"Chapter 1 - Tears of Babylonia"
My name is Sepehr, an Iranian, Born to be discriminated.
I always ask myself, what is to be faithful?
Water is coming down, and you're shaky like a boat full of holes. What is faith? When you are walking on 2' of snow into the streets of Tehran and you will see a girl is running away, while 4 men in police uniforms are chasing her, you can hear her screams, you can hear angry people shouting and changing color, attacking those men and you can hear a gunshot, yes everything's suddenly quit, yes this is Iran, this is Tehran and I'm its citizen, and I'm looking for my ticket out of hell gate of extreme Islam.
I'm passing by a mosque, a young Basiji look at my shaved face and invites me to his house of wisdom, encourage me to connect my soul to Allah, their mosque is really a truth detector, you can look at their face when they are praying , feel and see that god is the last thing they are thinking about, I refuse, I never submit, I shall flee to America like my last prince fled to chine after the Islamic invasion of Persia.
I never submit. (Islam = Submission)
Trust me, Exile is dark, but it isn't all regret, disco, party and cry, it isn't all love, sex, drug and no missing the rainy days of my hometown, for an Iranian its darker, it's all darkness Since the day I was born in the mountains of Zagros, from a Kurd/Caspian mother and a Jewish/Zoroastrian father.
It's almost September, Americans are making themselves ready for a new president, a new face, after so many rumors, conflicts and passing redlines over having a woman and a black man as candidates, calling Obama Osama, picking on his middle name Hussain or bringing racial differences finally the world saw America is indeed a great nation and yes a black man is its final democratic candidate.
But right after Americans more than any other race or nation Iranians are desperate to see the result, for us it's not only 8 years of facing another American president, its facing our destiny, facing a new world It's me crying while McCain was singing bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, it's my mom staring at TV with wide open mouth while her favorite woman Hillary talked about Iran's obliteration. It's me staring at Obama's face like he is a winged Greek angel coming down to rescue the world from tyranny and chaos. So I told myself I have to write this, it's a message, a letter from the deepest part of my heart to my American brothers and sisters in this free country full of opportunities to not only make better things for itself but the whole world, one of few nations that my people amazingly trust in.
What is Faith? When you are walking into the sands of Yazd, under the sun? And ruins of an old fire-temple?
since we don't have a real president ourselves we always look at America as our bigger brother, it started when I was looking at the picture of shah beside JFK as a 10 years old kid, it had such a strong effect on me stronger than any brainwashing anti-American program broadcasted by IRIB! Son, that's JFK my father said, and he was a good man like shah, and he was killed too, well last generation of Iranians like my father believe shah was emotionally killed...and that was my moment, USA was the New Persian Empire, and well back for me as a 10 years old Clint Eastwood was its king, I had to go to America. Today almost more than a million Iranians are living in USA. After Iran, USA has the largest population of Iranian origin.
10 years passed, 9/11 happened, Iran is a state of inside conflict with ahmadinejad in power and humiliated 2nd of Khordad Movement therefore More Iranians started immigrating to west in the fear of another war. Finally big brother gave my family a gift, I received my green card after 13 years of wait, that's another story to write about but we flyed away from Tehran Imam Khomeini Airport To United state of America, the Neo-Persian Empire of my dreams and I whispered to the big picture of supreme leader ayatollah khameneii "we never submit".*
I never experienced freedom; democracy doesn't have any meaning or a true form to me, I never saw Mosadeq liberating the Iranian oil industry, I never saw those famous demonstrations against shah in Tehran street, I didn't vote for the Islamic republic and I never burnt an American flag and I never saw another civilian do it, I read about operation AJAX but it doesn't matter when half of my family are already Americans, what is important is that I already passed the red line when I was born, and that's to be Iranian, a 21th century Persian who has to answer for everything others do and did in the past. I have to answer but we as a whole have to face the destruction and that is sad. It's sad to see how bringing down a monarch and changing him with an Islamic fundamentalist turned the destiny of not only my country but millions of free people. In the fear of big boar the world turned to Ayatollah of death but in the end everything turned to be worse, central Asia became the live large scene of terrorism, war and conflict. Nations attacking and stabbing each other in the back, and finally hell broke loose and thousands died in 9/11. If you walk in the street of Tehran and talk with an Iranian, you only find one answer, the second Arab invasion or The Islamic Revolution of 79 backed by America against Russian domination.
