“Geez”
"Are you sure it has enough salt?
I feel like it needs more salt,
no? Okay, no.”
“How they do it on TV:
‘And now we’re whipping all the eggs together.’”
Hi, I’m Yara.
And that’s me cooking Iranian food with my mom.
In episodes 1 and 2,
I spent some time with LA’s Iranian community,
also known as Tehrangeles,
to talk to other Iranian-Americans about living and growing up in the U.S.
And now I’m going back home to figure out what being Iranian-American means to me,
and how my family’s story plays into all of this.
I’m one of the estimated one million Iranian-Americans who live in the U.S.
I was born and raised in northern California,
but like a lot of Americans with immigrant parents,
I sort of have this dual identity.
On the one hand, I’m very American.
“Cheese.” “Cheese.”
But I’m also very Iranian.
Here in the States, both of my parents are small business owners.
My mom runs a clothing boutique and lives in San Francisco.
My dad owns a Subway and lives an hour south.
He came to the U.S. as a teenager to get an education
right before Iran’s 1979 revolution.
A few years later,
when Iran was in the middle of a war with Iraq,
my dad went back and married my mom.
Together, they moved to the U.S. and eventually had …
me.
“We’re here in my dad’s Subway.
We’re gonna go inside and see what he’s up to.”
My dad’s owned this place for over 30 years.
I practically grew up here.
And I ate a lot of his sandwiches.
Especially on my birthdays.
My dad’s been here so long that he’s really gotten to know his customers.
And the pigeons outside.
My dad’s definitely changed while living in America.
Before, he wanted to move back to Iran,
he almost always spoke Persian.
And he hated having dogs in the house.
Now ... he happily lives in the suburbs,
mostly speaks English,
“Happy holidays and happy new year,”
and loves dogs.
“Yeah, good boy.”
But Iran is still very much a part of who he is.
We even found this under his carpet.
"It’s a map of Iran.”
Before my dad came to the U.S.,
the Iranian revolution was picking up steam.
He was getting involved with the protests
and his parents were concerned for his safety.
“In Iran, the thing was changing.
You would see people come to the streets
and going against the Shah of Iran.”
“All of a sudden
my father came to the house and says,
'It's time for Amir to go to United States.’ I was almost 17.”
“Why did he say that?”
“Oh, because they said if Amir stays here, he may be killed.”
Back then, in 1979,
Iranians made up the largest group of foreign students in America.
There were over 50,000 of them.
But then the hostage crisis happened.
That’s when Iranian revolutionaries
determined to end U.S. influence in Iran, held dozens of
Americans captive for over a year.
In response, president Carter cut diplomatic ties with Iran
and temporarily banned most Iranians from entering the country.
And all the Iranian students already in the U.S.
had to report to immigration authorities to prove they were legal.
Several thousand were deported back to Iran as anti-Iranian protests took place across the country.
In some cases, immigration officers showed up at people’s homes.
“There was somebody knocking at the door.
We were four guys in a three-bedroom apartment.
and there were two gentlemen with a tie, blue shirt,
‘Yes, sir?’
‘We are here from Immigration office and we’re going to check all the passports.’
All of us were shaking. Maybe they want to deport us.”
“You’ve never told me about this. I’ve never heard this from you.”
“Oh, it was so fearful.”
My dad earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering here in California.
But when he finally got his green card,
he didn’t have much luck finding a job in his field,
which is how he ended up getting involved with Subway.
“I should take this.”
“So what you’re gonna have to do, you get some yogurt.
And then I’m going to add a little bit of saffron to the yogurt.”
“Who taught you how to make these things?”
“My mom, she was and is an excellent cook.”
“Yeah, she is.”
“And my grandma.
I used to watch them for like minutes, hours.”
“My mom is cutting herbs!”
“But you know, the smell of it makes me nostalgic.
It still takes me back there.”
My mom grew up in Tehran.
When she came to the U.S. with my dad after graduating high school,
they thought they’d only be here for just a few years.
But an eight-year war had broken out between Iran and Iraq.
Moving back to Iran had to be put on hold.
My mom did go back to visit during the war.
What she saw of her country shocked her.
“Everybody was mourning.
Everything was black.
The cemetery was full.
People were sad.”
“You didn’t expect to stay in the United States.”
