Enamored with the Foreign

Maybe in Quebec or France, Star Burger would get into trouble for choosing an English name.

Here in Iran, it not only gets away with an English name, it pours salt on the wounds of the pure-Persianist by phonetically writing the name in Farsi script.

Never mind that most people wouldn’t know exactly where the words “estar” or “berger” come from. Quickly and happily they add them to today's vernacular Persian, a potpourri of classical Farsi (rest in peace), Arabic, French, English and other tongues.

Deciphering store signs requires the art of simultaneously reading Persian and some other language phonetically written in Farsi.

Even reading the newspaper has become a chore, my father tells me.

"I kept seeing this word that looked like 'consel' or 'conosel' and kept wondering what is it. Finally, I realized they've written 'cancel', like such and such concert was cancelled. They could've used many Persian words to say the same thing."

Samsung, Panasonic, Toyota, Coca Cola, every world brand has its own countenance in Farsi script.

But brands aside, Iranians go out of their way to mix in anything else they can get their mouths around.

“Maan voicemaileh shomah-roh beh mobilam deerooz divert kardam,” an acquaintance casually informs me.

He means: “Yesterday I diverted your voicemail to my mobile [phone].”

The poor soul who only reads pure Persian would starve in this restaurant, inside a government-run park. Every single item is presented in Farsi-scripted Western words. The numbers didn't go Farsi, though, perhaps for that extra touch of irony.

Maybe better to let Iranians use phonetic English and not try to translate. Here buffet made it relatively intact into what sounds like "boo-feh", but the Persian translation of children's playground to English somehow became "children landspeculation". Maybe someone's acerbic joke at the skyrocketing land prices here.

You know, sometimes I wonder why I’m even labeled as a foreigner here.

At least one guy thought I'm more Iranian than the Iranians living in Tehran.

“Every word you speak is actually Persian," he tells me, "which is a rarity now. Most young people in Tehran are constantly trying to pepper in foreign words.”

They think doing so is cool, I’m told.

Until a few years ago, the government, a la Québécois, tried and tried to cleanup the language.

Businesses were fined, signs destroyed, countless man-hours spent dreaming up Persian equivalents to technological terms. The computer is rayaneh in the government's tongue, the only way to communiate in much of the literature.

So the newspaper that is confusing people with the Persian-ized English and French words also bugs them with computer classifieds that one can't decipher.

Solemn vows taken to fight to death the “tahajomeh farhangi” [cultural invasion] beaming into satellite dishes day and night and metastasizing through one of the world's youngest society's. Half of the 70 million people are under 30.

But the dishes are still there and at least in Tehran businesses go out of their way to choose foreign names.

“One thing you should know about the Iranian,” a friend tells me. “It’s that they are the absolute experts at destroying the system.”

He means that no matter who happens to be lording over them at the time—the Greek, the Arab, the Mongol—Iranians are specialists at disobeying the rules set by the conqueror, to eventually make mince meat of the culture of the subjugator, to the point that often they end up co-opting the master.

No Smoking in Persian

Persian no-smoking sign: "The employees of this inn do not use nicotine products."

I kept seeing the above same sign at various inns I stayed at and wondered about its significance.

It says: “Dearest Guest, The employees of this inn do not use nicotine products.”

So what? Why are you telling me this? Why would I care that the employees of this inn do not smoke?

Then one night my father came in sneezing and complaining about German tourists smoking in the lobby.

“There’s a no-smoking sign there but the darn thing is in Persian,” he said plaintively.

What no-smoking sign? I asked.

To my amazement, I realized he was talking about the mysterious employees-don’t-smoke sign.

You see, by expressing its employees’ dislike for smoking, the hotel is indirectly asking the guests to not smoke! I am not kidding. My father tells me this is just as serious as any non-smoking sign in the West. They’re just doing indirectly, trying to be polite and non-confrontational. They’re being gentle and considerate but they expect you to understand it as a request not to smoke.