Now it's time again, Iranians are looking at their big brother, America is really our big brother, when was the last time we chose our destiny? 14 centuries ago? So big brother hear us, we the Iranian youth trust in you, actually after all you done, we even love you, so please use this opportunity, help us and we help you and together we shall undo our mistakes.
Another war, another attack on Iran will make the Islamic republic stronger than ever. Some things never work on certain races; Iranians can't stand occupation or invasion. We are indeed living in a prison right now, with thousand of Osama wannabes and Palestinian Mercenaries marching in streets of Tehran with their new fancy labels such as Basij Of People beating up boys and girls in the name of the still uninvited Allah, and this is the best time to strike against this government of darkness with more sanctions and pressures.
There is a Persian saying "What is happening to us is from ourselves, shame on our race if we did not learn from our past".
I ask myself, what is happening to my people; my homeland maybe has a connection with our past, with my ancestor's deeds, but does it really? But If I believe in this how can I still worship a fair and powerful god? Everything I know about my ancestors is good and if not our land was far better than today's central Asian and Middle East desperate nations. Persia A super power nation ruling a vast empire not only once but more than a millennium. But it was finally brought on to its destruction by Muslim Arab invaders. We should learn now, before it's too late.
Cyrus the great my ancient father, the man who created the empire of light, attacked the Babylonian empire in 539 BC, brought down Nabonidus and created the largest empire in the ancient world, freed the Jews and rebuilt the temple of Israel in Jerusalem:
Thus says Yahweh to his anointed, to Cyrus, whom he has taken by his right hand to subdue nations before him and strip the loins of kings, to force gateways before him that their gates be closed no more: I will go before you leveling the heights. I will shatter the bronze gateways, smash the iron bars. I will give you the hidden treasures, the secret hoards, that you may know that I am Yahweh. (Isaiah 45:1-3)
Joining of two great nations, two faith groups resulted in what I'm today; they call us the Esther's children, Half Persian Zoroastrian Half Jewish by Blood, a Persian Jew...
King Xerxes gave up his whole corrupted army to free Esther and Persian Jews, I wish I was in that time, those honest days, god still was there, watching over our spirits. But when first wave of Muslims attacked us and killed millions of my countrymen, beheaded the Rostam Farrokhzad and assassinated my king Yazdgard III, our land was left alone to riot till this very day. President Ahmadinejad is the latest one to show the world how Muslims ruined a great culture into chaos, a man who wants to wipe out the world. His words are greave and pain for millions of my people. He was digging a grave for all of us; I had to get out of that place, I had to taste a little bit of freedom...
"Chapter 2 - Tasting Freedom"
It's a strange world, in a moment you can see yourself among your classmates and comrades marching on the streets near the famous Tehran University toward the infamous revolution Square yelling and shouting with all of our power against the arrests of our friends, a web logger, a Kurd journalist and a teacher while the regime agents are shooting smoke grenades, calling us traitors and American spies, I can feel the high amount of adrenaline pumping into my veins, my heart is ready to explode, how can I be a spy? What I want is really noting, what I want is one of the simplest needs of human being, I want to hold her hands and together seat in our favorite spot in a shiny day and talk about our daily life, I want to breathe, and I want to kiss her without hiding in the shade.
But that moment is gone.
Suddenly its July 2008, 3 years passed by like a second, it's so calm, not my streets, I can see myself on my way to delta college, this is Stockton, this is America, this is tasting freedom, but really? Is this it? All I can sense and hear is sepehr you are not welcome...
Statue of liberty, I love her, look like an angel, like Mithras the Persian goddess and she is finally looking after me...finally.
I saw this book at one of the famous chain store, by looking at the front cover, an Iranian girl covered in pink Hijab I already guessed half of the book, it was about an Iranian girl coming to America and how hard it was for her to taste the unlimited freedom, how it was hard for her to have new relationships and understand love, I was like telling the author what are you talking about? Disco? Sex? Throwing away the Hijab? That's what you think we Iranians are looking for? Honestly American media doesn't have a slightest idea about Iranian life. People forget soon, they just look at our last 30 years, they don't remember Googoosh, Queen Suraya, and shah, people confuse Iranians with Arabs or think Iranians are anti-Jewish, in fact Iran has the largest population of Mizrahi Jews after Israel in middle-east! We Iranians maybe have problems to face modernization but that's only a quarter of Iran. We already passed that issue, now it's a modernize us against an orthodox conservative extreme Islamic force that wants to shape us, turn us into a angry horde of zombies with no brain to just remain at power, in order to spread the idea into Iraq and even Lebanon, they want to stay in power like any other dictator did.
