The Year of Persian Dating

Last year, I conducted an experiment in which I dated only Persian men. It's a long story, and I promised a friend I'd chronicle it in abbreviated form in a series of anonymous installments on his website, so here's the first of what promises to be a dirty adventure. Don't judge! Help out a lady and "like" it!

Post-Hurricane

Wow, this has been a week of DRAMA in New York City--first an unprecedented earthquake and now an unprecedented hurricane. As soon as the City announced it was shutting down all subway service, a cascade of harried activity ensued: groceries sold out of flashlights and bottled water, restaurants and museums and gyms all sent out messages that they'd be closed too, various well-meaning morons scotch-taped their windows in lieu of boarding them up, the City was divided into zones and low-lying areas were told to evacuate, police drove down streets with loud-speakers like they do in blockbuster movies, and pretty much everyone everywhere was talking about THE HURRICANE.

Saturday night was probably the most boring night of my life. All of New York shut itself inside waiting for the impending apocalypse, and dammit did it take a looooong time coming. Like many other New Yorkers, I had overpurchased food and I immediately began over-eating in anticipation of THE STORM. Bored out of my mind, I just read my Twitter feed obsessively (and a star was born, entertaining thousands of desperate New Yorkers), periodically glancing out the window. Sometime in the middle of the night, yes, it did start raining and, yes, there was wind. But by morning, the storm had passed and I was left wondering if I had slept through it or dreamed it all.

I met Alice down on the street and we did a quick scout of the neighborhood. There were a few downed trees in Tompkins Square Park, but it seemed the main damage had struck my NAIL SALON on 1st Ave.! A branch had fallen on it, downing the awning.

Otherwise, all was good: No loss of power. No flooding. No broken windows (bless your scotch-taping!). Thousands of rats ran through Tompkins Square Park creating gawking crowds of humans staring and pointing in disgust, "What makes them come out in droves after a storm?" One only had to back away from the scene for a bit to watch the humans in droves to figure it out.

Emergency Events

Yesterday, a little before 2p.m., we felt the ground shaking on the 32nd floor of our building near Madison Square Garden. Our building sways in the wind a lot and we can sometimes feel subways under us, but this was different. The water in our glasses quivered. The blinds clanked against the windows. Doors yawned open. I've been in earthquakes before (having been born and raised on the West Coast) but I've never been in an earthquake while in a skyscraper, so that wasn't my immediate thought. My immediate thought was (funny in retrospect, I guess), The building is crumbling. I guess I wasn't the only one. Suddenly, everyone had come out of their offices in panic and were asking each other what was going on. Then there were swarms headed to the elevators. Nobody had any idea what was happening, but we all had 9/11 in our minds. Hundreds had come out into the lobby of the building. We poured out onto the streets and started walking away from the building, staring back at the skyscraper, watching for something. The streets were full of other people and we soon overheard that we weren't the only building that felt "it." There was talk of an explosion, but then slowly, the rumor turned into earthquake, and shortly thereafter, it was confirmed: a measly 5.8 in Virgina. Still, most people were too shaken to go back into the building.

This got me thinking of other emergency events I've been in. The one that always comes to mind is a time when I was visiting relatives in Iran and there was a bomb raiding. It was in the mid-1980's during the Iran/Iraq war. I was at my cousin's apartment, playing with them for the day while my mom went shopping in the bazaar with my grandmother. I was in my youngest cousin's bedroom constructing a mini city out of several blankets and pillows. I was still in elementary school. My cousin, who is four years younger than me, suddenly perked up and said, "Listen!" I asked her what it was. "It's the bomb siren!" I said there was no way. Then, whatever she heard got louder and turned on in our neighborhood and it was inevitable--the slow, high-pitched drone. The prick of fear and panic crawled up my spine. I had never been in a bombing before. I had never been in an emergency before. "Girls, come here!" my aunt screamed from the living room. We ran to the living room. "Get away from the windows!" she screamed, ushering us into her arms. My aunt's mother was elderly and was sitting right next to a window in the kitchen, peeling a cucumber. "Maman, get away from the window!" my aunt begged, throwing her body on top of us kids to protect us. I peeked out from under my aunt and caught a sliver of the elderly lady sitting at the table in the kitchen, not missing a beat on her cucumber peeling. All the while, the bomb siren kept wailing. The old woman didn't look up from her task, saying in Farsi, "Fuck it. If they're going to kill us, getting away from the window isn't going to help." My aunt started crying and screamed for her mother to join us against the wall away from the window. I could feel my aunt's sweat. I could hear her breathing, holding us tightly. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the bomb siren ended. It was a false alarm. No Iraqi bombs were going to fall. The planes that flew over had just been spies. We hadn't even needed to go to the basement. My aunt slowly let go of her grip on us and stood up. Me and my cousin unwound ourselves from our fetal positions on the floor and raised our heads, blinking. Then my aunt's mother looked up and said, "Does anyone want any cucumber? I've peeled a few."

