[R-G] Jason Rezaian, "Iran’s Brain Drain More of a Flow, Really"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/warwickreview/sept2007/jriransbrain/>
The Warwick Review
Vol.1 No.3 Sept 2007
Iran's Brain Drain More of a Flow, Really
by Jason Rezaian

When I first began travelling to Iran in early 2001 one of my initial
impressions was how intimate a place it was. Although there were clear
divides between what one did in public and behind closed doors, there
was also a closeness that was hard to ignore. Six strangers piled into
a makeshift Peykan taxi, large families picnicking on a roadside
stretch of grass next to a clogged five lane highway, and the crush of
pilgrims on holy days in Mashhad are all very common occurrences
within the Islamic Republic. With camaraderie comes laughter and
dialogue, both welcome sounds that can be rare in many parts of the
Middle East.

Toward the end of my first journey to Iran, after being passed around
from each extended relative's home to the next, as I put my life in
God's hands one afternoon, and tried to cross at a busy intersection,
I had a realization: This is the first time I've been alone in two
months.

Many trips later much about Iran looks and feels exactly the same as
it did then. The tastes, smells, superstitions and jokes haven't
changed, nor have the living conditions and struggles of most
Iranians. Still, it feels evermore confusing.

To Westerners who only know Iran through our own admittedly limited
media coverage, it can seem like the land of statistics: 60% of
university students are women, two thirds of the population is under
30, Tehran is one of the most populous (and polluted) cities in the
world. We've all heard them and for good reason; they're true and
easily observed. Less visible, however, are other striking phenomena,
including Iran's high attrition rate among its talented youth, the
Brain Drain.

If you go looking for signs of these people in Tehran you won't find
them because, well, they're gone. Head to Pune or Budapest or
Vancouver and you'll discover legions of young Iranians constructing
makeshift communities around their customs and traditions, sprinkled
with the liberal and public consumption of beer, something they can't
do back home.

For me, though, their exodus is making my times in Iran much lonelier.

Furthermore, the Iranian public's increasing infatuation with Western
popular culture and unparalled access to it, through the internet and
satellite television, is having a deep impact on young Iranians'
images of who they are. Increasingly they are identifying with
international ideals of youth through consumption, rather than the
local culture and it is making it harder than ever to define what it
means to be Iranian.

It took me several trips to realize that these were very real trends
and not just coincidences, and by that time I had already become
hooked on Iran. What was initially a sad fact about regular visits to
a place, whose inhabitants have very real objections to how they are
ruled, has become part of my own Shiite reality. In true Iranian form,
I am resigned to the idea that with each arrival there will be fresh
loss.

It's now becoming a jarring aspect of every visit, calling familiar
phone numbers only to hear a strange voice at the other end, or a
recorded message telling me that the "mobile set is off" over and over
again.

Like so many of these emigrants though, I now have the feeling of
being stuck between two very different worlds, with affection and
abhorrence for both. In America I'm continually drawn back to Iran,
geographically one of the furthest places in the world from home, and
once I'm there, I quickly long for some of the mundane freedoms I've
come to take for granted.

I've formed my own ragtag crew of Iranian friends who've recently
exiled themselves to the West. Although I was born and raised in the
United States, they, like me, feel no connection to the by-product of
revolution that is the Iranian American community, with its never
evolving pop music and outdated and empty political slogans spouted on
satellite television.

I'm thinking now of so many tired pop songs produced in Los Angeles,
then imposed on Iranians everywhere. Recently they've even turned to
writing "protest" songs like 'Some Day', the hollow freedom anthem by
Nazanin, an Iranian Canadian beauty queen, turned actress/singer and
political activist, who is lauded by Iranians all over the world for
her commitment to liberty in Iran. I always wonder how people who
haven't set foot in a country for decades can presume to know what's
best for the place, and furthermore have their rants treated like
trusted opinions by Western governments often deemed worthy of
funding.

These folks have long since lost touch with the reality in Iran, and
everyday that they spread their unrefined messages, the concept of
Iranian identity becomes more confused, both for non-Iranians, but
more destructively to those in Iran aspiring for something more.

Just as many Iranians leave and find themselves in new and unfamiliar
lands so different than the ones they had imagined before their
departure, our western perceptions of Iran are fatally limited,
lacking texture and color. We are all guilty of believing the myths
about the other, and for the young Iranian stepping into their new
lives and can be an extreme letdown.

