
MM: And that’s the thing, my friend. We are all different. We all have had different experiences. We all are living different stories. It’s like the universe is a big library and we are each a book in that library. Some of us fit into a section. And some of us are having a hard time finding a section. What I am leaving with from our conversation — which I’m very grateful for — goes back to that REF (Respect, Empathy, Freedom). I pray for enough empathy to understand the person who hates me, who disagrees with me, who wants to kill me. That has happened, too. Because something, somewhere they picked up that made them who they are.
AS: I think you must have been and continue to be a great healer and therapist, because you have so much more compassion than I know how yet to generate. I don’t want to live with hate and I don’t want to normalize hate. And you are saying, “but I want to learn from it.” Because it has been your job, in a way, to understand the human mind. That’s an elevated state.
MM: I have relatives who have been educated in the United States. And they are physicians and engineers and lawyers, and all I’ve heard from them for years is, “Oh, these Jews, these Jews.” And one night, I was sitting with them. And I go, “I’m really curious, what have “these Jews” have done to you. You are such a smart, talented, caring person. What is this? I wanna know.” He said, “When we were growing up, when I was a kid. I was told, ‘watch out for the Jewish people. They will suck out the blood out of you.’”
AS: Right. Yeah, that’s an old anti-Semitic trope.
MM: And I looked at him and I said, “and you’ve carried that?”
AS: I know, if I could only show him the jars of blood I have hiding in my closet!
MM: And also I said, “You know I can’t change you. But I can choose not to listen to you.”
AS: Well, I’m with you on this. With my privilege of being not under missile fire, what kind of ethical communication do I want to have? When we were together last time, I wrote about an experience with this wonderful Jewish-Muslim Alliance, and how it felt to hear the call to prayer in Arabic inside of L.A.’s oldest synagogue. At first I was cynical that this was never gonna work. Then a young woman, who is Saudi, came over and sat next to me, and we had Iftar together. She had never been inside a synagogue before and was thrilled. I felt a kind of relief. Peace is the most important thing I could possibly imagine. Peace as a prelude to actual coming to know the human family, and having a deep love and respect for who we are in all of our broad array. I don’t see how the path society is on now will take us anywhere better.
MM: Maybe we are all to have the conversation: “How do I walk in peace in a war zone?”
Biography:
Dr. Naz Motayar is a healing advocate, and a medical psychologist supporting individuals with challenging medical conditions to return to the healing path. Born with a physical difference she knows and promotes the healing path as a process of integration and illumination, personally and professionally. She has developed and taught numerous courses on healing through community and creative interventions. She has served as medical staff at several hospitals. Her work emphasizes the necessity of honoring relationships with all beings to promote individual, communal and planetary healing. She is best known for bringing joy, vitality, inspiration and enthusiasm to the healing process through creative approaches. Healing is her passion and life’s purpose.
Resources:
Follow Naz on Substack at Naz’s Substack
Naz and Amy met in a writing circle taught by Deena Metzger. Follow Deena’s substack Desperate Love Letters to a Wounded Earth.
Read more about the 13th century Persian poet Saʿdī
Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Equal and inalienable rights is the foundation, justice, and peace in the world.”
- Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.
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By Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-SantoWALKING IN PEACE DURING WAR
How can ancient Persian history reveal enduring legacies of peace — even during a time of war? In this episode, we listen to Dr. Mahnaz Motayar, an Iranian-American writer and neuropsychologist with nearly 50 years of experience innovating creative therapeutic processes and guiding mental health education. Memories of her homeland provide a sense-memory of peace through the beauty of ancient architecture, mouth watering sweets, and the enduring poetry of legendary Persian poet Saʿdī (1210–1291) who inspired humanist ideals underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) centuries later. Listen to Motayar and learn from her fresh perspectives on the importance of valuing peoples, cultures, and land.
[Tomb of poet Sa’adi Shirazi (سعدیه) located in the city of Shiraz, in the province of Fars, Iran.]