Ugly American... no wait, Ugly Iranian-American

There have always been two Irans, or at least two types of Persians. I mean, this was the whole basis of the 1979 revolution, right? There were the super traditional Persians, and then there were the super materialistic Persians. When the revolution happened, most of the latter moved to L.A. Today, with the advent of websites like http://www.uglypersianhouses.com/ and now the upcoming reality TV show about Iranian-Americans living it up in L.A., "Shahs of Sunset", I guess it was inevitable that there would eventually be a backlash from within Iran against Iranian-Americans, all using the medium of the Great Satan himself: television.

Azadeh Moaveni (the author of "Lipstick Jihad") wrote an article about Iranians' TV obsession with a comedy show called "Satellite" about a family with 900 illegal channels (but really more about how much real Iranians should hate Iranian-Americans).

Iran has long had its highly publicized version of the Ugly American; now, it seems, the country is embracing something else entirely: the Ugly Iranian-American. . . Most of the clips focus on ordinary Iranian-Americans, portraying them as drug-addicted, promiscuous, amoral loons. The show is busy with flamboyant gay men who cause the family much alarm as they wiggle their hips and flap their hands on-screen, speaking in screeching tones.

I find this all hilarious, of course, especially because I'm one of those "drug-addicted, promiscuous, amoral loons." I'm also friends with lots of "flamboyant gay men" (although I admit that I haven't seen any of them wiggle their hips or flap their hands lately). To me, the bigger message here is that even Iranians are recognizing the existence of Iranian-Americans--us formerly non-existent beings. They may hate us and stereotype us (I certainly am not the L.A. type!), but they acknowledge that we are here at least. This is also what I tell people about "Shahs of Sunset": Yes, it's probably going to be awful, but I'm just glad this will be out in popular culture and that a dialogue can begin.

Anyway, here's a clip of the controversial show:

This generation

The fact that honor killings have a place in "integration debates" in Europe is ridiculous (it is not exclusive to Muslim cultures and it is certainly not condoned), but this article does have some interesting statistics about the current generation's views:

According to the recently published study on “honor-related homicides in families and partnerships between 1996 and 2005 [in Germany]”, 32% of perpetrators during that time were over 40 years old . . . Second and third generation immigrants almost never commit honor killings.

Progress

I picked it up yesterday.

A FedEx package from The Embassy of Pakistan's Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran. My U.S. passport would hopefully be inside, as they promised ("we are just going to check it and send it back to you," they had said on the phone).

I tore it open right there in Union Square and, sure enough, my U.S. passport was there.

Then my father called. "I just got an email message saying you picked up the package." I love that my dad is being updated of my every movement by the embassy. It's such a nice, condescending feeling. I reached inside the package and extracted more papers: My application, and some kind of form letter written in Farsi, check-marked with a red pen.

I don't read Farsi. So I took a picture of it and emailed it to my dad to read. I feared that perhaps I hadn't filled out something right, that they were sending my application back because they wanted me to fill it out again, that they were writing me to say what was missing. I scanned the document to see if I could figure out if it was a reprimand or just a confirmation.

"It doesn't say anything important," he said, after opening his email and reading the image. "It just says that they've sent your application to Iran and now it's in the hands of the Iranian Republic."

Resigned to my mission by now, my dad then added, "Now, you just wait."

Patriarchy in Action

As you know, in order to apply to have my identity papers updated to match the new regime (so I can renew my Iranian passport, so I can go back to Iran), I was asked to provide my American passport. The Iranian government said they would simply look at my American passport to make sure it was real, then they would FedEx it back to me.

Yesterday, my dad forwarded me this email with the message "why is this being mailed to me?":

Subject: FedEx Shipment Notification
______________________________________________________________________________
This tracking update has been requested by:
Company Name:Emby of Pakistan - Repb Iran
Name:Mailroom
E-mail:'not provided by requestor'________________________________________________________________________________
Mailroom of Emby of Pakistan - Repb Iran sent to [THE PERSIAN PERVERSION]1 FedEx Standard Overnight package(s).This shipment is scheduled to be sent on 07/29/2011.
Reference information includes:
Reference:xxxx
Special handling/Services:Direct Signature Required
Deliver Weekday
Status:Shipment information sent to FedExTracking number:xxxxxxx

NOWHERE on my application did I provide my father's email address!!! There was a line where they asked for my father's name, so they must have connected his name to previous emails they've sent him and then sent my American passport to HIM! I know that fathers are considered the legal gauradians of thier daughters in Iran, but this is just ridiculous!