Almost more than a quarter of Iranians are living in Tehran and other large cities. People with their amazingly mixed part westernized part Islamic and part heavy Persian Zoroastrian culture, trying to get the best fun out of their lives. We maybe can't say things like down with khameneii out load but we whisper it in our tiny little coffee shops, smoke our sometimes rare but famous Kent light cigarettes and kiss at dark corners of wide and Wild Street of Tehran. It's part of our vampire life. Millions of hidden Satellite dishes are looking at the sky broadcasting Persian DJs and Rappers inside and aboard, and while thousands are at Friday prayer, boys and girls are kissing each other behind the trees cause all the guards are worshiping the ayatollah for now.
But it's amazing how the west and America is watching us, showing us and introducing us to the new generation. Every time I turn the TV on, and if, 1 to 100 there is a program about iran , it's an old villager guy from talking about how ahmadinejad is going to do better! Or it's our crowded moments of the old Tehran's bazaar, and if I get lucky! Sometimes I can even see the Friday prayers! What do you really think? You think they want change? Bazaar, Seriously? I haven't seen one program about millions of protests the Iranian students did and doing in their called normal daily educational life, under heavy beatings and the sky full of NAJA helicopters and tear gas. Who's asking my father? he was in SAVAK prison for years when he was a students but is against the Islamic republic since, whose asking my mom, interested in the left party, oh I asked her, more than 75% of her friends are dead. Come to shemiran, come to valieasr and see the horde of young people like me looking for you to show the truth of us to the world. Ask us and we tell you how many of us are ducked at home because we didn't vote for ahmadinejad therefore don't have the required stamp on our IDs to even try entering our favorite university. We tell you how we have to sneak in the shadow, pass the mosque and enter the church or our temple while we are worried to not get killed in the next second. Broadcast these and maybe the whole world sees that we never voted for the IRI, never asked for the free milk and don't want the atomic peaceful bomb!!! We want to have a little bit of freedom and I promise you, if we manage to do it, and somebody like Ahmad batebi becomes the president, Israel and America are the first we come to.
The American world has no idea what we make out of our daily life over there, we make rare moments, yes we can't hug each other and drown to each other in the public metro station, no we can't taste the freedom there, but we do it on the roof our homes, under the clear sky. We climb the Mount Damavand and read Hafez poets inside our tents and we dance over candles and drink our Shiraz wine in secrecy. We buy a T-shirt to wear it on the top of our "Los Angeles" tees in order to hide them.
Why people think the Islamic government cares if we French kiss or drink alcohol? Are universities students, young girls and women shouting and yelling for their rights to have bikinis on? Well of course that can be one of the reasons! The more drug or sex addict we become the easier is the ayatollah job or to remain at power, what the mullahs are afraid of is that Iranians are solely a free race, we are free souls looking for opportunities to rise, looking for answers, for success, for equal rights, I want to know why a rich land like Iran has lot of low class population since Qajar dynasty. Why every time we are hungry for reality the whole world make such a huge plan to stop us? It's like the movie Matrix, Yesterday it was oil and Mosadeq, then shah and his plans for a better Iran, and now after 30 years we are finally at that point again, millions of people are against the regime of Iran, we want or homeland back, hear us world, we are shouting, we don't want nuclear power, we want our own Freeland. Americans know the value and the meaning of that word "My own Freeland?" but no, there is no answer, the only answer I can hear is the sound of falcon engines ready to obliterate 70 million potential great allies to the free people of world, Israel and America.