Mahnaz Motayar (MM): My full name is Mahnaz Motayar. However, my nickname that I have grown up with is Naz Motayar. I’m a human being. I’m an immigrant. I have been in the United States for almost 50 years. And, my passion, and my vocation and my avocation has always been working with people to make life a little bit easier for them in whatever way possible with the circumstances that they are in. And I’ve been fortunate to be doing that, also, for 45 years.
Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): What do you get to actually do with your life force?
MM: My life force is truly about people, and community. My life force is about bringing peace, comfort, and ease wherever I am and with whomever I am. My career started as a public health educator, and then I taught at various universities for a number of years and then I started my practice as a clinical neuropsychologist. I loved all those pieces of my life, and I see that I’m a person who works better without borders. And, institutions right now, both academic and medical establishments, there’s a lot of borders. Not honoring the diversity of human beings, not just ethnic diversity, but every person has different desires, different strengths, different weaknesses. Unfortunately, in these establishments these days, you cannot acknowledge those. The focus of my life right now, is, promoting health and wellness through music and community.
“My life force is about bringing peace, comfort, and ease wherever I am and with whomever I am.”
AS²: May I ask you if you were in charge of how public health education was unfolding, if you were the author of that space, what it would look like?
MM: It would be very creative. It would create space for people to realize their own potential rather than just learning some information and applying it to the entire population. It would be very respectful, creating a space for people to transform themselves rather than just be lectured at, and saying you gotta take this protocol and apply it to everyone who has this illness. Or, if you’re teaching this course, you have to teach this and this. More of an experiential, interactive, engaging process, rather than just information and lectures.
AS²: How did you figure that out?
MM: Creativity was always a part of me. I always believed that creativity will allow us to reach each other in a more intimate way. If I could use an analogy, Amy, it would be like if you take a frozen food and just defrost it, then everybody can do that. But to cook?
AS²: Ha! Right. “But to cook.” I’m so glad to be here with the real chef.
MM: It’s an honor to be interviewed by a real chef.
AS: Do you have a favorite food ?
MM: I like sweets. There’s some Persian sweets that are really…
AS²: Which one?
MM: I love cream puffs.
AS²: Yes.
MM: I like Napoleon’s.
AS²: Yes.
MM: I can do without food…
AS²: …but not your sweets.
MM: In response to your question, I was just thinking, you and I can pick up the same recipe and it can come out totally different because of our own unique energies, because of the resources available to us. Because of so many other elements. We are to cook. We are to make food that is not tasty at all, and then play with it, and make it better and better, until we reach that place where we say, “Oh, this is it.”
AS²: I see. So health —mental health, physical health, education, public health education — should have that kind of openness and creativity.
MM: Absolutely.
[Image depicting Saʿdī (seated left) and Abu Bakr ibn Sa’d (seated right). Made in Mughal India, dated 1602.]
AS²: The next question is about your connections to place. What lands do you feel a sense of connection to?
MM: I was born in Tehran, Iran. And, to this day, my connection is to that land. I live in San Jose, California. I’m also connected to this land. But the place where I feel whole, and where I feel healed, and, strangely enough, where I feel at peace is still my homeland.
AS²: Absolutely.
MM: It’s very strange to feel at peace with a place that is totally out of peace.
AS²: I can understand that though because the un-peace isn’t natural. What I mean to say is, to say: “I feel at peace with my place where I was named, I was made” makes sense to me— even if it’s a place that right now, is not at peace. Because that’s not its authentic state. What is the peace of Tehran? What is that to you?
“The peace of Tehran is the hospitality of the people. The peace of Tehran is people are willing to help and reach out to each other. The peace in Tehran is amazing beauty in buildings that are thousands of years old. The peace in Tehran is generosity of its people. The diversity and a strong culture that is based in community.”
MM: The piece of Tehran is the hospitality of the people. The peace of Tehran is people are willing to help and reach out to each other. The peace in Tehran is amazing beauty in buildings that are thousands of years old. The peace in Tehran is generosity of its people. The diversity and a strong culture that is based in community.
