Settled

Several things have happened since I last updated this blog.

Trump was actually inaugurated as the President in the United States and has caused pain to millions around the world with his ugly rhetoric and executive orders. I'll only say that America needs a Mockingjay to inspire its people in seeing that The Capitol is run by The Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. 

Now...on to more simple matters.

My eldest daughter turned 12. My second eldest daughter turned 11. I had a birthday party for them and invited several friends with their children to our apartment. It was the first time in a long time that I hosted a party at my own place with new friends. In Texas, I had a party for the kids every year. It was a nice way to focus on crafting decorations and gathering friends and family together. The party went well! I had hoped to cook some classic Iranian food, but due to lack of time and ingredients, I made a few simple meals. Turns out I live a lot farther away then my guests realized. They are all living in Qom, while I am in a nearby town. Still, it was a nice time!

A couple of weeks later, my whole family were invited to a friend's house for lunch. It was interesting to visit another apartment building in Iran. It was slightly different from ours of course, but also had some similarities. Their apartment had a lovely view of Qom and mountains from their balcony! 

I wish I could go out and explore Iran more, but for now, the kids and I stay close to home. You can follow my INSTAGRAM to see the photos I don't publish here on the blog.

I can say that we are definitely settled now. The first week I arrived, some people would casually ask if I'd gotten settled yet. I don't know if there are different definitions of settled, but I know for sure I didn't feel that way for the first few months. It's been 5 months now and thankfully, we are settled nicely! We have a routine. Our furniture and household items have a place and function that work (That is, do cardboard boxes as side tables count as furniture?). My husband bought a study desk, we put up a privacy curtain, a handful of shelves, bought a huge round plastic bucket and fashioned it into a bathtub, and even got a mobile Western style commode to place over the eastern toilet (ha)!  

Our internet and devices are on a stable schedule and easily accessed, so that helps our daily living a lot! We've had no major problems with electricity, plumbing, water, or heat thankfully. At first I really hated the way the shower room (it also has an installed Western toilet and sink) was so small and how the water goes all over the floor, but again, it's something that I've gotten used to now, and doesn't bother me AS MUCH (though it's still annoying of course). 

Another issue that has been resolved is our need for English entertainment. Although I was glad to watch familiar Western shows and movies here in Farsi, nothing beats being able to enjoy a show in your own language. A friend of ours mentioned that he has an extensive collection of popular English films and shows we could use. I was very relieved to be able to watch these during our free time. Since then, we've watched Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Hunger Games--all movies that I wouldn't have even wanted to watch in the U.S. since I was content with my cooking and design shows there (which they don't really have in Farsi either). But I'm glad to now be able to see what all the fuss about such films was about. It's the little things that make life comfortable, you know. 

Speaking of The Hunger Games (haha), the kids daily meals have become established as well. In America, frozen waffles, frozen pizza, pasta with sauce, etc. were quick and easy to give to them. Now in Iran, I spend a lot of time making things from (semi) scratch: pancakes, pizza (without a stove!), pasta sauce, and even popcorn the old fashioned way. We are more easily able to purchase and cook halal meat here so I am cooking with those more often now. We've found some snacks to be as "good as in America," such as "Ramen" noodles, pickles, chocolates--but my children are still very discerning when it comes to other things such as popsicles and pasta sauce. And the cakes here are good, but they all seem to contain nuts inside which my kids don't like. It's true, America has an easier line up of tasty treats! But that's only because it was what we were used to for so long. I personally was sad at first that the chocolate here was not the same as it was in the States, but have found some here that's equally enjoyable. You can find it all here in Iran, you just have to be patient enough to look around since there's not a big box store like Walmart that has everything under one roof. Oh, there're loads of ice cream and sweet shops here though!

One of my younger brothers is set to arrive here in Iran to study soon. I am glad to be able to have another familiar person here! Since he's coming from America, we've asked him to bring a few things along for us. If you're ever traveling to Iran from America, we expats will always appreciate some of the "good stuff" that your bring for us. It saves us the time and effort in having to seek similar things out here. And of course, there is something comforting about a familiar product that comes from the land where you were raised. 

We've been to the Holy shrine of Lady Masumeh (p) a couple more times.  Also, I bought a chador to wear. I feel like a sort of superhero while wearing it, as if putting on armor--yet still feminine. In this bottom photo, I am wearing it while facing toward a mihrab (prayer niche) in the wall of the shrine's courtyard.

It's always a great privilege to be able to visit the shrine and its surrounding courtyards, and I hope to spend more time there just sitting and contemplating the meaning of life.

Until next time, thanks for reading. 

Sound the Trumpets

I was probably 10 years old, living in Texas, when I told a grown up that I wanted to move to London and live there.

The grown up:

“It’s very racist there. You want to live somewhere with signs saying “No blacks allowed?”

Me:

“You mean England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses?”

Grown up:

“It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds.”

Ok, so only the first part of that conversation happened. I did not believe the grown up anyway. I assumed this person was mistakenly referring to how in the 60s, London was racist. But now it was the 80s, man! That bad news was history.