“Oh no. I had no desire.”
“I was homesick.
I was missing my mom, simply my mom,
my girlfriends from high school,
my dad, my home.”
My parents got divorced about 20 years ago.
But away from her family, and on her own,
my mom started her own business.
“The whole philosophy, the concept of operating this business
I think is more of the Persian
– or Middle Eastern – than western world.
We sit down, we talk, we have tea together, we have sessions together.”
Iranian culture has also played a part in how my parents raised me.
“When you were born, we – both of us – tried to raise you that, with Iranian culture.
Always, me and your mom thought one day, we’re going to go back to Iran.”
“We were talking Farsi to you, yeah.
We, me and your dad, we never spoke English to you.
The only time you were getting exposed to English was when you were watching cartoon TV.”
“What was that like. What was I watching?”
“Barneys.
That purple character every morning.
Huge thing.
Barneys, Barneys, Barneys.”
“Barney. Barney.”
Growing up, we’d go back to Iran when we could.
I wasn’t too crazy about it as a kid,
but developed a huge interest in going back as I got older.
To the point that I moved there for two years to work as a journalist and translator after college.
There was just something unbelievably wholesome about the unconditional love
I’d receive from my enormous family.
Something about Iran just sucked me in.
Maybe it was because I sometimes felt out of place in America –
and wanted to flesh out this other side of my identity.
Even still, I didn’t feel fully Iranian in Iran.
People told me I spoke Persian with an American accent,
that my hand gestures totally gave away my American identity,
or that the way I thought about things was different.
But growing up Iranian in America had its hurdles, too.
“Did they ever bully you?”
“Well there was one instance,
we were playing soccer,
and I remember this kid and he looked at me,
and this was after 9/11.
I think I'd maybe kicked the ball improperly,
and yeah he looked at me and he was like,
‘Oh yeah? That terrorist?’
So, I know for me, like, the Iranian identity always came through, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“I am very obviously different looking and different maybe sounding,
and maybe I have a funny name. Right. It’s Yara Elmjouie, like, what is that?
Where is that from?” “It’s a beautiful name."
“I like it now. I love it today,
but back then, when you’re kind of trying to blend in, it’s different, right?”
“I remember you told me one day ‘I don’t like my name.’
And I said, ‘Everybody loves your name.
Everybody thinks it is such a beautiful name.
What should I have called you?’
You go, ‘David?’
I said, ‘Between all these names, David?
Why David?’ ‘David is cool.’
I said, ‘Well how about, “DAVEED” at least.’
“Or ‘Davood.’”
“Or ‘Davood!’"
My parents haven’t lost sight of their Iranianess.
But they’ve now spent far more of their lives here in the U.S. than they ever did in Iran.
My dad ended up getting remarried to a Salvadoran woman,
and now I have two sisters.
Here’s one of them.
“Hey!”
“Hi! How are you? Good to see you!
I got mom’s birthday cake.
Hi. Hello! Hello guys.”
“As you see, I am 58 years old almost, 17 years in Iran,
almost 39 years in United States.”
“Now, today, I have a choice of packing and moving back there.
I have a choice of living here.”
“What choice have you made?”
“This is home for me.”
“Here in California.”
“This is home for me.”
“Being Iranian-American, doesn’t matter if we live in LA
or we live in New York,
we came here as a student.
We didn’t want to stay here,
but
this country made us love this country.
And we love it here, all of us.
Sorry.
So, we are both Iranian-American,
and nobody can separate us.
Sorry.
This is our identity.
We are two arms.
You want me to cut one?
I can’t.
You want me to cut this one, I can't.
And this is my American. I am Iranian.
I’ve talked a lot about feeling in between in this series
in some sort of limbo between one identity and the other.
But talking to my mom and my dad, it got me thinking.
Maybe I don’t need to live my life feeling divided and in-between.
Maybe I can firmly, and confidently, embrace both identities simultaneously.
I mean, in a sense, what’s more American than that?
“Okay, so I just put my family on display for you guys,
hope you enjoyed hearing about my story
as a child of immigrants.
But now I’m going to turn it over to you.
What is your family’s immigration story like,
and how has it shaped who you are?
Don’t forget to subscribe
and watch out for our next episode,
where we break down some myths about the Iranian-American community.”