AS²: I’m so glad to hear that that’s your definition of beginning. That you were born into a place of welcoming and community care and ancient architecture. And that that place is Tehran.
MM: One of my favorite quotes that actually brings me peace is “when we replace an I with a we, even illness becomes wellness.”
AS²: Yeah.
MM: And whenever we are held, and cared for, and we were made to feel safe, there is much more potential to feel at peace. If god forbid, I consider you my enemy. How can I feel safe or at peace if I have an enemy?
AS²: Right. We’ve been in a writing group together, and it’s been so wonderful for me just to hear your work, and you’ve heard my stuff, too. And I thrive so much on just knowing that you have a foot in a region where my mother’s family is. That a lot of people wouldn’t even be able to imagine. And that we share this understanding of, like, how do you create a space of wellness? How do you create a space of peace? And I believe that people have always been doing that somewhere, and we don’t hear enough about it.
MM: People are doing it here. And we don’t hear about it. They’re definitely doing it in the Middle East right now.
“Whenever we are held, and cared for, and we were made to feel safe, there is much more potential to feel at peace.”
AS²: Yes.
MM: And we don’t hear about it, because there is a segment of society that does not want people to be together. They make profit by separations, by divisions, by disentanglements. And I think it has always been that way. The intensity of it has changed. And, my prayer is that this intensity will wake us up.
AS²: What would you like to have awoken?
MM: That we are all human before we are anything else.
AS²: Absolutely.
MM: I mean, if I don’t know where you’re from, Amy, and you don’t know where I’m from. How would we treat each other?
AS²: Well, we might treat each other from the face value of how we behave, what we say, how we show up, what we feel. And, you know, we know, specifically. You were born in Tehran, my mother was born in Jerusalem as a Jewish person. And I delight in you. And I always love when it’s your turn to read. I love to listen. And I can’t see why people couldn’t come to that kind of a place with people from different nationalities, if they knew each other, if they actually got to know each other at their best.
MM: I was working at the VA hospital and this young man came to my office and looked at me straight in the eye, and said, “I cannot work with you.” Right. It was our first session together. And I said, “I respect that. It would just help me greatly if you tell me why. Because you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.” And he said — it was during the Iraq Desert Storm War — he said, “You remind me of the people I had to kill.” I said, “I would be happy to go and arrange for another therapist to see you. And I would appreciate a chance if you just sit and have a dialogue together. But if that’s really hard we don’t have to. And he agreed. And we sat down. And we had the most amazing conversation. I’m sure it must have been very difficult for him. But he gave it a chance. And the only reason, probably, that he did give it a chance is because I gave him freedom to choose. We are to give each other freedom. In everything. In conversations, in interactions. Freedom. Respect. Empathy.
AS²: The benefit of the doubt? A clean slate, just a fresh beginning. Right? I’m going to meet you in this moment. And not with this legacy that my family, or myself, may be carrying. We sometimes turn to ancient stories as an excuse for bad behavior now. Instead of taking responsibility for good or bad behavior now. And we are ancient people. But we’re also people who I would hope that one thing we have in common is that we want futures for our children and our grandchildren, and for the land.
MM: The land is never gonna forget.
AS²: The land is never gonna forget.
MM: History may forget. People may forget, but the land is never gonna forget.
AS²: Forget what we’re doing to it now, what people are doing to it now.
MM: Or what happened to its people.
AS²: Tell me more. My first reaction was, Oh, it’s the oily rain, it’s the bombing of the oil fields, it’s dropping toxic ships to the bottom of the sea. What are all the aquatic life saying? It’s all the other living things in the region. But maybe you have something else in your mind.
“The land is never going to forget. I consider land a living thing, a living being. Land, like our body, does not forget.”
MM: I consider land a living thing. A living being. And land, like our body, does not forget. Our body remembers what we forgot. I see the land as that kind of a space.
