Being Iranian-American in the 21st Century

Sarah Sajadi

I am thirteen years old. I sit in an airport chair in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, playing a game on my phone with my friends as I wait for the flight attendant behind the desk to call for boarding. That isn’t what I hear. 

“Kaveh Sajadi,” butchering the way it should be pronounced amongst other words, none of which I understand, except for the word “desk.” They seem to use a mix of Spanish and English. My father makes his way to the desk, and clearly doesn’t understand either. He and the man behind the desk try to communicate, gesturing as they speak, but it doesn’t look like they understand each other. My dad turns to ask a friend traveling with us, Mr. Joshua, but the man at the desk is vehemently against it, gesturing and saying no, making it very clear my father is not to leave the desk.

Mr. Joshua walks over, however, seeing this scene. He is traveling with us, being originally from the Dominican Republic, and being a godsend to translate, especially now. He spoke with the man behind the desk and my father, back and forth, though I couldn’t hear a single word spoken. After a while, my mom walked over to Joshua’s wife, and they spoke in hushed tones, away from the kids. My dad then left the desk, a new man in khaki shorts and a collared shirt escorting him.

Mr. Joshua walked over to my mom and his wife, spoke quickly, and I stood up as my mom walked over to the seat next to mine.

“Mommy, why is daddy leaving? I thought you said the plane was boarding soon.” I looked up at my mother as I said this, seeing the pain in her eyes as she smiled down at me, though she darted glances at my father, growing smaller and smaller before disappearing around a corner. 

“Dad has to go back through security. The guard is there to escort him so he doesn’t miss our flight. Don’t worry, he’ll be back soon.” The sound of her voice was calm, but I didn’t believe her. At the time I suspected it, but I now know that I didn’t believe my mother because she hadn’t truly believed herself. 

“But he already went through security. Did something happen?”

“Joshua said that the man at the desk was saying it was a random selection and that it happens sometimes.” I quickly realized that my mother was in no way agreeing that it was random.

“But was it?” I asked. Her face told me before she gave her planned response, as she always does, as though her mind is considering the most appropriate answer. She answers like a politician. And when my mother answers like a politician, I know what she is telling me. She tells me without a single word that the logical, safe, general assumption is not at all what she believes to be true. 

As we waited in the beginning, I asked my mother what we would do if he didn’t make it in time for the flight, and I hated her answer. I wanted to scream at her, call her a monster, throw a fit as a teenager in the middle of an airport. But I didn’t. I just tried not to cry. 

“Mom, what happens if daddy doesn’t make it back in time?” I asked, looking up at her. 

“He’ll make it back in time. The people at the desk know where he went, and he’s already checked in,” she replied.

“But what if he doesn’t?” 

“Then we will go home anyways, and dad can figure something out to get a later flight.” The panic rose in my chest as I heard her say what she hadn’t wanted me to hear. More than anything, I just wanted my dad. 

More and more anxiety and nerves grew in my chest as my father still did not appear, and we grew closer and closer to final boarding, until finally, he rushed around the corner, slightly frazzled, making it in more than enough time to board and settle in on the plane. The adults began to speak. I wasn’t supposed to hear. I listened anyway. Random selection, Mr. Joshua had relayed for the man at the gate. Born in Iran, my mother said, reading the inside of my father’s passport. I put the luggage under your name, my father said, so it looked like he didn’t have any bags. You booked our tickets separately, my mother said, referencing how he had used miles for his. Every single reason he could have been sent back was spoken between my parents. I wasn’t supposed to be listening. And yet under every reason, it came back to the first. My father’s passport reads “Place of Birth: Tehran, Iran.”

I am fourteen years old. I sit in a class as close to sociology as you can really get in high school as we discuss politics and recent events. We speak about terrorist organizations, and a boy that I don’t know with four more years of life than me raises his hand. 

“Why don’t we just send in the military and arrest all the Muslims? They’re all terrorists, so if we put them in jail, they can’t hurt anyone.” He smirks to himself, as though he truly believes he is so intelligent, that this is a great revelation. I shake in my seat from the blood boiling in my veins. 

I raise my own hand to reply before my teacher starts to look for someone to do so. She calls on me. “You can’t just punish everyone in a religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists. That’s like saying all Christians believe in murdering Jewish or gay people. You can’t make generalizations like that.” My voice shakes with adrenaline and fury. I cannot see through the tears burning my eyes that I refuse to allow to touch my face. 

The boy asks me how I know that. Says I can’t prove it.

“My family is from Iran. I have Muslim family members. If you actually spoke to someone Muslim, you would know that their religion is based on peace. People who do these kinds of things are not truly Muslim, they just use religion to justify their actions.”

I don’t remember what else he said. I just remember hearing the words family and terrorists. I couldn’t choke back the tears anymore. My teacher cuts the boy off before he can say anything else and thanks me for my contribution before quickly changing the topic. I start shaking every time I think about it. 