Iran bursts with so much possibility that one can become exhausted
with anticipation. There is a unique brand of chaos best witnessed in
Tehran at night. Pulsating traffic jams, make it impossible to move,
but provide young people the opportunity to flirt between car windows,
trading SMS messages and suggestive glances. You may be offered to buy
beer from a guy on a motorbike; a small thing to us, but Islam's take
on alcohol makes drinking more thrilling than it ever was in high
school. Strangers spark conversations with each other, covering all
conceivable topics. Contrary to popular belief, no subject is off
limits. Ultimately, it's never boring, with the potential for every
sort of imaginable encounter looming around all corners. It is a place
that, although officially very repressed emotionally, sexually and
creatively, feels alive and vital in the most meaningful way: in terms
of human energy.

When they go abroad, especially to the US, many young Iranians are
simply bored by the pace of social interaction. Sure, they can drink
when and where they want, but so what? Baywatch made an incredible
impression on the Islamic Republic and realizing that it's not really
like that here can be difficult to swallow.

The courting of the opposite sex, for example, takes on a much greater
sense of urgency when a mutual attraction is uncovered. The where,
when and how become imperative, and as one of my cousins memorably
told me, "Haji, it's like a jungle here. You must be ready and act
fast. Get her or someone else will."

When I returned to San Francisco recently I was invited to join the
birthday party of another recent Iranian arrival. His girlfriend had
called me last minute and told me to meet the group at 7:30 the next
evening at Asia SF, a famous restaurant and club that does an all
Asian, all transsexual song and dance routine every night. Interesting
choice, I thought.

The group consisted of eight people, five of whom had come from Iran
to study at UC Berkeley. We drank and laughed, and I loved watching
their unsure interaction with the performers. Is it ok to be turned on
by these people? was the look on most of their faces. They were a bit
shell shocked, I think, by this completely sanctioned sin fest, but
not unwilling to participate.

Somehow, though, it seemed boring compared to a night out in Iran,
where everything exists as it does here, but in a much rawer,
un-institutionalized form. There is no system of public dialogue for
hedonism or alternative sexual expression although it exists of
course; another example of repression, but also another possibility
for true experience.

Just a couple of weeks earlier late one evening in Tehran, I was
driving the streets with a good friend Saeed. I find Iran to be most
alive when the sun goes down. We were headed north on Valiasr Street,
named after the Hidden Imam, an avenue that runs from Tehran deep
south to the posh neighborhoods at the foothills of the Alboorz
Mountains. At the large intersection still known as "The Peacock
Throne" young prostitutes stood around waiting for customers and
hopping into the cars of johns, speeding off to locations unknown. A
real problem here, but no one seems to be doing much about it.

I started to assume that every girl was working and would sometimes
ask, "Is she one, too?" Locals seemed to have developed a radar for
them. Saeed laughed at my naiveté. Sometimes, though, when he would
point one out I'd tell him, "Maybe. But that one's a guy." Tranny
spotting is not yet their forte.

Still, there are many advantages to the new lives most Iranians find
abroad. I'm consistently surprised to see the "reality" shows on state
run television that showcase the misfortunes of Iranians who have left
and then come home, expressing the harshness and disappoint of their
experiences in the West. These are clearly propaganda plays, and there
is no denying how successful many Iranians have become, as it has been
identified as one of the immigrant groups in the US with the highest
level of education and income.

I wonder to what extent these skills are honed in Iran, living under a
nightmarish bureaucracy that seems to mimic purgatory. It becomes very
tiring, but it also provides one with a heightened sense of awareness,
the ability to follow rules with precision and a knack for quickly
identifying how individuals that have something you desire need to be
interacted with to achieve the best possible outcome. It's a
never-ending series of finding connections, fortifying relationships
with them, gauging when to make bribes and when not to, judging who
can be helpful in which situations. It's a complicated dance, and the
public bureaucracy in most Western countries is so much simpler to
navigate. Perhaps it this makes it easier for them to get ahead, too.

It's also quite possible some of the same factors point to their
absence from Western political life. By the time they get to the US or
Europe they've had enough with bureaucracy and would prefer to stay on
the sidelines. Another theory I have, though, is that many Iranians
seem to be living in a now nearly 30 year long dream; the kind that
takes place somewhere they don't know well, yet is vaguely familiar.

Despite the tension between governments, and the lingering ill well by
Diaspora Iranians against the current regime, there has never been so
much flow of people, money and information than there is right now.
With many western educated Iranians returning to Iran I see a great
potential for redefining what being Iranian really means; shedding the
bold attachments to conflicting ideologies, while maintaining the
subtle curious about that which is different. For Iran the age of
extremes has ended.

-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>