In just a few hours, I will be celebrating an important anniversary on Iranian.com. This day marks a year since I joined Iranian.com as a registered user and started blogging on the site. I don’t mean to brag (!), but I was one of the first people Jahanshah invited to test the new software. I wrote my first test blog on August 5, 2007, becoming the first blogger outside of JJ and Wayne to write something on the site.
Being able now to self-publish through blogging, this past year has been a year full of interesting reading and learning, writing and learning some more. From the earlier stressful days of being called names and such to the more civil days of receiving compliments and constructive criticism, writing for Iranian.com for the past year has found new meaning and purpose for me. Though it may be hard for the newcomers to agree, our community seems to have transformed into one with a kinder, gentler, and yet more sophisticated discourse over the past year as a result of our ability to self-publish.
This year also marked the 30th year since I arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Though like most other Iranians living abroad I have discovered and exercised the freedoms extended to me in the US, I feel especially privileged as for the first time I have been able to exercise those choices and freedoms of expression among my fellow countrymen and women. We all love Iran, and we all miss it. Though loving and missing something are usually positive feelings, when it comes to a homeland so far away and occasionally so difficult to understand or relate to, this loving and missing can turn into a set of less desirable feelings, a state of schizophrenia marked by feelings of nostalgia, anger, worry, and fear all mixed together. In our mixed state of emotions about Iran, it is quite understandable that sometimes we express ourselves in ways a little surprising, a bit confusing, a little intimidating, and sometimes even a bit abusive. We all love and miss Iran and that is what we all have in common, sometimes all that we seem to have in common.
Over the past year, I have read things on the site which have made me cry and things that have had me sit in my chair and slap my knee, laughing out loud to myself, appearing as a lunatic to witnesses in both cases. I have become furious with the asinine articles of some, and proud with the clear and concise expressions of brilliant thoughts and sentiments of some others. Through my daily excursions to the community that Iranian.com has become, above all, I have learned and learned and learned. Sometimes I wonder who these anonymous people are, how come they are so smart, and why can’t I know those people up close and in person, so that they could become my wise friends. Just as I get ready to get mad at the poor English skills of a writer, I am hit by a wave of understanding and humanity for the message he or she is trying to convey, getting it despite the atrocious spelling and imperfect grammar. Like many others, I read so much on the site silently and without making my presence known. Sometimes I read two users’ comments to one another, going at it for days and days, as each states his or her case eloquently and patiently, mesmerizing me into following the debate, learning something in the process, learning and learning. Sometimes I get mad at the crazy comments some people write, or become embarrassed for the simplistic ways in which some people see issues, and then I have to stop myself from judging, remembering that he or she, too, is an Iranian, displaced and homesick, trying to reach out to a community which if nothing else, has that love and longing for Iran in common with him or her.
I go through the photographs and click the play button on the video links, I listen to music and follow the news on the site. Nothing about any of what appears on the site seems to startle me anymore, for I have learned that Iranians come in all shapes and sizes and tastes and ideas, some more artistic, some less, some more articulate, and some less, but instead of judging them, I sit enjoying the beautiful collage that is all Iranians, placed on the beautiful mat that our love and longing for Iran has prepared. All of a sudden, after a year of active participation in this community, Iranians appear more beautiful to me, growing, prospering, flourishing, and doing better, writing better, talking better, saying more, seeing more, and feeling more. Not all of that can be just my imagination now, can it?
I am honored to have been among the first people invited to join the site, but above and beyond that, I am honored for the joy and meaning and direction the users on the site have extended to me over the past year. I am a member of a very special community, and I would like to thank each and every one of the users on the site for that privilege. Thank you all for the gift of understanding. Thank you for accepting me as a member of the beautiful mosaic that Iranian.com is. Happy Anniversary Iranian.com!