AS²: I agree.
MM: In these busy, chaotic, complex, rushed lives that many of us are living right now. We don’t even pay attention to what we are stepping on. And now, with what’s going on and different ideologies, and different experiences, we’re stepping on each other with our words. By the way, I think we have an acronym. And I’m gonna use it. We were just, we were just talking about it, and we said, respect and freedom.
AS²: Respect, empathy, and freedom are the true referees of a fair game. Oh, I’m so with you on that. I’m so with you on that. I understand that when I ask, “what is your inheritance of peace?” it almost might seem innocent, perhaps. But, I personally have chosen to not reach for hatred, not reach for war. I must have become this way somehow, and I assume I’m not the only one. So, I’ve been asking people. You’ve already said it’s Tehran, which is really beautiful to hear right now, that your memory of that place for you still feels so rich and so full.
MM: In order to accept that inheritance of peace. I am to be at peace. If I’m not at peace, that inheritance has gone wasted. You know, it’s kind of like we all inherit a lot of things in our lives, but we don’t use it all. We don’t want it all.
AS²: Right.
MM: For me, my inheritance of peace. Have come from my family, my community in Iran, even to this day. You can’t imagine when we can connect. Which is very difficult right now. A friend of mine, who is our age, and her parents are in Iran. Right now, they are in their 80s. And she was in tears two days ago. Both parents are involved in social work and NGOs and he said, “My 86-year-old father was putting me at peace.” This is someone who has been imprisoned five times. This is someone who is being bombed right now. And he calls his daughter and puts her at peace. Don’t worry about us.
AS²: Having family in the middle of a war zone though, they do do that. My family does that for me, too. I know they’re not sleeping. I know they’re hiding out, they’re underground, they’re in bomb shelters, and they always want to make sure no one else is worrying about them.
MM: Because taking care of each other is at the foundation of both our cultures. That part of me is the culture of sanctuary.
AS²: I relate with that word a lot, too. And I have said, I want to be a sanctuary.
MM: I’ve traveled back home many times since the regime was changed. And this is my personal experience, I’m not saying it’s that way for everybody.
AS²: Sure.
MM: This is just my own personal story. At times when I went back home, I literally was a foreigner. I didn’t know how to do things. And everywhere I went I was treated with such integrity.
AS²: I have to ask how your people are there right now because we haven’t really talked about it. You talked about your friend. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
MM: I don’t know how most of my people are right now. Because there is no connection.
“Taking care of each other is at the foundation of both our cultures. That part of me is the culture of sanctuary.”
AS²: Right.
MM: There’s no internet connections, and phones are… If you can purchase cards, which are expensive, then you can call out from your home. But not everybody can afford that. I have relatives who are not affluent. And even meeting their basic needs right now, I can’t imagine how they are doing that. I am a student of many teachers back home where I have no idea where they are because we were meeting online. Everybody there is our people. Everybody in Israel is my people. Everybody in Lebanon is my people. Everybody in the U.S. is my people.
AS²: Absolutely.
MM: When we say, “my people” the meaning of it is not an ownership.
AS²: It’s not a wall. It’s not like my people that are not yours, or your people that are not mine. In the language of recognition of international human rights, it speaks directly to the human family. And it’s sad to me that the human family had to put themselves through such torturous conditions to get to that awareness which is who we really are, in my opinion. But I’m sad for so much suffering. I wish we could have that understanding without the suffering.
MM: I feel like there will always be suffering because without it, we human beings won’t learn anything. It’s sad to say that. My wish is: let this suffering bring us together. Are you familiar with that poem, from Persian poet Saadi? That’s on top of the United Nations building.
[“Bani Adam” written by Saʿdī (1210–1291) woven into a Persian carpet that hangs in the United Nations-New York]
MM: I know it in Farsi.
AS²: Let’s hear it in Farsi.
