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I Just Smile
By Babak Eskandari
goodteacher64@hotmail.com
I picked up the phone and dialed. At first the call didn’t go through. I tried again and again and again. Finally there was a connection with static. The moment I heard his voice, the flood gates opened. I just broke down and started crying. It was my dad who answered the phone and he became worried.
Dad: What is it? What’s wrong?
After almost a minute I was able to talk.
Me: Dad, I want to come home. I don’t want to stay here anymore.
Dad: Why? What’s wrong? Tell me, Son.
Me: This country. I don’t want to stay in this country anymore.
Dad: It’s been less than a year since you left Iran.
Me: I know, but I want to come home...
After finishing middle school and within a year after my brother’s arrival in the US, I came to this country at the age of only 13. Barring two cousins and few distant relatives and friends in Southern California, it was just my brother and me in this vast and strange country. Most Americans were not aware of Iran or where it was located, although we were somewhat familiar with the US, its culture and history.
I started high school right away and since I had enough credits from Iran, I was able to bypass the freshman year and started my sophomore year. There were four other Iranian students, one Afghani, few Latinos and African-Americans, and the rest were Caucasians. It was very hard to learn and get comfortable with the new culture, but slowly, I made some American friends. I joined the marching band and played drums. I will never forget the first time I wore the band uniform and marched onto the football field. It felt great, and being a history buff, I felt as if I was marching with Napoleon’s grand army. I went to school dances and was able to muster enough courage to ask an American girl to dance. I held her hand for the first time and slow danced with her as my heart was rapidly beating.
It was interesting and exotic to many on campus. Some recent immigrant students from Latin America thought I was from Mexico or Venezuela. When they tried to speak to me in Spanish and I didn’t respond, they assumed I was a stuck up Latino and that’s why I would insist on speaking English only. I had to explain to them, with my broken English, that this is not the case. Teachers would say: “Oh, so you are Ayranian.” For most students, Iran would conjure up stereotypical images of oil, rich sheiks, camels, Aladdin, and flying carpets.
I would routinely explain that the only time I saw a camel was when I went to the zoo in Tehran; yes, the official language is Persian and not Arabic; yes, we do have cars and roads; no, my dad does not own oil fields and he doesn’t have ten wives.
All this was happening when the Iranian revolution was in full swing and more than half of Walter Cronkite’s nightly newscast was about Iran. I had heated discussions in my classrooms about why the revolution was occurring, the nature of the Shah’s regime, his relationship with the US, and the CIA coup of 1953. Then, the hostage crisis of November, 1979 happened and Ted Kopple had his nightly program, “America Held Hostage.” A few teachers became sarcastic and insulting toward me. Some students blamed everything on me. I became the target of insults and derogatory remarks such as: “camel jockey”, “sand nigger”, “terrorist”, and “fucking Ayranian.” One day in my biology class someone placed a cartoon on my desk depicting Mickey Mouse flipping off Iran. This cartoon was very popular back then and I had seen it on cars as well. Once, a huge football player openly threatened to beat me up after school. Fortunately, that threat did not materialize due to the intervention of a few students on the wrestling team who knew my cousin. I even received death letters in my locker. It was hard to be an Iranian in the US at that time. Many were beaten up and one or two were murdered, victims of hate crimes. Some thought that what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II would happen to Iranians. These were the reasons that I called home and wanted to go back to Iran.
But with encouragement and support from my family, most of my fellow students, especially band members, and teachers, I remained in the US and finished my education. As the news of the hostage crisis became routine for Americans, the atmosphere at school gradually became better. Of course, even up until my high school graduation day some of my close American friends would jokingly call me “Ayatollah.” By then, I would just laugh with them and would not get bothered with this remark.
A few years ago I went to my high school reunion and saw some of the same people who used to insult and threaten me. At first, I felt strange seeing them, but they approached me and we talked about those times. Indirectly, they were apologizing for their past actions. Once in a while, I go to the garage and go through the box containing my high school books and papers. I kept many things from those days thirty years ago. I still have the Mickey Mouse cartoon and the death letters. They have long ceased to be scary. I look at them, read them, and I just smile.
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