American in Iran, What They Want You To Know
Table of contents for american
- An American in Iran
- An American in Iran, Kabooky Fried Chicken
- An American in Iran, Old Beetle Brows
- An American in Iran, They Won’t Be Left Behind
- American in Iran, What They Want You To Know
I’ve been back from my travels for over a week now. I’ve survived all the questions like ‘why would you go to Iran for vacation?’ and ‘don’t they eat goat’s heads over there?’ (the answer is no, but the do eat lamb’s head).
Would I go again? You bet. I’m already planning on what kind of carpets and lamps I want to buy. Would I move there? Only if I had to. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with the traffic, the summer heat or the air pollution. On the flight to Iran I sat next to an Iranian man who lived in Belfast (quite interesting hearing English with an Irish accent spoken by an Iranian). As we descended on the airport he pointed out the smog…at 1:00 in the morning!
Being there, reading the Iran Daily, a newspaper in English, reading the streaming headlines in English on IRINN and talking to the people I learned that we have our spin and they have their spin on the hot topics and somewhere in the middle is the truth.
Our governments might not see eye to eye and there are certainly valid reasons (for both sides) why they don’t. But if there is one thing I learned while I was there, it’s that the people of Iran like Americans and want us to know it. On several occasions I was told by perfect strangers that I should tell everyone that Iran is a nice place. They are acutely aware of how the West perceives them and they desperately want to change that.
That will happen naturally as they slowly embrace globalization and modernization. Iran already does a lot of business with the West, just not America. For example, they import a lot of goods from Germany, Italy, and France. They are also trying to privatize the economy by selling government assets and opening a stock exchange. Unfortunately, the recent problem of uranium enrichment has put a kink in these advances and is pushing Iran closer to its allies in the east and farther away from the west.
But I digress and this has already become a very large series, so I’ll stop while I’m ahead…
Needless to say I had a good time in Iran and if nothing else, it was a learning experience for me!