MM: “We are part of each other.” [Naz reads poem “Bani Adam” by poet Saʿdī]
بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکر اند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوى بهدرد آورَد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نمانَد قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بیغمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی
banī-ādam aʿzāy-e yek peikarand
keh dar āfarīnesh ‘ze yek goharand
cho ʿozvī be-dard āvarad rūzgār
degar ʿozvhā rā namānad qarār
to k’az meḥnat-e dīgarān bī-ghamī
nashāyad keh nāmat nahand ādamī
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
MM: Isn’t it fascinating that a poem from Iran, is on top of The United Nations Building?
AS²: Well, the poetry from the region. is ancient. And the whole world turns to that. The whole world will quote Rumi, or will quote Hafez. But then, do we really study each other? Do we really study each other’s poetry, each other’s culture, each other’s roots? No.
MM: And we don’t necessarily have to “study,” but listen and ask for the stories like you do. You know, I may not have time to go study your culture.
AS²: There’s so many aspects of every culture. Both you and I are educated women, and we’ll probably go to our grave not knowing all the things we wish we could learn. At least I feel that way. Maybe it isn’t just knowing, it’s listening and enjoying and valuing.
MM: It’s valuing! How come you and I? I didn’t know you, you didn’t know me, and now you’re on my list of gratitude.
AS²: And you’re on mine.
MM: When this war started…
AS²: Yeah.
MM: I am blessed to have many wonderful Jewish friends. And as soon as the war started, all these messages: “We’re still friends, right? We’re still friends, right?” And I’m going like why wouldn’t we be?
AS²: Oh, Naz. When I was in Ramat Hasharon in October 2023 one of the first people who texted the cousin I was with was her friend from Iran. They had met when they were both on vacation where they had started talking and learned that he really loved this one particular Israeli artist, but he didn’t have access to listen to them because of blocks. It just so happens that my cousin knew the artist he liked and called the artist on the phone so they could talk. They became fast friends. On October 7th, this Iranian friend texted my cousin right away. She said, of all the people who could reach out to me now, this one matters most. Is there anything else you would like to share? Anything that you pull from for strength? You once said to me something to the effect of “you can’t live with the war inside you.”
MM: It’s not my war. And the war…wars. They enter those of us who have deep compassion and empathy for others. And, but these wars are to stay outside of our bodies because when they’re in our bodies, we’re not well. The wars around the world. Yes, I may sit here, I may smile with you, We can chuckle, we can do all of that. But inside of me, I know that my wonderful cousin may not have food to eat tonight. That’s how war enters me. I don’t know who’s alive right now? My mother-in-law passed away, and we didn’t know because there was no connection. We found out, four days later that she had passed away. I have friends here who have mothers back home that are alone and they’re elderly. They’re all my people.
AS: Of course. I’m not sure if everyone understands who doesn’t have family somewhere else, or a family somewhere else in a place that’s effected by war. You can’t just find them, you can’t just go. You can’t just bring them here. You can’t just go in. You can’t just go out. There should be, I believe, more respect for immigrant families that have to negotiate this kind of thing because the distancing is dehumanizing. The boundaries and borders are dehumanizing, and it’s a lot to carry. How do you process an experience that is inherently toxic or negative and harming and somehow not come out the worse, come out the better? You’re a healer. You’ve studied mental health. You’ve taught mental health. You’ve treated people who have had to live and experience war. Do you have anything you would like to share about choosing to bring your peace with you instead of other choices that we have?
MM: It goes back to that life force that you were talking about a little while ago. If that life force is diminished, we first are to heal that life force. Connect with it. Allow people to feel it again. Just the fact that we are alive. For those who still have the will to live in light of what is going on. That life force is still there. The light is on, even though dimmed. And to get to that life force. I cannot tell you how many patients over the years I have seen where my ethnicity becomes the entire focus of the session.
AS: What?
MM: Yeah. But I’m not interested in war.
AS: This is a really troubling thing. There’s too much storytelling about war that keeps it in place. That are fictions to bring people into nodding of the head that it’s okay. I think if we dehumanize whoever this is happening to, or we also say the land has no value. What you just said is really sad to me. It’s not okay to not know a place and to believe the worst of it.
