It's an odd thing, being born to immigrants in the US. It's strange, realizing that you are part of the "melting pot," but it's even stranger realizing that the "melting" takes a little longer than most think. In the eyes of my parents, I am Iranian. In the eyes of my American friends, I am American. I know that I am both.
I grew up between cultures - constantly having to explain to friends why I couldn't sleep over at their houses, but saying that they were more than welcome at mine. At the same time, I begged my parents to be allowed to sleep over my friends' houses. By the time I was 10, I learned how futile an effort that was....
Of course, many will argue with you - how dare your parents say that you're Iranian, and not really an American? How dare they have difficulties accepting that they will probably never live in Iran again? If they don't like it here - they should go back to where they came from! But it's so much more complicated than that... how can they abandon their traditions, their culture, their family, their language, and everything that comes along with all that? How do you do that when you came to go to university and go back home, and then you find that the land that you loved is no longer the land that you remember?
Am I truly American, as friends seem to think I am?
- When in 3rd grade (in a silly argument with a FRIEND), she tells you to "go back from where you came from" - am I American? My response, by the way, was - "you mean Oklahoma?" - but, boy, did that comment sting. It still does.
- When in 5th grade, someone asked me if I sleep on a bed and if my dad beat my mom... while someone else asked me if my throat was built differently so that I could pronounce my name.
- When in 6th grade my neighbor said, "I heard that weird 'duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh... nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh' music at your house last night." They were making that Egyptian song sound - you know the one I'm talking about, I hope.
- Or when the Persian Gulf War broke out... I became an Iraqi, after people had known for 3 years that I was Iranian. Perhaps they forgot the 9 year long Iran-Iraq war, where 1 million people died... the one that keeps my cousin so bitter towards Arabs to this day, as he lost so many of his friends to it.
- Or when someone told me, after September 11th, that people should be kicked off of planes if they looked scary to others - including my dad who had been in the US for 30 years and is a US citizen.
- Or like last week in Puerto Rico, when a marine corp sergeant (hitting on me at the hotel bar) totally got a look of revulsion when I said I was Muslim. Of course, he apologized for the next 30 minutes, after I soundly put him in his place.
But all this can't help but make me wonder, how American am I if people set me outside as soon as they know that I am Muslim, a Middle-Eastern, a member of the "Axis-of-Evil?" Some people ask me how frequent all these experiences are... does it really matter? I can say that I only wrote about experiences that felt like a knife going into my heart when they happened. There were plenty of other experiences, but these were the ones that took me by surprise, except for the plane one. Perhaps you can say these were just ignorant people, but it's a little too often and from too many educated people for that to be a good reason - or at least a good enough reason for me to feel totally welcome in society.
Sometimes, I just want to be in a group of people who understand me, who are proud of my Iranian heritage, who don't think being Muslim = being a radical psycho, and who simply accept/understand me for who/what I am. Sometimes you get tired of all the questions from people just trying to figure out who you are, who your family is, and just trying to understand all the idiosyncracies of family, tradition, etc. that apply to your life. Overall, I appreciate the questions. I strongly want to be understood by others, but sometimes it's just so frustrating, because it almost takes an inherent knowledge to understand. I think this was why I enjoyed going out to
Persian Night... it was the first time I went to anything like that, and I LOVED it! (I'm definitely going again.)
One thing that I really appreciate about Rob is that he understands a lot of this better than most. Granted, I don't think there will ever be a replacement for another Iranian, but that is understandable. However, Rob is in an interesting position; he is part of the phenomenon called the "
Third Culture Kid." Growing up in India, living between worlds, his experiences and understandings of other people and cultures grew. What is strange about this article, though, is that it made me realize how it is that he almost morphs into a different person in different settings. It must be confusing, and I know it is something that he thinks about often.
Back to the cross culture issue: I came across an interesting
article. It doesn't totally apply as the author was born in Iran and moved to the US as a teen; I was born here. I think this made it even more difficult for my families, and for others in our situation Do we teach our children Farsi - less choice here, really, as they didn't speak as much English back then? How do we teach them about our culture? about
taarof? about so many other little things that make up Iranian traditions? How do we get our daughters to understand that sleeping over at other people's houses is simply unacceptable? So many clashes grew from these difficulties. I appreciate my parents having to make those decisions, and I respect the difficulties and the heartbreak they faced while doing so. I know they experienced some serious trials, and I know that they struggled with trying to achieve the best balance that they could. I still don't know what I will do with my own children some day.
All of this barely scrapes the topic. There's so much that comes up with being raised as a first generation, cross-culture, or (as I like to think about it) lost and confused child that summing it up would take ages.
