My family emigrated to the Unites States during Thanksgiving week, 1978. I have many things for which to be thankful: family, friends, freedom. We didn’t have to walk across border at night and spend months or years in one country hoping for a visa to a third – I know many who did.
I look back at the years away from Tehran and wonder what would have happened if I had stayed – would I have remained true to my Faith like so many and bore the brunt of the wrath of a small group of small-minded men? I want to think so.
I think I left something back there – not sure what it its but I am missing something. When I’ve tried to explain this to my friends the only ones who understand are those who left Iran at about the same age – somewhere between 10 and 13; old enough to know things weren’t quite right but too young to understand the magnitude. Those who were small children when they left were able to adapt to their new home well and those who had passed adolescence had some sense of their own identity and adapted in their own ways. The ones in the middle got confused – perhaps that’s why I see many of us go through challenges in school, career and relationships. Of course this could just be the whining of someone who lives in relative comfort with too much time on his hands.
Once in a while I have this fantasy of riding a bike through Iran – my own Motorcycle Diaries I suppose. I don’t know why a motorcycle – the only time I was on one was with a friend and I almost fell off as we sped up to 80 mph.
Not now though. There are hints of a thaw but I’m wary. I hope we are not charmed by the semblance of sophistication or fluency in English without a harsh ethnic accent.
What was a revolution against a dictatorship turned into a republic of fear; fear of women, fear of youth, fear of the other, fear of the new, fear of an Iran before Islam, . . . fear of laughter. Sometimes from a distance it is as if all the vibrant colors of a Persian rug were removed from an entire nation – everything and everyone in black and white and the many shades in between (and it can’t be because the whole population suddenly became architects).
Not too long ago, I read that young boys and girls were arrested for a water fight in a park. It took me back to the last day of 5th grade at my co-ed Mehran Elementary; we would all be going our separate ways to middle school and we had a grand water fight, as best we could. It was the end of innocence: in the midst of being doused by Tehran’s famous refreshing water, we found out who had a crush on whom – tender moments to hold dear for a lifetime. Now, as one of my childhood friends who lives in Iran told me, those younger than her cannot comprehend the concept of boys and girls going to the same school.
We should all be thankful for freedom on Thanksgiving, the true American holiday that every immigrant group adopts and to whose table each adds its own spice – you haven’t lived until you’ve had the traditional Thanksgiving Persian tea after your turkey dinner.
the City 