MM: We both have been in education. Education often is about right and wrong, correct and incorrect. You answer correctly, you get a good grade. You answer incorrectly. You’re left behind. When people tell me the things that they do, that you’re talking about that’s “not okay?” Oh. I don’t tell them it’s not okay.
AS: Because you’re a better… You’re a therapist!
MM: Outside of a therapeutic session, even if you and I had a disagreement. I can say it’s not okay for me. But I cannot say it’s not okay for you. Because as soon as I say that, we have entered a different field.
AS: When you spoke about the person who said, “You cannot be my therapist because you look like the people I had to kill when I was a soldier.” My first reaction was different than yours.
MM: And that’s the thing, my friend. We are all different. We all have had different experiences. We all are living different stories. It’s like the universe is a big library and we are each a book in that library. Some of us fit into a section. And some of us are having a hard time finding a section. What I am leaving with from our conversation — which I’m very grateful for — goes back to that REF (Respect, Empathy, Freedom). I pray for enough empathy to understand the person who hates me, who disagrees with me, who wants to kill me. That has happened, too. Because something, somewhere they picked up that made them who they are.
AS: I think you must have been and continue to be a great healer and therapist, because you have so much more compassion than I know how yet to generate. I don’t want to live with hate and I don’t want to normalize hate. And you are saying, “but I want to learn from it.” Because it has been your job, in a way, to understand the human mind. That’s an elevated state.
MM: I have relatives who have been educated in the United States. And they are physicians and engineers and lawyers, and all I’ve heard from them for years is, “Oh, these Jews, these Jews.” And one night, I was sitting with them. And I go, “I’m really curious, what have “these Jews” have done to you. You are such a smart, talented, caring person. What is this? I wanna know.” He said, “When we were growing up, when I was a kid. I was told, ‘watch out for the Jewish people. They will suck out the blood out of you.’”
AS: Right. Yeah, that’s an old anti-Semitic trope.
MM: And I looked at him and I said, “and you’ve carried that?”
AS: I know, if I could only show him the jars of blood I have hiding in my closet!
MM: And also I said, “You know I can’t change you. But I can choose not to listen to you.”
AS: Well, I’m with you on this. With my privilege of being not under missile fire, what kind of ethical communication do I want to have? When we were together last time, I wrote about an experience with this wonderful Jewish-Muslim Alliance, and how it felt to hear the call to prayer in Arabic inside of L.A.’s oldest synagogue. At first I was cynical that this was never gonna work. Then a young woman, who is Saudi, came over and sat next to me, and we had Iftar together. She had never been inside a synagogue before and was thrilled. I felt a kind of relief. Peace is the most important thing I could possibly imagine. Peace as a prelude to actual coming to know the human family, and having a deep love and respect for who we are in all of our broad array. I don’t see how the path society is on now will take us anywhere better.
MM: Maybe we are all to have the conversation: “How do I walk in peace in a war zone?”
Biography:
Dr. Naz Motayar is a healing advocate, and a medical psychologist supporting individuals with challenging medical conditions to return to the healing path. Born with a physical difference she knows and promotes the healing path as a process of integration and illumination, personally and professionally. She has developed and taught numerous courses on healing through community and creative interventions. She has served as medical staff at several hospitals. Her work emphasizes the necessity of honoring relationships with all beings to promote individual, communal and planetary healing. She is best known for bringing joy, vitality, inspiration and enthusiasm to the healing process through creative approaches. Healing is her passion and life’s purpose.
Resources:
Follow Naz on Substack at Naz’s Substack
Naz and Amy met in a writing circle taught by Deena Metzger. Follow Deena’s substack Desperate Love Letters to a Wounded Earth.
Read more about the 13th century Persian poet Saʿdī
Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Equal and inalienable rights is the foundation, justice, and peace in the world.”
- Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.
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