I am sixteen years old. I attend a mock United Nations conference, in which students choose a country to represent, spend the first night informing others about their country, and the next two days debating over a resolution to resolve an issue within their country. I am attending for the fourth time, not quite able to believe I will only be able to attend once more before I graduate. I love them. Every year I learn something new. Every year I debate resolutions as though I truly am representing my country in the United Nations. Every year I love looking through the booths about different countries. 

I walk around the hotel ballroom filled with chairs and cheap folding tables, smiling and talking, until I turn and lose my smile for the night. The school representing Iran has chosen to do so with a shrine to General Soleimani. I stand there in shock.  I follow the news almost religiously, and as such, know the events that had transpired months before. The assumption had been made that the people of Iran “worshipped” Soleimani, as I heard people say. But the people of Iran don’t have freedom of speech. Those who protest are thrown in jail, and more and more young people were prisoners for this. No one cared to think what the people of a country actually believed, they just assumed they stood for their government. 

The rules of the conference had been changed to prevent this. Changed to prevent assumptions or insensitive presentations. Focus on informative topics with decorations that represent your nation. France had an Eiffel Tower statue and models of traditional French food spread out across their table. Italy had a scale sculpture of the alley in Verona where Romeo and Juliet takes place. Norway has a painting of the Northern Lights. And yet a table designed by students and approved by a teacher for Iran was a shrine to a war criminal who was praised by a government that quells the will of their people and cuts them off from the outside world. I am furious. How dare they? How could anyone think this is okay?

I drag my friends over to the table. “Look at this. Can you believe this? I thought they changed the rules!”

“They did,” my friend says in shock. “I can’t believe an advisor signed off on this.” She stares at it in shock, before going to tell our advisor about it as well, before we have to go to our first meeting. 

My other friend still stands with me at the table, while I am fuming. “I don’t get it,” she says. “What’s wrong with it?” 

“It’s just plain wrong!” I am flabbergasted as to how she doesn’t get how messed up it is. “The Iranian government treats their people horribly! The people don’t love or worship those in power, they hate them! Their phones and internet were shut off for months and they had no communication with anyone outside of Iran. Protest, or even suspicion of speaking against the government can get you thrown in jail. They clearly didn’t research and thought that it would be funny to do something completely tone-deaf for their project.”

She looks at me apologetically, like she understands why it is incorrect, but as though she thinks I’m overreacting. “I think those people over in the corner actually made this display though, so maybe you shouldn’t say that.”

“What do you mean? It’s true. I am not saying anything wrong, and I honestly don’t care if they hear me. They need to recognize they made a mistake.”

“That’s not very nice,” she says, as I get even more frustrated. “Just come on.” She grabs my arm and pulls me back towards our chairs for the meeting that won’t start for another fifteen minutes. And during that time I cannot help but be more and more furious at the idea that these people, who know nothing of the life of an Iranian citizen, deserve to have their blatant ignorance respected. 

I am sixteen, finishing off my junior year from inside my house, looking back on what has happened only this year. For a week, war with Iran was almost on the horizon. During that week, I clung to the news like a lifeline, relying on it to tell me that things were not bad yet. My grandfather is in regular communication with his sister, who lives still lives there. He tells me that before the American government threatened war, before people spoke more bluntly racist things against Iran, phones and the internet had been shut down across the nation for months. Not because of another nation’s actions. Because the Iranian government had wished to completely cut their people off from the outside world. 

Every time someone young protests, they are thrown in jail. The older ones either believe in and support the Ayatollah because they remember life under the last Shah, and believe this to be better, or they stay silent, because they remember the revolution, and how the Ayatollah rose to power, and they are afraid. Every day, Iranian Americans are detained by border patrol while entering the country, whether they come from Iran and other middle eastern nations or not. It happens more every time there is tension between our two nations. My parents left the country for their anniversary just a few weeks ago, and for every day they were gone, I could not shake the fear of my father not being allowed to come home.

I do not think I experience racism. At least, not in the way of a snap judgement based on my appearance. I am white. I’m more tan than the average person, sure, but one does not look at me and immediately think that I am not American. Unless, of course, according to my mother, you look at my nose, the shape of which is distinctly Persian. But I see the way people respond to my grandfather’s strong accent. I see the way people treat my father. I watch them discriminate because they follow politics and are privileged enough to live in a practicing democracy, and believe that any government is supported by the people who live there. And every day I am frightened. 

I cannot imagine the discrimination based on race for those who do not even look moderately white. And yet, it is here, when the limits of whiteness are reached, that my father and grandfather live. They experience privilege. But they experience individual discrimination. And the more our president speaks of the middle east and terrorism, the more likely it becomes that someone will discriminate against my family. While they may not speak to me based on the way that I look, I will never get used to the way people act about my family and the place that they come from. 

I may not be individually singled out, but I am terrified sometimes. I am terrified when Trump speaks of Muslim terrorists. I am terrified when a mosque is attacked. I am terrified when I see women in public with hijabs being harassed. I am terrified when I hear the stories. Maybe not for myself, but for my family. And I can’t help but wonder, if there was a major terrorist attack by some foreign group, would my family be safe?