Citizenship

 

I had been invited for this Saturday night since last week: The occasion being a huge party to celebrate my friend Azar's swearing in to be a U.S. citizen.

As usual, I was early to arrive and the house was devoid of guests. The hostess was doing final preparations in the Kitchen. Contrary to my expectations, she didn't look happy; you could even see that her eyes were red-rimmed.

She and her husband were so excited and were waiting for weeks for this day to go to the Convention Center among the thousands of other people to pledge allegiance to the United States and its flag. This family had been so culturally assimilated, it seemed as it had been years that they even forgot the name, IRAN.

Knowing all of these facts, I thought that there had been an unfortunate tragedy to the family. When I expressed my concern I saw tears well up in her eyes. She sat on her comfortable chair and said: "I feel so blue! This morning when we went to the swearing in ceremony it took two hours to get into the Convention Center. There happened to be another Iranian couple there also. We were all excited and happy except the other man who looked so preoccupied and sad. At the end of the ceremony, they asked us to rise and sing the National Anthem of the United States of America. Among all of the voices of the thousands of people I heard the voice of the man behind me. His booming voice singing "Ey Iran Ey Marz-e Por Gohar!" When I turned around, I saw his right hand over his heart, just like the rest of us, but in his hand, against his heart he was clutching a small flag of Iran and the tears rolled down his cheeks.

At the end he looked at me and without any reason at all, he offered this explanation: "I had to do this for my daughter who has just escaped from Iran to join us. I feel so sad for what I am doing today."

That night Azar's party was not warm. It did not bloom into fun, or maybe it didn't seem that good to me. Every time I looked at her, I saw the sorrow and the pain and remembered the story of the man, the man whose heart had not accepted his logic.

 

In The Back Alleys of Exile

Volume 2 Page 136