 Now I cares
Reflections on the Boston conference on the Iranian
diaspora
By Mani Parcham
April 27, 2004
iranian.com
The April 17-18th International Conference on the
Iranian Diaspora organized by the Iranian Alliances Across Borders
(IAAB) unknowingly presented to me the
details of a personal initiative on what it takes to be an Iranian in America
and abroad. Before I get into my thoughts on the conference, however, I would
like to give some idea of what my mindset was coming into the weekend.
I have an acquaintance through mutual friends (for
now we'll call him Ghertee)
who embodies a stereotype that I absolutely abhor about my generation's
Iranian-American community. He drives a behemoth Lincoln Navigator, shops
constantly at Armani Exchange or Versace (depending on the Fall
fashions...very complicated
stuff), listens to hard-core rap (blaring away from his Navigator speakers,
not ironically enough), does not seek (but still manages to attract)
a fight every
time he imbibes, has a misogynistic approach towards women, and in general
exudes an air of self-importance that seems to somehow work and
perpetuate itself with
those who buy into it. Through all this, he maintains the notion that he
is a proud Iranian.
My issue with him is the fact that I can always
sense the idea
that in the back of his mind, I, Mani Parcham, am not sufficient enough
to consider myself an Iranian, that I have no pride, that I am
lacking in general because
I stand on equal footing with my female friends, that my Farsi is broken,
that I dress just ok, that I am who I am, not a mold to fill. But
despite all this
business of recognizing my unique identity, people like him (for one reason
or another) began to impress upon me the idea that indeed I was
not a proud person,
or more specifically, a proud Iranian, to the point where the idea seeped
into my consciousness.
So it is obvious why I say that it is people
like this that
I find remove me from the culture that I crave to know better, but they
are still the ones that my logic unreasonably tries to avoid by
shunning the community
as a whole. Through that avoidance I found that I just didn't give a damn
about the community, and took my aversion to Iranian-Americans as a feeling
that "oh
well, they had it coming."
I found I rediscovered something that people like
Mr. Baazee -- Ghertee Baazee -- had somehow diminished since my
years of being exposed to stereotype-driven
Iranian-Americans. This is not to give the impression that all the Iranian-Americans
of my generation
that I have met and maintained contact with have in any way contributed
to this diminishment. It was just my disgust with a select few that had
wrongfully
tainted
what is an otherwise fascinating community.
With that said, I can now
see how I was before this conference, be unbiased, and say that,
yes, it was
an error
in judgment to lump the entire community with those who simply rubbed
me the wrong way. What I have found now is just pride again...
plain and simple.
It is not that I completely blame having had a lack of pride on people
like Ghertee Baazee, but I've come to realize that it took people completely
unlike
him to reinvigorate it, and by doing so, energized a sense of responsibility
and engagement.
All this from a two-day event that stood by the
simple but hard to grasp concept that we are Iranians outside of
Iran - and our attendance at
the conference was
to talk about just that. To discuss the dichotomy of having such a
rich and distinct cultural background while living in a society
where that
particular culture is
not prevalent.
The success of this event was just an intense combination
of so many factors that nothing could possibly have made this a more
charmed weekend. Beautiful New England weather, contagious big-city
energy, fascinating people,
and an appreciative environment led those compatriots who congregated
there to learn and discover things about themselves and others
in an intimate
situation where all parties had access to each other, speakers
and audience members
alike.
Personal accounts and artistic renderings from several
panelists oftentimes left my face numb from having to maintain
some composure
from crying.
videos from
the charming Iranian-Brit film director, Taghi Amirani, had me
choking back tears of nostalgia from an era that I was never a
part of: the
rise, fall,
and subsequent
return of Googoosh to sing in Western countries after years of
forced silence. After showing "Gaga for Googoosh", he then had
us laughing
at the idiosyncrasies
of fellow Iranians in California in Tehrangeles, a short documentary
about a former Iranian pop singer turned satellite television "journalist" as
he sits by his luxurious Beverly Hills pool (funded by his wife's
plastic surgery practice), and discusses why he (a monarchist at
heart) encourages people
in Iran to rise up and revolt against the Islamic regime (for their
own benefit, of course).
