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Love it, hate it, love it
Visiting Iran

Mohsen
December 20, 2004
iranian.com unedited

It was last summer that I had to rush to Iran to visit my mom for her recent bypass heart surgery. She was doing great after the operation, thanks to Iranian physicians' geniuses.

I remember that I had to obtain a plane ticket for twice of its original price because every thing happened so fast. But heck knows, I was willing to pay ten times more just to smell my mom's scent for one more time.

You know what? Prior to my departure I had been crying for two days after getting the news by phone from my Dad. I was constantly asking myself what if she had died from it. Then my wife got tired of my tears and made me to cancel all my plans and look for plane ticket.

Four days later I was on one of Emirates' airplane heading home sweet home. I was strangely having the same feelings that I used to have while in military service going home and departure from my base in Kurdistan.

It is still a vivid picture in my mind along warmth feelings in my heart. Back then, all I wanted was to have enough time to get to the first light post in Tehran, hug it and kiss it and get right back to Kurdistan.

Now after 15 years those feelings are back again but this time instead of sitting on a uncomfortable, hot and noisy last row seat of a bus, I was sitting on a Airbus model 7something jet and looking at a flat screen 60-something inches HDTV and watching how slowly the airplane is passing the ever-blue Persian Gulf and getting closer every second to my homeland.

At the beginning I was somehow not interested in the distance that was chipping off from between the points of where I was and where I wished to be. But as the space shuttle launch sequence starts, my heart started beating harder. Now I couldn't turn my head away from the screen and I was not paying any attention to the conversation that I have had with this English guy next to me.

The plane was not quiet there yet but my heart was pounding harder than ever. I thought it is about to jump out of my chest. As we were getting close to the Iranian soil my eyes started to burn and then here you go again tears. Now we just passed the border and we were officially inside of Iranian air space.

God, every thing suddenly changed, the air smelled differently and it even got warmer. I tried very hard not to cry out loud. I was pushing my forehead on the cold plane's window and hopelessly trying to see the Iranian land from 30000 feet height in the middle of night.

I couldn't see the land but Heaven knows I could feel it with all of my senses.

To make the story short six days later I was gladly heading back to the U.S. to return to my kids and wife.

During these six days I had enough of headache from Tehran's traffic, pollution, and lawlessness that I was already sick of it. I couldn't wait to get back home.

As I was waiting in Mehrabad's super crowded transit area to get my boarding pass, I was having a nightmare. I was thinking what if they tell me I can't get out. So then what should I do? What if they lose my green card? What if ... Until I found myself in front of the airport's agent that was trying to help a nice lady to smuggle an endangered hunting bird as a Parrot. I carelessly ignored it and I didn't even try to remember that I used to have a Falcon and I could tell that that noisy bird under that covered cage is a very expensive young Falcon ready to serve one of Emirates' richest Sheikhs.

I was focused to my fullest degree. My mission was to get the hell out of here!

When I got to Switzerland, I was still in the cultural shock, thinking if it is possible a nation changes that much in that little time. Oh well, none of my business now.

When I got home I was homesick for two weeks, missing Tehran already. Remembering my family, friends and kind and polite ordinary people that I dealt with while there.

Damn! Why can't I get over it once and for all?

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