We Are All Hamvatan

by N.

Thelast time I was in Iran was the summer of 2010: I was 9 years old, about to enter middle school, and had not gone since I was 3 years old. I knew I was “going home”, but understood and remembered absolutely nothing. I went to countless mehmoonis (parties, gatherings) filled with family members who all pinched my cheeks and wrapped me in tight hugs in excitement, all exclaiming the same thing: that the last time they saw me, I had been a toddler with chubby cheeks and barely any teeth. Of course, I remembered almost none of them or the interactions they described. Nonetheless, I left Iran, remembering who they were when I arrived back in America, harboring a deep sense of love and appreciation for each of them in my heart.

The next time I visited Iran was 12 years later, in the summer of 2022. Like all diaspora, my family never intended for our next visit to be so delayed. But work, school, summer classes, finances, having to move, political instability, COVID, and more all impacted our ability to return. Every summer, my parents would promise that we’d go next year. When “next summer” finally turned into “this summer”, I could barely believe it. Anxious and in disbelief, I barely told anyone about my summer plans, and refused to leave the house for 3 weeks before the flight (in fear of getting COVID and being unable to go), because I did not want to jinx or jeopardize my trip.

I instantly cried tears of joy (and sadness, that it had taken 12 years) when the airplane finally touched down in Imam Khomeini Airport. I fretted that 12 years had been too big of a gap to come back and visit. I was anxious if it would be awkward with my family after not seeing them for so long, or if my Persian-speaking skills would not be good enough. At the same time, these anxieties were overpowered by the joy of returning as a cognizant, appreciative adult.

The most saddening realization, however, was that my loved ones had aged 12 years. I realized that many of them no longer looked like the people I had remembered them to be, and that I had missed so much of their life. Given that the last time they saw me I had been 9, and now I was 21, I know they felt the same (or my brother: he had been 6, and now, 18). My uncle, after picking me up from the airport, could not stop laughing at how much we had grown. I was overjoyed to find that interacting with my family and family friends still felt like second nature. But, it took a while to comprehend and grasp that these people were no longer pixels that I stared at in WhatsApp video calls, or people that I had heard about in my parents' or grandmother’s stories. For the next 3 weeks, they would be people I actually spent time with in real life. This was a privilege that I will never, ever take for granted. And yet, having soaked up every moment with them, I already long for the next time I can experience it.

I was also stunned by just how much I had failed to recall about Iran, as a result of my memories being held through my childhood perceptions of life. I had to ask my parents if the political murals and posters plastered throughout the country had always been there (to which, of course, they said yes); most importantly, I failed to remember ever seeing monuments, signs, or memorials of all the soldiers that died in the Iran-Iraq war. I’m genuinely unsure if, at 9 years old, my ignorance of the war and subpar Persian reading ability at the time was the reason why I didn’t register them, or if my Americanized childhood perspective made me oblivious to them. Either way, all I could notice now when I was in Iran, whether in rural or urban areas, was all the martyrs whose faces were plastered throughout the country in memoriam (even in sparse desert roads). I couldn’t help but succumb to my emotions — anger, grief, sadness — with every single one I looked at. Regardless of one’s political affiliation, looking at all the faces of conscripted young, innocent Iranian men who lost their lives to a horrific war was yet another everyday reminder of the constant tragedy Iranians face. I often thought about how many of them had been the same age as my brother, and wondered where their families were today.

Throughout my time there, I was in awe of all the large and small ways my people displayed resilience, despite facing some of the hardest times in history. Even with things like inflation and unemployment being at an all-time high, the streets, parks, restaurants, cafés, etc. were filled to the brim with joyful, laughing people who danced and sang the night away. Couples, young kids, families, friends, coworkers. Even up until the early hours of 4 or 5 AM, ignoring codified gender binary divisions. Honest people who, despite it all, still tried to make the most out of life, despite the daily hardships that they had been forced to grow accustomed to. My mom’s cousin, in conversation, remarked, “You Americans don’t really understand — you make money to set some aside for future expenses, vacations, personal purchases. That’s a luxury we don’t have and may never have. We don’t know what the future holds for us here, or what our money will even be worth tomorrow. The least we can do is spend the little we made today towards something that makes us feel good.”

