You Can't Run From Iran

I would say that one of the more interesting psychological shifts that I have noticed since living here is my awareness of being different, more specifically, LOOKING different. I guess as being part of the majority in the US, I never felt so conspicuous and thus never felt at all self-conscious. I sometimes have the feeling that everyone is staring at me (this is either perceived or real, I can not say for sure), and I long for the anonymity and privacy that I felt in the US since I blended with the crowd. This gives me a real appreciation for how it must feel for members of minority groups in the US, though certainly the situations are wildly different. I suppose that the sense of standing out is amplified here due to the high degree of homogeneity in India. Sure, there is huge cultural heterogeneity amongst the Indians, meaning that Bengalis are very different from Tamilians, who are also different from Punjabis, etc., but India is by no means a melting pot. So, one of the effects of this is that my eye is always drawn to the other foreigners. If there is a foreigner with a 2 kilometer radius, I will spot him or her. I seem to be particularly good at picking out the Caucasian-looking faces from a crowd, it is done so unconsciously that I feel that it must be a biological function, maybe evolution has provided a mechanism for us to seek out those that are similar to us (or conversely to notice different faces in a group, who knows).



Anyway, this is a long way of explaining that I see white people (get the Sixth Sense reference, I hope so or it is a good joke wasted). So, when I was walking home from the gym on Monday evening, I noticed a very tall, very light complexioned man standing in front of a shop near my home, looking out onto the street in front of him. I sort of did a double take because, first of all, he was tall. There are really not many tall people here, but really, I noticed him because he was white (or so I thought). So as I was on the double part of the double take, he caught my eye. I was so embarrassed because I had basically been caught staring at him, so I looked away and kept going down the street. I was waiting for traffic to go by so that I could cross the street, and who walks up to me, but this same guy! So he asks me where I am from and I say the US, and he asks what I am doing in India, etc., the typical type of questions that I get from people who notice a foreigner and are curious. I, though am equally curious because there is this strange sense of camaraderie that I feel towards other foreigners, sort of like we are in this together. So I ask where he is from as I am having a terrible time identifying his accent. He smiled broadly and said, "Guess!". "Super, a guessing game," I thought to myself, "what an excellent opportunity to make myself look like an idiot." Which, by the way, I did. So since he was light skinned with light colored hair and was clearly not American, British, Australian, or Canadian, I assumed he must be European. Okay, so there are lots of countries in Europe, which one? He didn't sound or look Eastern European so that narrowed it down a bit, and when in doubt, guess France (actually I have found, at least in the game of Trivial Pursuit, that one should always guess Reykjavik, Iceland). Well, both turned out to be wrong, so he laughs and says, "Okay, I am from the country that is most opposite yours in government." Oh boy... However, this clue does not really help me that much as my mind races through all of the countries that might have a legitimate reason to hate America, who have we attacked recently, who have we threatened, who have we offended? This takes a while, and at this point, I am really worried about offending this guy, so I tell him I have no idea. He says, "Iran!" Wow. Now I know that I have to be careful, whatever I say to this guy is going to represent the thoughts and beliefs of the whole of America. So I laugh and tell him that yes, it seems that there are some tensions between our governments (with Dick, Cheney that is, tossing around threats of war). So we go on to have a nice conversation about how in the world it was possible that Bush won a second term, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, etc. Then he drops a bomb, "So what do Americans think of Iranians?" What am I supposed to say, that the popular media characterizes all people from the Middle East as religious fanatics waving Kalashnikovs in the air and crying "Death to America"? That these people are shown as backward idiots who need America to teach them about freedom and democracy, that they are incapable of making decisions for their own countries? This is one of those situations where I find it incredibly embarrassing to be American. Don't get me wrong, I am proud to be from America, but living abroad I have had to answer for the decisions that my government has made, and to try to convince non-Americans that we are not war-mongering, power (and oil)-hungry imperialists. This is becoming an increasingly difficult case to make. So back to my conversation with the Iranian... I decide to take the safe road and tell him what I believe is the truth about his people, my people, probably all people; that there are crazy extremists at both ends of the spectrum in both countries, they often have loud (and grating) voices, but that the majority of people fall in between and are good people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, countries are judged by their governments, and in both the US and Iran, the country gets a bad reputation based on the acts and beliefs of its respective government. In the end though, we are not that different, two countries filled with good people and led by raving lunatics. The whole experience left me feeling very helpless. Here we were, these two strangers from countries that are on the brink of war, and we had no problem at all in getting along, we have no dispute with one another. If only our governments were truly representative of the people, by the people, and for the people. I guess that must have been forgotten somewhere along the way...