Waking up
Many Iranians in US lack awareness regarding
their issues, but...
July 1, 2004
iranian.com
Kayvan Iradjpanah, one of UCLA's Iranian Student
Group's leaders contacted me by email to personally invite
me to their Second Annual Culture Show. He had been on our student
group's (Iranian Student
Alliance in America)
email list and was fond of our activities and thought I would be
interested in seeing what they were up to at UCLA.
On Thursday,
June 3, 2004, my friend and I drove from Orange County to see what
the Iranian Student
Group (ISG)
and been busily doing. At the show we were given a brief history
of their culture show. Accordingly, they started the culture show
last year with thirteen members and were nervous about the turnout.
The success of the event prompted them to make it
an annual occurrence. This time around, they had nearly 30 people
involved in the organization
of the event and planned the show for a two-day showcase. The show
was quality with poetry readings, traditional dances, classical
music performances, and skits.
In my opinion the skits were the
most important and powerful part of the program. It was broken
up into several parts with intermission and other performances
taking place in between. The skits had a special message that resonated
with me wholly. It was a story of an Iranian student, Afshin, who
had just immigrated to America -- F.O.B. (Fresh
Off the Boat) -- and started school at UCLA.
On the
first day of school he locates his cousin, "PJ" short for Pejman,
who had grown up in the U.S. and had Iranian-American friends. Pejman was ashamed
of his
immigrant cousin and pretending like he didn't know him after his Iranian-American
friends laughed at him for talking to this so-called FOB. But Afshin was too
excited about starting school to pay any attention to this initial behavior.
At his Philosophy 101 class, Afshin sits next to
this beautiful Iranian-American female student "Sam," short for
Samira. Sam and Afshin hit it off
but Sam's Iranian-American friends also ridiculed Afshin for being a FOB
so Sam had to
pretend like she didn't know Afshin. Afshin's cousin PJ soon began
to ridicule him as well. Surprisingly enough, the American student sitting
to the other side
of Afshin in class embraced Afshin's uniqueness and they immediately became
friends.
After a while Afshin grew increasingly frustrated
of the behind-the-scene whispers and giggles. Even worse, he was
extremely hurt because Sam continuously
pretending that she didn't know him in public, even though they flirted
in private. This caused Sam to feel very guilty about her behavior. She
began to question her authenticity and denounced her superficial
friends and exchanged
her friendship with them to be with Sam. The story ends and you assume
that they "live happily ever after."
Believe it or not, but all
this was a skit. It was beautifully orchestrated and worthy of the
standing ovation it received. The message was powerful: many Iranians
in the U.S. suffer from
identity issues and perhaps, self-hatred, and only we can solve it.
Why was Afshin disliked? Was it because he was different? Maybe
it was because he was genuinely
Iranian and was better versed in Persian than he was in English. Thus,
he was poked and laughed at because he was, in all actuality, a
real Iranian: an individual
who grew up in Iran and was best informed about the culture, language,
and identity.
The message propagated by the skit was one of unity
and recognition. Unity, because
whether we were born here, came here ten years ago, or just came
here, we are all Iranian and members of a grand family. And recognition,
because it recognized
this identity crisis that can be associated with self-hatred and
introduced
the concept of embracing our brethren as a solution.
It's a shame that these sort of projects only have audiences of 300-400
people.
Don't get me wrong, it was a full house at the auditorium
in UCLA, but more Iranians need to witness these sort of powerful
skits and cultural performances,
especially my generation. I recently finished my college career at
UC Berkeley and have moved back to Orange County, a place where
the number of Iranians is
abundant, but many of them lack a sense of culture, identity, and
awareness regarding Iran and Iranian issues.
Being a witness to
this makes me worry about the future
of our community in Diaspora. Will our Iranian community stay Iranian
in the generations to come, or will our children grow up speaking
English
and not know their culture, history, or identity?
I find comfort
to know that in the past
two to three years, Iranians abroad have made more progress
than in the twenty years before them. Just in the past couple years,
dozens of Iranian organizations
and institutions have been founded, from our student organization,
the Iranian
Student Alliance in America, which was ranked number
one as the most active student group out of 685 at UC Berkeley
in the 2003-2004 academic school year, to groups like NIAC, Payvand
Cultural Center, and the Persian
Center. What's more, individuals like Shirin Ebadi, the 2003
Nobel Peace Prize winner, have inspired many of us to aim high
and
do our
best in the name of Iran
and Iranians. More and more books have been published and
countless Persian language programs or Iranian history departments
have
been founded in universities across
the country.
Much progress remains to be made as schools
like UCI, who have significant Iranian student populations, still
do not
have any programs related to Iran or
its languages. Even now, with such institutions and organizations
existing, it is already too late for some. Tonight, I saw
my
friend who happens to go to UCLA.
I told him how we had gone to the UCLA culture show last
Thursday and that it was great and that he should have gone.
His response indicated that it wasn't something that interested
him. He, like many others, simply grew up without the culture
and identity and now that
these
few programs finally exist, it simply doesn't resonate
with them.
I am concerned about the future of community, but
hopeful. I'm on the email list of nearly a dozen Iranian
student groups across the country. I have witnessed their level
of
activity, thus, I am hopeful
about our future. I never knew we had such an active
community until I became president of ISAA. Once that happened,
many
organizations took my email address
from our site and added it to their listserves. After
that, I entered another realm. I began to see that the Iranian
community in the
Diaspora is dynamic,
vibrant, rich, active, and multi-faceted.
 For that reason,
I
began to incorporate other group's events
onto ISAA's email announcements. I wanted the nearly
3,000 people on our listserve to know that the Iranian community
is alive
and well. For these reasons,
I am hopeful about our future.
Pouya
Alimagham recently graduated from UC Berkeley double majoring
in
Middle
Eastern Studies and Political Science
and was the 2003-2004 President of
the Iranian Student Alliance in America. Features in
iranian.com
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