this article appeared in BMed Magazine, summer 2004
‘Your real “country” is where you’re heading not where you are.’ (Persian poet Rumi)
Although the Iranian diaspora has existed in the West for some time, the Revolution of 1979 saw its numbers swell, as the ruling elite and anyone who could be associated with the Shah’s regime fled the country. Later many more people followed as the Revolution turned Iran into the Islamic Republic and the ideologically-driven new regime started to devour even some of the revolution’s most passionate advocates. For many Iranians, arriving in the US or the UK at this time was traumatic. ‘People’s perceptions of Iran were very negative then,’ says Masoumeh Hamedi, a broadcast journalist now based in London. ‘It was the time of the US embassy siege and those images of people chanting against the West on the streets of Tehran. Even though we had visited the US many times, going there to live as a child of 12 was incredibly different. All I wanted to do was fit in, to not be Iranian.’
Professor Hooshang Amirahmadi, president of the American-Iranian Council picks up this point. ‘I don’t think we did ourselves any favours,’ he says. ‘Because we were all hurt by the new regime we helped, in a way, to demonise Iran more in the eyes of the West. And of course, we were the ones who suffered from that misperception.’
However, the millions of Iranians who have made their homes outside the country have forged their own way. Estimates as to the number of the diaspora range from 2 million to 4 million, of these some 700,000 (some say many more) live in the US. The biggest population by far is in Los Angeles – nicknamed Tehrangeles – followed by Virginia and Maryland. Sizeable communities exist in New York and north of the border in Canada, particularly in Toronto. In Europe the UK is the main place that the diaspora has settled, especially in London, while Sweden, France, Germany and even Italy have their own communities of Iranians.
The question that most engages the younger members of the diaspora today is the duality of identity between the Iranian and the Western aspects of their character, along with an acceptance that home is now the West. Iranian Alliances Across Borders (whose directors are students themselves) held the first international conference on the Iranian diaspora at Wellesley College and Tufts University in April this year to try to address such issues. Speakers from all over the diaspora talked on themes such as community composition, identity formation, civic and political participation, and alliance building. Taghi Amirani, an Iranian filmmaker who lives in London, attended the conference to screen a couple of his short films, ‘Tehrangeles’ and ‘Going Gaga for Googoosh’. ‘The process of rediscovering my Iranianess has led me to make these short films about the exiled community,’ he says. ‘These have been like testing the waters, paddling in the sea before taking the big plunge – making a film back home, where I first picked up a camera at the age of 10. So I, along with an increasing number of Iranians, will be going back to immerse myself in Iran with all its troubles, contradictions and joys.’
Of course the diaspora includes many age groups and, as Iran has one of the highest instances of brain drain in the world, it is growing annually. It is estimated that every year more than 150,000 educated young people leave Iran for countries such as the US, Canada and the UK where Iranians are the most educated group of immigrants. Mohammad Hafezi of the Iranian Studies Group presented data to the conference on the significant achievements of the Iranian-American community in academia and the economy. According to the group’s research, Iranian Americans rank first among 67 immigrant groups in regards to educational attainment, while the average family income of the community is 38 per cent higher than the national average.
Traditionally Iranians have done well in business and academia, but in recent years there has been more of a flowering within the arts too. Azar Nafisi’s literary memoirs, ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’, has helped bring not just literature, but the recent history of Iran, to a receptive mainstream audience (at time of writing it had spent 13 weeks at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List). Marjane Satrapi’s cartoon book, ‘Persepolis’ was widely acclaimed, telling her own story of growing up in Iran at the time of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war in striking black and white, wittily sharp strip cartoons. Artist Shirin Neshat (see page XXX for interview) continues to attract international attention and is turning her hand to her first feature film. Exhibitions such as the huge contemporary Iranian arts show which was on at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Culture) from March to May, bring together artists and filmmakers living and creating work both outside and inside Iran, fostering a cultural exchange between these two groups that has been unprecedented since the Revolution. Satellite TV stations based in LA beam programmes into homes in Iran, many of which have an illegal dish, and bootleg copies of banned Iranian art films and music make sure that the people of Iran are not totally isolated from the community that lives outside it.
The diaspora has always kept it cultural roots very much intact, both in traditional and more progressive ways. Within each large community, wherever they happen to be in the world, important Iranian festivals such as No Ruz (Iranians New Year, celebrated around 21st March on the verbal equinox) are marked not just in private homes, but also by large gatherings and parties organised by various cultural organisations, such as the Iran Heritage Foundation in London. This year for the first time the Persian Parade in New York marked the Iranian new year while in London the British Museum devoted a weekend to celebrating all things Iranian to commemorate No Ruz. A few years ago when Googoosh, a pre-Revolutionary pop star unlike any other, was allowed by the regime to tour abroad for the first time since 1979, the tickets to her concerts sold out in minutes. In Toronto alone she attracted an audience of 12,000.
Events such as the Diaspora Film Festival, held every year in Toronto, started off as a way of giving voice to filmmakers from the Iranian diaspora, but, having been such a success, it has been expanded to include all diasporic filmmakers. Shahram Tabe-Mohammadi, the festival’s director, applauds his adopted country: ‘Canada, in my opinion, is among the most open societies to immigrants. Although discriminations exist here too, society in general approves and supports national identities. As a result, the second generation of Iranians look back to their roots more freely and more proudly.’ He echoes many others when describing his sense of identity: ‘I have kept from my mother culture whatever seemed to be human, and adopted from the host culture those elements that I found helpful.’
This point is crucial in understanding the reconciliation that some members of the Iranian diaspora have affected. Hooshang Amirahmadi emphasises this point of choice for the younger generations: ‘These kids can become better Iranians in a way. They have been brought up in these democratic, open societies and so they don’t have to take on the more negative aspects of the Iranian character.’
His organisation, the AIC, is working hard to find a peaceful way to reduce hostility and foster understanding between America and Iran. He is hopeful: ‘People like us must become a bridge of understanding between Iran and the West.’ He uses his own sense of identity as an example: ‘I have lived in the US for many years, and I have an Iranian side and an American side. I cannot live with these two halves hating each other, so I want to find a way to resolve this conflict of cultures.’
Azar Nafisi, who is also director of the Dialogue Project aimed at encouraging understanding between Islamic countries and the West, also sees the conflict in some young Iranians, saying the pull back to their roots seems to happen to Iranians in their 20s, even to those who have never lived in Iran, although the conflict is more apparent in those who spent at least some of their lives there. Many go back to visit Iran, and then, says Dr Nafisi, ‘there is this drive, this seduction by the country, this love, but at the same time, they can find society there claustrophobic, repressive. But even then, they still keep going back. They carry with them always this love and hate, but they still go back.’
Hooshang Amirahmadi similarly identifies a feeling of emptiness that can come to haunt some members of the diaspora. Taghi Amirani sums it up: ‘The older I get and the longer I live away from home – and yes Iran is still home – the more Iranian I feel. Identity and belonging to a place and culture matters. I can't deny that my life in the West has shaped me, but it hasn't fully reached deep into my soul, my inner self. When asked after some 28 years away from Iran, do I feel more English or more Iranian, I always reply: “My head is English, but my heart is Iranian, and I wouldn’t have them the other way round!”’
And as the diaspora comes of age 25 years after the Revolution, Iranians abroad are also finding new ways to survive, to be Iranian and forge a relationship with Iran that will one day benefit both east and west.
© Kamin Mohammadi 2004