Nothing is Holy

Ava Razavi on trading in American dreams for nightmares.

“Nothing is Holy,” by Ava Razavi, is the second in a series of reported stories by new writers on the direct and indirect trickle-down effects of the Trumpocene in the small towns of the Upper Valley, a region of New Hampshire, tilting right, and Vermont, strongly liberal, divided by the Connecticut River. You can read more about the series, theDartmouth College course out of which it emerged, and our first entry, here.

About halfway through the course, Ava Razavi responded to our readings, which included Trump’s executive orders and the daily news, by declaring, “I don’t want to think about this.” And yet, she told me, she couldn’t stop thinking about it all. As a student of government wondering what “government” means now, as someone coming into adulthood ten years into the Trumpocene, as a woman, as an Iranian-American, as someone who used to believe in American dreams. And maybe most of all, here, at least, as a writer. Ava asks questions here, but this isn’t a story to which you can turn for answers. Ava takes up her notebook and goes looking—in religion and poetry, among the aged and the young—and doesn’t find any. And she’s too good a writer to lie. This is no feel-good story.

Or maybe it is: A story of what it feels like for one writer to be alive right now, a true one. That’s worth more than any tacked-on happy ending.

—JS

Nothing is Holy

By Ava Razavi

Five-year-old Lane told me we have the same birthday. He was wearing a paper crown with his name on it. Our birthday was not until the next day, but he was going to be out of school, so he donned his makeshift royal headpiece a day early.

Lane was very excited that we shared the same date of birth. Almost as excited as he was shocked that I was turning twenty and not also six.

I wish I were six. Then I could shove my fingers in my ears and scream “lalalalalalala” over the news. If I were six, I would not know there’d been a bombing in Bandar Abbas, Iran, a few days ago. I would not wonder if my grandparents had died in that bombing. I would not crawl into bed crying some nights as Donald Trump launched attacks on my national identity. I would wear a paper crown the day before my birthday and tell my mother I wanted vanilla cupcakes instead of chocolate.

…

On the winding back roads of Warren, New Hampshire, a friend tells me, “You’re overwhelmed because it’s an overwhelming time.”

She is right. It doesn’t make me feel much better.

…

There is a version of America that only comes to me in my dreams…

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