It might seem weird to the Westerner. For chrissake, why don't you just say it plain and simple in two darn words: “No smoking”?

But who are we to say what is normal communication?

Not Perfect? How Dare You?

Not perfect? How dare you? Cinema heartthrob, Mahnaz Afshare. Source: movie poster.

My aunt arranged a meeting with a beautiful young woman “so you two can meet and see if anything could be worked out” in regards to marriage.

I showed up at my aunt’s house with my mother. She shows up with her mom—an hour late. We speak for about 15 minutes privately as our mothers massaged each other's egos nearby.

My mother had high hopes. “Can Ali call you?” my mother asked as the prospective bride said her goodbyes. She responded positively with a smile.

I called her cell number several times in the next couple of days. No one answered. My mother called my aunt—the RAW-bet here, the contact between the two families. A few days later the message comes back that the would-be bride is upset that she has not received a call from me!

It was a convoluted message, I was told, but essentially it was the other family’s way of saying all bets are off.

It didn’t rhyme with the family’s other messages, though. My parents were perplexed and grilled me on the now-famous 15-minute conversation.

“Anything else?” my mother says, eyeing me like a hawk. “Try harder to remember.”

“I told you. We just talked about education and where we prefer to live. I talked about living in the U.S. and how I made a lot of mistakes because I went there at 15 …”

“What? You told her you made mistakes?” My father jumped off his chair as if shot by lightning.

“Yeah, what’s the big deal? I told her I made mistakes when I was a kid living on my own in a strange culture.”

“Ah, Ali joon, you never admit you made mistakes,” my mother said with such sadness, as if she had just watched the family’s good name carted off on a garbage truck.

“No I told her that when I was a kid 30 years ago ...”

“Doesn’t matter,” my father shot back. “In Iran, you just never ever say, ‘I made a mistake.' Period. It’s just not done.

“You just discovered what turned her off. When they go home and start talking among themselves, they say, ‘imagine how horrible his mistakes were that he was forced to make a reference to them!’

“Then, being Iranian, they start giving it leaves and branches. ‘What in the world could he have done? Ah, that’s why he’s still not married! Ah, that’s why he’s back in Iran at all, otherwise why would he bother?’ Pretty soon they’re comparing you with …”

“This is pretty crazy, you know,” I say. “To me, it’s as sign of maturity to say, ‘I made mistakes and learned from them.’ Isn’t life about making …?”

“Ali,” my father says impatiently, “What did I tell you before? Forget about what you know. You are here now. Do as they do here. You have to adapt or you won’t get anywhere.”

---

I can’t be more thankful for what transpired with my dear would-be wife. This thing with not admitting mistakes has absolutely fascinated me.

It explains so much.

Yes, people say with a smile, as if I just solved a puzzle for them too, this is why the government officials could never admit mistakes. If they did, it would automatically mean they’re not fit to govern.

(Just wait a minute! Is George Bush Iranian?)

This is why so many perplexing things remain unchanged—things that just make you scream, ‘Why? Why? Why?’

Like so many misleading highway signs; like the airport sign that sends traffic away from Tehran’s brand-new airport.

Could it be that the bad highway signs remain because changing them would be admitting screwing up the previous signs?

“People not only never admit wrongdoing, they are always looking for something to blame you for,” says a cousin, who, along with four colleagues, installs and repairs European manufactured laboratory equipment.

“They’re constantly watching you. Something might go wrong with something completely unrelated, and suddenly they say, ‘Ah, it was so and so’s fault all along’—even things that have nothing to do with you.

“For me it’s better to keep doing something the wrong way than correct it. Because just changing, say, the [wrong] technique I’m repairing something, would be an admission of past mistakes. Then your co-workers will be all over you.

“Obviously, it’s hard to work in this environment. The Europeans that come to visit us at work just don’t have the capacity to comprehend all [the crap] we have to deal with.”

Update: My father wants me to tape the future 15-minuters. Too much at stake to leave it to a greenhorn from the US of A.

If only Dubya and Karl were here to teach me the art of fakehood.