As I continued on my home and as the prayer gradually faded away, I slowly began to become aware of the fact that there are very few, if any, places on this earth where religions, races, and beliefs of all kinds are not only tolerated, but embraced whole-heartedly. While the call to prayer may certainly have not been welcomed by many individuals on the UC Berkeley campus, it did increase awareness and knowledge of the faith. The recent election of a black man as the President of the United States, while too certainly not embraced by all, has defied stereotypes, opened new spaces for dialogue, and renewed hope for those marginalized individuals who believed that they could never make it. Yes, it is a time of hope here, a time of prayer for better things to come. What are your thoughts?

This is going to be a particularly exciting Halloween here in America, 4 days before the presidential elections. I suspect many will dress as one of the candidates. The talk of the town is who to vote for and what to do if the other gets elected. Here in California, many are wondering if they want to vote for legalizing gay marriage in the state and argue about details of the existing abortion laws. We are going to have a highly political Halloween this year as we fasten our seatbelts and impatiently wait for the outcome on November 4^th.

Photo courtesy of happyhalloween

We had a football game between UC Berkeley and UCLA today.  Typically, these games have quite an impact on everything in town, most importantly transportation and parking become almost impossible.  How lively it is to fight for winning, to have a favorite team, and to show your support for something you relate to.  Today, while I work at a café next to the football stadium in Berkeley, I am witnessing hundreds of students and alumni from both universities walk by wearing UCLA or Berkeley shirts, hats, or shorts.  Many have brought their children, and of course the children are wearing shirts with the name and colors of their parents’ favorite school.  As I write, Berkeley’s marching band passes by with the loudest drums and a few hundred uniformed students marching Bancroft Avenue while the crowd waves at them with open smiles.  I am automatically a part of the excitement as I hear that Berkeley has won the game: 41 by 22.  Why do I care? What is it that is so exciting about being a part of a community united for a purpose, a community that has a team and is relating to that team to feel better or to fight against something in common?  Would I be disappointed in Berkeley if she had lost the game? Perhaps but I think not for long; I would probably continue smiling and congratulate the UCLA folks passing by.

 Photo courtesy of nybox6

I recently had a job interview in England and did not get the job.  When I was invited to interview for a faculty position that seemed to be a dream job at the time, I remember getting extremely nervous to even attend the interview fearing for the outcome.  I wished I had not applied for the job at all and thought it was too early for me to do this as I was not prepared and not even close to graduating.  My father told me something that completely changed my attitude, which is why I want to talk about sports.  He said: “this interview is like a football match of your dream.  You are invited to play in your national team against another excellent team.  What matters is that you play for the sake of playing, the excitement, the glory of the game in itself – pay no attention to the results.  Life is not about the outcome, it’s about the game.  You will go and you will play your best and will enjoy the game regardless of the results. Do not pre-judge, judge, or post-judge the outcome.  Just play…”

I spent a week in the UK and returned a few days ago.  I got to travel around a bit and see London, Cambridge, and Oxford.  It was a lovely trip and I had a wonderful time, ignoring the incredibly high cost of everything in Europe.  London is a crowded city which reminded me of some areas of New York City but much older.  It was nice to see so many old structures throughout the country and not fear what would happen to them in the case of an earthquake.  Earthquakes are not a big threat to England and you can see many old (as old as about 600-800 years) structures everywhere. 

The architecture was breathtaking in many areas.  I can say confidently that Cambridge is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to.  While walking in narrow streets with old buildings, restaurants, and coffee shops you might see a door open to something that looks like a regular building. But once you look through the opened door, you see a beautiful garden behind the wall and a huge castle-like structure far away, all hidden when you walk through these lovely streets. Another amazing part of this trip was the opportunity to dine at one of the colleges in Cambridge with the department of engineering.  Harry Potter is real in Cambridge and Oxford.  They have kept most of the traditions alive, dining in gowns, a drum to start, words in Latin by the master to start the feast, professors sitting higher than the students, it’s all real.

Cambridge, UK — Photo courtesy of bugbog.com

Playing ping-pong in South Tehran. All rights reserved.

“Manata, tell me, where do you like more, Iran or America?”
“I like both the same.”
“Yes, but where would you rather live?”

As an Iranian who has lived the majority of her life in America, I have been asked this question more times than I can recount by family and friends in Iran. It is not a simple question and the answer entails a deeper understanding of the concepts of home, location, and identity. These motifs are interwoven in the daily lives of those Iranian émigrés too assimilated in the host country to return to the land of their birth, too “foreign” to ever feel at “home”. Further embedded in this question are the intricacies associated with a life in exile. Feelings of nostalgia, marginality, and longing for return often characterize such persons who leave their homelands by force, voluntarily, or by necessity of circumstance.

As a second generation Iranian who has experienced such feelings without ever having lived for a substantial amount of time in Iran, I live my life in a continuous attempt to honor, respect, assist, and learn more of the country of which I am from. While I may not be fluent in Iranian cultural nuances and may not know the inner workings of Iranian society, I am an Iranian and I can nevertheless attempt to learn and bring my own unique experiences into the broader “Iranian” milieu. Indeed, my unique Iranian lifestyle at home as a young child provided me with a lens with which to view and analyze my dominant American surroundings. It was my good fortune to be immersed in two antithetical traditions and to be able to merge the lessons learned from both into a type of “hybrid” Iranian culture that was uniquely my own and that continues to shape my life to this day.