The last two lines of my “conversation” are from a beautiful Sinead O’Connor song I heard years later called "Black Boys on Mopeds." It was written almost 30 years ago, but the issues are devastatingly similar to today. 

The parents of Colin Roach seek justice in the death of their son,
London 1983

And I’ve been hearing the same song in my head since the 2016 Presidential election mayhem began, especially the line 

“And I love my boy, and that’s why I’m leaving. 

I don’t want him to be aware that there’s any such thing as grieving.” 

Once it was clear that Trump was actually going to run as a candidate, I kept thinking to myself, “Thank God I’m leaving.” But then again, I was going back and forth between being relieved to be leaving and being terrified of leaving America, my home of nearly 4 decades.

So even though, as I mentioned here in a previous post, we began our plan to move to Iran before the election campaigns even began, I’m so glad I was able to leave America before Trump was elected. I don’t think my already anxious brain could have handled any more escalation of that racist poison so inherent in America.

The saddest part is, when I was a kid in America, it felt like the whole world had already learned the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King Jr., and the crimes of hatred and genocide through the Holocaust.

Of course, as I and all the other little kids grew up, we became aware that the world wasn’t really so much moving forward as much as running in circles. Still, our collective imagination never anticipated that Donald Freaking Trump would become the President of the United States! Well, we thought about it and laughed, but it became serious fast.

I had an inkling that American politics was a sort of game show anyhow. I’d heard that Ronald Reagan was an actor before he became the U.S. President, but that was decades long ago, a time of classy black and white movies, right? But THEN, when Arnold Schwarzenegger, The TERMINATOR, The Freaking Kindergarten Cop became the Governor of California, it was clear that yes, ANYONE could gain the approval of a large mass of people--if that ANYONE was charming enough.

Notice a pattern here?

Then came Bill Clinton. There was some talk about him smoking weed and not inhaling and a so-called cool performance on the Arsenio Hall show, but I didn’t notice much. I was too busy deciding to wear a headscarf/hijab when starting high school.

I had become motivated by my inspirational friend, Farah, when she told me about her decision to wear it when we started 10^th grade in Arlington, Texas. I was nervous, but thought, I want to try that too! I’ll not go into my experience here, you can read about it here on my other older blog: Scarf Ace: Wearing a Headscarf in America. It was obviously not easy, but for me, I ended up having a mini-nervous breakdown from all the harassment I got. I stopped wearing it even. 

Then many years later after I got married, began to wear it again. It was easier at first that time. I could stay at home instead of heading into the lion’s den of hell, er, high school everyday. But it was still a struggle to wear hijab in America.  I went through so much anxiety and by the time we were preparing to move to Iran, I had become a shut-in, only going out if I really, really, really had to. My attitude would go up and down, high and low, but overall, my life was definitely negatively affected by feeling like an alien in public. It didn’t help that we began moving a lot, and with me being slow to warm up to new things, I never quite felt at ease in public again.

Of course, while Obama was the President, there was this thin veil of comfort for minorities such as Muslim Americans, but I knew even then, because of the endless stories about terrorism in the news, and the horror of 9/11, being Muslim in America, especially being VISIBLY Muslim was not going to get any easier for me.

So anyway, there I was sitting comfy in Iran, watching DT get elected. PressTV ran

live coverage with several analysts. 

On Facebook, I made a comment about how a Trump presidency might be less destructive to the MidEast than a Clinton one, and a few people agreed, but then I had a couple of people in the U.S. tell me that me sitting here so comfortable in Iran made it unfairly easier to comment on the bigger perspective regarding Trump and the society in which he rose to the top. Basically, since I no longer lived in America, mentioning any positive of DT was too convenient. Anyhow, whatever the case, the American government has been killing and oppressing Muslims in the rest of the world, so the logic remains as to why this same injustice would not eventually come down to its own country’s Muslims.

"I've said this before now
You said I was childish and you'll say it now
"Remember what I told you
If they hated me they will hate you"

Sinead O'Connor, "Black Boys on Mopeds."

As the newly elected DT now seems to be adding known Islamophobes to his team, and hate crimes have increased towards American Muslims and Black people and other minorities, my heart is heavy even all the way over here in Iran.

I try to focus on the GREAT people who have always existed in America: the kind, the compassionate, the gentle, the seekers of justice for all. They do exist. And hearing about neighbors connecting and standing together, and vocal opponents to the racist, bigoted, and violent side of the country is a testament to the inherent truth and justice within us.  

When it comes to defending the truth and justice, it can obviously be a difficult, sometimes impossible task. The greatest example we have is of our Imam Hossein (peace be upon him), who fought to the end against this falsehood of power over the weak and the crimes against humanity perpetuated by those who claim to be good and right, but are the worst of the worst, the Yazids, the oppressors, the tyrants of every time.

Some people may think I’m sitting easy here in Iran, but nowhere is perfectly safe. As long as there are enemies of God, there will be injustice and pain in the world. And although it is true that the city of Qom is one of the gateways to heaven, there are gateways all over the world. That is why God sent messengers to all nations. The way to true freedom is out there yes, but mostly it is within us.