Are there americans living in iran




















Another person who identifies as LGBTQ, must hide their sexual identity from others in the Iranian community, both here and abroad, for fear that they will be ostracized here or face severe legal punishment should they return to Iran. The recent unrest in Iran weighs deeply on the minds of these Iranian Americans. One person spoke of the violent dreams she has experienced.

Another explained how seeing video of Ukraine International Airlines Flight on fire in the predawn sky, amid the rising tensions of everything else, was the moment that caused him to abandon all hope for his government and its care for the Iranian people. Each person chose the space in which they were photographed; a place that was comforting or meaningful to them in some way. These are the stories of their American experience.

Aria transplanted to Seattle for his job at the university three months ago. He moved to the U. That was a massive miscalculation. A massive miscalculation from a know-nothing president who's destroying diplomacy at an institutional level. By attacking Iran militarily, the U. As a teenager, Roomiany arrived in Pocatello, Idaho, in with an idealized view of the United States.

During that time her family moved to Bakersfield, Calif. Fast forward to the events in recent weeks, and Roomiany is shocked and heartbroken by the detainment of Iranian Americans at the Canadian border. Lay down! Roomiany loves to visit Carkeek Park for solace. Dadgari, a mother of two young children, finds herself gazing out the window into the forest behind her Issaquah condominium when she writes poetry and reflects on her life.

She and her husband won the lottery for a green card in the U. At times, it has been a solitary experience for their family. Dadgari finds inspiration and happiness in the arts. When she lived in Iran, her affinity for Persian dance led her to explore the art, but laws in Iran forbid women from singing and dancing, forcing those who wanted to dance into underground clubs — she did so for nearly 20 years. With the most recent developments in Iran, a wave of sadness washed over her, but she then realized that she must persevere.

Dance can be a form of protest of what is happening in the streets. Lashgari has found this intolerance at other points in her life, too. Lashgari has since filed a grievance with the hospital's human resources department and has been told the hospital is providing classes for the staff that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Compared to other places in the world, we live in a very wonderful place. I feel that we are a state that is very way ahead of our time. It's the pinnacle of who I am," says Vahabnejad, a second-generation immigrant who was born and raised in Washington state and is a recent graduate of the University of Washington. His father came to the U. Me being an Iranian American, but staying true to my Persian roots — the way I speak, interact.

One moment, I saw propaganda murals encouraging young men to walk into the blazing sunset of martyrdom. The next, a woman in a bookstore served me cookies while I browsed through the books, admiring one in particular. Then, when I was about to leave without buying anything, she gave me the book for free. While English is the second language on many signs, the squiggly local script looked like Arabic to me.

I quickly learned that it's actually Farsi. Iranians are Persian. Persians are not Arabs, and they don't speak Arabic — they speak Farsi. My film crew and I heard over and over again, "We are not Arabs! The numbers, however, are the same as those used in the Arab world.

Thankfully, when I needed it, I found that they also use "our" numbers. Iran is a cash society. Because of the three-decades-old American embargo here, Western credit cards don't work. No ATMs for foreigners means that we have to bring in big wads of cash The money comes with lots of zeros. One dollar is equal to 10, rial. A toman is ten rial, and some prices are listed in rial, others in toman…a tourist rip-off just waiting to happen. Nothing could be further than the truth.

No other people in the world are more temperamentally similar to Americans than Iranians. So is their language. But we are a lot more like them than most Americans, and that includes members of the news media, assume. The problem is, very few Americans have been to Iran. But this seems like an appropriate time to share what I learned nine years ago when I visited that country. The main purpose of our trip was travel through Afghanistan for a book I was writing.

Since our itinerary through that war-torn country would end with the Afghan city of Herat near the Iranian border, we wanted to leave via Iran after some tourism and rest and relaxation. You can get an idea of how unusual our plan was from the incredulous reaction of the Afghan border policeman who greeted us after we crossed the border from Tajikistan.

When we told him Iran, he laughed. Several weeks later, we walked across the border between northwestern Afghanistan and northeastern Iran. It seemed incredibly simple. They grilled us for hours. Clearly we were rare birds. The first thing that struck me, especially compared to the bleak devastation of Afghanistan, was how modern Iran was, even in this remote corner of the nation. Americans have an impression of the Middle East as a bunch of dusty pockmarked ruins and sand, but Iran looked and felt like Turkey or Israel in terms of its terrain and infrastructure.



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