Identifying oneself as an “Iranian” (as I have done) has different connotations that depend on both context and circumstances. There is no one “true” Iranian, one rigid definition that encompasses what being “Iranian” means. Being Iranian, as being any other ethnicity, is relational and is constantly negotiated, defined, and redefined through contact with an other - whether this other is a person, one’s ethnic group, a nation, or even the media. Thus, when we ask questions of “authenticity” we must consider who is “checking our credentials”. Our claim of authenticity is subjective and is influenced by our own location and our own perceptions of what is and what is not “Iran”.

As such, it is vital for Iranians, regardless of their country of residence, to realize that while “Iranian”, “American”, “French” and the like are cultural placeholders, they are not defining markers of an individual’s identity. Our relations with others, our perceptions of other peoples from varying nations and ethnicities are what contour and give shape to their own sense of identity. Similarly, the forging of relationships with different peoples of the world, the continuous back and forth tug-of-war of ideas and opinions is what makes us into unique individuals and further reinforces our own sense of cultural identity. These interactions are a needed, if not necessary prerequisite in creating a globally aware society that is attuned to the needs of others and that can forgo bias in favor of mutual aid and understanding. Cultures, just as homes, live in the minds and souls of those who create and nurture them; living in and interacting with a national culture distinct from that of our own does not make us into lesser forms of “Iranians”. Indeed, it provides the skeletal framework for a more peaceful and just world order and enables us to find a space, no matter how abstract, which we can call “home” and to which we can all belong.

-”Reflections of an Iranian in America”, Oct. 2006, tehranavenue.com

Mother and daughter preparing tea in Lavasan, Iran. All rights reserved.

He let his mind drift as he stared at the city, half slum, half paradise.  How could a place be so ugly and violent, yet beautiful at the same time?

-Chris Abani, Graceland

I came across this quote tonight while reading a book on poverty and the growth of slums worldwide. The quote really struck me because it reminded me of how much we judge people and places by their external appearances.  It has always been a (optimistic) belief of mine that in order to appreciate the beauty of anything, we have to take time to really see. But it seems that as we mature, it becomes more and more difficult to see the good. We start to lose a little bit of the optimism that we had when we were young when we see that despite our best efforts, we are powerless to bring an end to the bad: poverty, violence, death, cruelty, and struggles for money and power.

But reading this quote has reminded me yet again that the ugliness of life is a part of life itself, and it may even be this very ugliness of life that helps create life’s beauty. I saw a lot of the ugly life during my research this summer. But within the slums and villages that I went to, I also had the blessing to see the simple acts of kindness and love that make it all worthwhile: mothers and daughters preparing afternoon tea together, young cherry pickers laughing and working together, keeping each other company on a hot summer day, and strangers preparing sweet sherbets and desserts for visiting researchers that stumble upon their tiny homes embedded deep within the hillsides of Tehran.

Washing dishes in the village of Lavason, Iran. All rights reserved.

Let’s not muddy the water.
Imagine that close by a dove
is drinking from it,
or in a distant grove a finch
is washing its wings in it,
or in some village it fills a storage jar.

Let’s not muddy the water.
Perhaps this flowing stream runs
by the foot of a poplar tree
and eases some heart’s grief.
A dervish, perhaps,
has moistened his crust in it.

A young woman stood on its bank—
the water doubled her beauty.
Let’s not muddy the water.

How delicious this water is!
How refreshing this stream!
Those people who live upstream,
how fortunate they are!
May their springs be ever fresh,
their cows always fertile!
I haven’t seen their village,
But surely, God’s foot is on
their threshing floor and
the moonlight there illuminates
the width of their words.
The walls are low in the village upstream.
Blue there is really blue.
When buds blossom, they know, those people.
What a village it must be!
May its streets be filled with music!

Those people by the stream
Have left it clear.
Let’s not muddy the water.

-Sohrab Sepehri

It was a wonderful feeling to be sitting with this group under the same roof. The speakers informed us of all that was happening and all that is needed to be done in the few months to come (just a few months). The questions and answers followed the introduction and it gave way to comments about international affairs.

As one of the speakers started commenting and joking about Iran, I found myself feeling very confused. What is going on here? As the jokes about my country continued, I felt as if the walls of the room were closing in on me. I felt even dizzier when I looked around and saw these well intentioned people, or so they seemed in the beginning, as the same prejudiced people they are trying to oppose.

My confusion continued to the point of absolute disappointment not because I was being insulted as an Iranian and not because once more I was witnessing a great civilization like Iran was being mocked by ignorance, but mostly because I was loosing hope.

Yes, Obama had brought hope for us that all this can change. Here though I was sitting next to people supporting this human quest, chanting for change yet seem to be so far from it. I asked myself desperately whether these people know what change means and what it takes to practice it. Do they think that change is a fashionable slogan? Is the change about to take place once there is party and free wine, strawberries and stickers? Are they now going to make a song out of it and dance to the words, “yes we can”?

On the other hand I felt so obligated to cry out asking his campaign managers not to damage his mission.

This was my confusion.

Well I did not say a word because I did not know what effect it will all have, not to mention I badly needed a ride down to Shattuck