I remember watching the news in my grandmother’s apartment one morning, feeling my heart sink to my feet when they announced that the price of 1 American dollar had soared to 40,000 Toman (funnily enough, my grandmother told me that when 1 American dollar rose to equal 7 Tomans about 45 years ago, many people were adamant that it would soon go back down, and urged others to be frugal about spending until then). Simultaneously, they announced the iPhone, as a result, had grown to cost 85,000,000 tomans — a result of sanctions. That very same night, my mom lost her cellphone in the streets of Tehran, likely from the hole in her coat that she didn’t realize existed, until we entered my uncle’s car to go home and attempted to use her GPS to navigate us. Of course, we all panicked. She had also seen the news that morning, and knew that her phone, which held her entire life and was our lifeline for communication in Iran, would be lost forever. After all, who could blame the person that came across my mother’s phone and sold it for quick cash in these hard times? We wouldn’t. And yet, when we called my mom’s number with the smallest ounce of hope that she could perchance get it back, a young man courteously picked up the phone. He politely introduced himself and let us know that he found it in the street, took it home to safekeep it for us, and then provided his home address.

My uncle was not familiar with the exact street, and his phone was on 1% with no car charger, so we couldn’t use his GPS. My phone also didn’t have an Iranian SIM card, rendering it unusable at the time. My mother desperately asked a young delivery motorcyclist at the nearest corner store if he could lead us to the address, and offered him compensation for his time. He directed us to the exact location, yelled out that he hoped we had a good night, and sped off before we could pay him. Additionally, the kind man who had kept my mom’s phone likewise refused my mom’s attempt to pay him for his kindness, and grew genuinely upset when my mom insisted that he accept the reward money. He did, however, accept the box of pastries we had in the car, but maintained that even that was too much for him to accept.

It cannot be understated how difficult life is in Iran for everyday people. I witnessed heartbreaking things like unaccompanied children, with torn and dirty clothes, begging and walking barefoot in the street, and a young family, including a toddler, digging through dumpsters in hopes of finding food. Most of the remaining family members I spoke to had plans in the works, or at least had hopes, of migrating to another country. One of the things I came to realize during this trip was that, although I still had family members to visit in Iran, the number of them that actually remained there had significantly decreased since my last trip, and will only continue to diminish. The last time I visited Iran, I remember becoming overstimulated as a child at the constant number of mehmoonis I went to, day and night — even losing sleep over the amount my parents had committed to going to. This time, I only went to less than a handful, and they were nowhere near the size of attendance to the ones I frequented years ago. A few days after we left Iran, one of my family members sold their apartment, packed their bags, and fled to Turkey.

Others, however, were adamant that despite Iran’s hardships, there was no other place on Earth they could ever bring themselves to call home. Despite procuring an American visa, one of my mom’s cousins grew miffed at the question of if he would permanently move to the U.S. — “Despite how bad things are here, Iran is where the true joy and happening of the world is. America is just a place to visit. Las Vegas or New York is nothing compared to the beauty of what Iran has to offer.”, he said.

Of my mom’s entire high school class, only 3 still lived in Iran. One of them had active plans to move to Spain within the year. When my grandmother wanted to reserve a restaurant to take her family out to dinner, the restaurant owners told her that they could not tell her in advance what the price of the meal would be, due to the instability of the Toman (I’ll never forget what they said: “I can tell you the price it was yesterday, and the price for today. But not the price it will be tomorrow, or any day after. It might be the same, it might be less, it might be triple the price.”). Taxi drivers, unprompted, would confide in us about the back-breaking labor they endured just to provide for their families. And yet, despite the heavy nature of the conversation, they would always insist that they still harbored a deep sense of love for their people and homeland.

The widespread sentiment of sadness often emanated from people, but so did their kindness. A corner store worker in Tehran, upon finding out that we were Azeri, insisted we drive up to Ardabil with him that weekend so he could show us around, adamant that we promise to plan something. A young shop owner in the Esfahan bazaar, after we paid and were about to leave his store, thanked my family for being kind and friendly to him, and said he had given us a discount on our items for it. When I came up short for a bus fare and searched through my purse in an attempt to find loose change, an elderly man walked over from the male section and paid for my bus fare without a word (and without me noticing at first) - and insisted that I not mention anything about it, or even attempt to pay him back.

While something seemingly so simple, the constant kindness my family and I experienced from literal strangers in Iran truly touched me. Even if people couldn’t change their current exterior conditions, they did what they could to extend solidarity and support for one another. I don’t think I truly understood what it meant to feel a unified identity and community until then.

As I was leaving Iran, the female workers in the security section of the airport waved goodbye and blew my mother, grandmother, and I kisses, lovingly proclaiming that regardless of who we were, where we were going, or where we now lived, we would always be their compatriots, we would always be hamvatan.