There was also Houman Mortazavi, the artist from
California, whose Project: Misplaced
[See "The
rise and fall of Simon Ordoubadi"] had the audience in
fits of laughter from the recognition and sympathy of our own fresh-off-the-boat
attributes,
and the
people
in whom
we constantly see personify
the same characteristics that Mr. Simon Orodubadi (to whom I owe
the title of this essay) embodies. A fictional character of the
artist's, Simon Ordoubadi
is the typical FOB Iranian who has come to America and finds that
he needs to establish himself in whatever manner he can.
Using
fliers, leaflets, and newspaper
ads, Mr. Ordoubadi (among other things) proclaims his position
on politics, where he stands on the very moderate platform of declaring
absolutely nothing at all.
One of these fliers has a picture of Mr. Ordoubadi smiling with
a big grin while on a cell phone, and a separate picture of George
W. Bush, also on the phone,
in the corner, giving the impression that he "has connections".
At the top of another ad, the headline boasts that he is "gooder
in defending you right".
These accounts are just a handful of what we experienced;
to name them all would be a foolish experiment in capturing the
essence
of all these
accounts
through
quantity and not the utter purity of their quality. To those who
presented (whether I mentioned them or not), I owe my profound
gratitude.
The specific moment that determined my absolute
emotional connection to the people surrounding me was the silence
of the room while
a soft spoken,
unanimated
half-Iranian
from New York played an ancient wooden flute-like instrument. This
young woman had recently returned from a yearlong trip in Azerbaijan
where
she learned
to speak Farsi, play the wooden instrument, and gathered 70 hours
of documented film from her experiences there.
The melody coming
from
the haunting sound
of
that flute pinned the audience in such a way that a substantial
silence followed, and then a reaction that was nothing short of
elation and
a standing ovation.
Immediately afterwards, a half Iranian, half British young woman
(fueled by the emotion from the musical performance) gave her eloquently
spoken
and impassioned
account of a return with her sisters to Iran. She touched on an
expedition to
the top of Mt. Damavand, and just reflected on her reaction to
what it was like knowing she was looking down from the highest
point of
Iran,
a woman,
who at
one point in her life detached herself from the idea of coming
back to her childhood home.
I have no recollections of Iran, though
I
was born
there.
With the exception
of my first 6 months of life, I have lived in America for 22 years.
The images that these two extraordinary ladies painted in my minds
eye were
a thorough,
unbiased connection between the spiritual and physical aspects
of the country that I have been always curious about returning
to. From
these
accounts,
a not unreasonably mad jealousy began to brew within me at the
thought that I
deserved
to go back just as much as anybody else. These stories settled
one of the bigger inner conflicts I've had about living in America
by
increasing my
resolve to visit Iran in the next two years.
For now, however,
I'll save those
thoughts of returning for a future article. I just wanted to express
what it meant for me to hear these stories, and how they encapsulated,
clarified, and
settled some struggles I've faced in the past.
I recently talked to a panelist who I had driven
to Boston with, and the one word that he said describing the conference
that stood
out
to me was "relevant".
From the beginning, this was evident. I can't recall any conversations
about conferences in the past that covered the same ground that the IAAB envisioned.
I have attended conferences about Iranian politics, the status of Iranian women
(in Iran and abroad), and discussions of Persian films, but never have I heard
of any organized gatherings about Iranians in America or other countries.
Perhaps
this is because there is a developing acceptance among first
generation Persians outside of Iran that where we have settled
is becoming our permanent home;
or maybe there is the notion that second-generation Iranians
are too used to our
new lives; or perhaps even that those second-generation Iranians
have settled in and started with their own families, and have no
use for political discussions
of a place that used to be home.
Whatever the reasons there is
still a growing need for a forum where we can embrace, discuss,
and appreciate the same things
that interest us, with the small caveat that home is now, always
was, and/or always will be somewhere other than Iran. On top
of that, in respect to our
home, the whole of this conference was spoken in English -
another indication of who
the audience was and why we were there. The relevance and recognition
of these things on behalf of those college students at the helm
was crucial, and I cannot
give enough credit to those at IAAB who accomplished this with
seeming infallibility.
I don't know how to make the impression of how moved
and fascinated I was without being redundant, and negating the
experience
by repeating the words: embrace, embody, spirit, absolute,
emotional, etc. But
those are
exactly the
phrases of what the conference was to me. Up until last Friday,
what I had experienced
about Iran before were secondhand emotions from my parents,
but
at least
now I know that I have more than a relative interest. This
weekend was a personal
investment that I am sure will never exhaust. I ask you to
patronize these websites as they belong to those who influenced
a great
deal in one way
or another to
my experience.
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Now I cares
