Persian Power: Iranian-Americans make an impact

[democratic]

http://www.ocmetro.com/metro070804/Cover070804.html

Persian Power
By Stan Brin

But Bakhtjou is not a typical immigrant: She has been living in the United States for only 18 months. While even most Iranian-Americans consider her story somewhat unusual, she illustrates the rapid success this new local community has experienced in the past 25 years. From the Moshayedi brothers, founders of SimpleTech, a $300-million public company included on Inc. Magazine’s list of the Fastest Growing Companies in America, to Paul Makarechian, owner of the St. Regis Resort and Spa in Dana Point, to Dr. Fardad Fateri, former president of DeVry University, Iranians have achieved prominence in every aspect of business and the professions, from high-tech to education and the arts.

Persian accents are heard everywhere in Orange County, especially in Irvine and the South County area, but most people don’t know who Iranian-Americans are. In fact, nobody seems to know how many Iranian-Americans actually live in Orange County.

Worse, Iranian-Americans have had a difficult time being recognized as a distinct community by the public, the mass media, even the government, all of which tend to confuse them with Arab-Americans.

But as any Iranian-American will tell you, Persians are not Arabs, any more than Koreans are Japanese.

In fact, relations between Iran, or Persia, as the country was traditionally called, and the Arab world have been tense for many centuries (see sidebar, “The Tragic Pageant of Persian History”). And nothing annoys Iranian-Americans more than being mistaken for Arabs ­ their accent and appearance is very different.

Persian or Iranian?

They’re both, actually. Persia, or Fars, is the ancient term for the country. The people and their language are called Farsi.

And as all Persians are quick to point out, their language is not related to Arabic in any way. Like English, Italian, Russian, Urdu and Hindi, Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages and shares a number of grammatical ties. Some words, such as the Persian “lab” for the English “lip,” haven’t changed since the first Indo-European tribes went their separate ways perhaps 5,000 years ago.

The term Iran is derived from Aryan, the name historians and anthropologists gave to a wave of tribes that migrated out of the Caucacus Mountains, traveling south and east into Persia and India.

Reza Shah adopted the current official name, Iran, in 1935, and the current regime has never changed it back

[Must_B_Free]

1. Knew a persian man who worked the pickup counter in a seafood restaurant

in Glen Burnie.

He was both hilarious and charismatic. He played some dramatic Persian pop music for me that he had participated in.

"I like this music," I said.
He said, "Stay away from Persians, they're nothing but trouble."
I said, "But you're Persian?"
"Stay away from me," he said.

What a character. He was just kidding of course.

[democratic]

2. ,,

heheh!

[nemo137]

3. My uncle's Persian.

Funny, funny guy.

[democratic]

4. House of Sand and Fog

Great Film if you haven't seen it yet.

http://www.iranian.com/Arts/2003/December/Fog/index.html

Right direction
Hollywood's first refined portrayals of Iranian Americans

By Trita Parsi
December 22, 2003
The Iranian

DreamWorks new movie for the holiday season, House of Sand and Fog, based on Andre Dubus III bestselling novel with the same title, is poised to intrigue Iranian-Americans due to its Iranian-American lead characters, its complex portrayal of Iranian cultural traits, and it being one of the first Hollywood productions in which Middle Easterners are depicted as multifaceted individuals and not one-dimensional shooting targets.

The movie astutely captures the dark side of the immigrant experience in America, an experience that may be all too familiar to many Iranian Americans. Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley - Gandhi), a former Royalist colonel in the Iranian military, is living a life beyond his means, desperately trying to keep up the pretense of the wealth and power he once enjoyed in pre-revolutionary Iran in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage.

Risking the remainder of his fortune to restore his family's dignity, he buys a small house at an auction in order to restore it and sell it for four times its original price. However, what was supposed to be an ingenious business transaction quickly develops into a trajectory to disaster.

The house has been auctioned because of a bureaucratic error, and Behrani's plans are jeopardized when Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly - A Beautiful Mind), the self-destructive and alcoholic owner of the house, begins to protest the sale.

What starts out as a legal scuffle soon spirals into a personal confrontation, starting a tug of war between two struggling, proud people, each buoyed by the genuine belief that they have justice on their side. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. To the former Iranian colonel, the beachfront home is the first step to restoring his family's pre-revolutionary lifestyle. To Nicolo, the house represents an illusionary safe-haven that helps her veil the failure that she has become.

Besides being a movie with an undeniably deep emotional touch and a prime Oscar contender, it is also one of Hollywood's first refined and sophisticated portrayals of Iranians and Iranian Americans. Although the trailer of the movie may give the impression that Colonel Berhani is the "bad guy" -- an unreasonable and aggressive man untouched by human feelings -- it belies the movie which leaves the audience with a deep feeling of sympathy and admiration for the proud and dignified Iranian-American.

Although a portrayal is just that -- a subjective portrayal of reality and not reality itself -- Dubus and Perelman's depiction of Iranian-Americans and Iranian culture may be incomplete, but it is not unrealistic. It is a blend of the positive and negative that constitutes all cultures, and it is a step in the right direction for Hollywood; away from its simplistic, Manichean perspective and towards a polished outlook with a focus on the essence of the individual and not the misleading emotions of the stereotype.