I'm a college student, the only Iranian born student at my college, first time I tried to talk with an American, I was called a potential terrorist, and was reminded that FBI is watching me and how profiled I'm and was instructed to not try to gain Americans and specially his trust! That's very funny how the world looks like to some American youth, how paranoid they are toward new different races and how they think others are poor, lonely and desperate to be trusted by them. I believe in America. America is a symbol for me, it's not like I need its trust, I can be in Tehran and still believe in America like my father and grandpa, it's like believing in Persia, having faith in a system is totally different from being desperate to be loved by its people, I want to be loved and trusted by my own people first like anybody else but I believe Iranians, Americans and people of Israel are more fit to be lovers than any other nations historically and according to what I can say certain mutual benefits. It's a big mistake to not shown the reality of Iranian race and culture to American youth and ruining relationships between some generations by heavy themed commercial action flicks like 300 (west against east! Persia against Greeks, Iranians against Americans! 3000 years of conflict! As far as I know we Iranians are the only ones still proud of our ancient western roots), especially when a million or more Iranian-Americans are living in USA.
Why? I started to believe there is something wrong with the world, I really don't care about corrupted systems and blind politicians, since the Romans we had them, walking and talking by their code, but we always had the peasants, the lower class, and most of the time we commoners lived by honor, by truth, but not anymore, I started to sense that the majority of humans are ignorant and blind these days. My father used to tell me media themed religions and political views are Opium for the majority of population. They are made to put you in a place and make you busy with fear and paranoia, if that works on you, you lost your sense of humanity forever. That is what happening people are getting so lost that they are okay with nuking countries, blowing up buses full of babies and women and children because they think they are faithful. A million died in Iraq and when I ask people, what is this? They say this is the holy war, against whom? Saddam was Satan but he killed less than this in 20 years, we sure chose a wrong path. Why should I expect god to watch us over? He made us as one, he told us to be united and we didn't listen, and now we are left alone in this wild dark world, I don't want to force myself to believe, but sometimes I believe his creation has flaws, or maybe he isn't that powerful he is claiming to be.
I'm a Persian Jew, a mixed-race, by quantities rare, my father was born from a Jewish mother and a Zoroastrian father, a marriage similar to Queen Esther and King Xerxes, there are only 200000 or less of us living in this world, all killed by Alexander the great, by Muslim and their Islamic conquests over Persia and finally Genghis khan and his heir. Coming to America for me was like an opportunity to finally express myself, but...
To most Americans I'm just an Ey-Ranian or Ey-Raki, they don't even try to ask me which one I'm, who I'm, what I'm, it's funny and sad at the same time if you look at It this was I was considered as an infidel inside my own country because I didn't follow the Islamic rules and now in USA I'm considered as an outlaw or infected cause I'm from Iran! Sometimes I feel I should act like a priest, my father is a real one so I know how to, but also I want to yell: god are your there? Give me a rest, I lost my brother in the war, my parents divorced, I tried to live as a minority, as a Zoroastrian Jew in Iran, just kill me and get over it. no I don't want to be called an infidel anymore, I don't want to be called a desert kike or a potential terrorist, I just want to breathe and live, but then I think this is our destiny, I should say since the Islamic invasion over Persia (633-656) our people were persecuted by their rulers.
"Chapter 3 - Some Fish Can Fly"
When our last Shah left Iran with his illness and broken heart, I wasn't even born what I know is that Europeans and united states didn't want the left party to govern an important country like Iran, they were afraid of communism so much that accepted an extreme Islamic ruler to come after shah. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Imam of death we call him, of course he knew his homework, after few months of brainwashing the young generation and giving the hope of oil money for all families and free milk in the morning he bought the Iranians hearts. What he did after changed the history of mankind. He started a full scale Shia Islamic war against Muslims and non-Muslims; he started to talk about exporting Islam to other countries.
Indeed what is happening today in middle-east and central Asia is because we left the bad for worse, we kicked away a monarch for an extreme religious leader, for another dark age, why should god help us? We humans continue to forget soon, we don't appreciate our freedom.
Saddam and Hezbollah never had a chance to wake up and talk in the time of shah, beside his charming approach he was a man of wisdom, and that was his weak point, he started a new relationship with Israel, he left the Arabs for Afghanistan, Tajikistan and India and when they asked him why? He said Aryan (Indo-Iranian) brotherhood, he said that blue eyed people forget to easily they are drowned into their lives so much they can't see how messed up the future will be, but they didn't listen to him, they said he is creating another South Korea, another Japan, and worse he has oil, we don't want him, now is the time to get rid of him.
Islamic revolution was an opportunity for another dictator named Saddam Hussein, he thought himself as neo-Babylonian king, he wanted to avenge his father's defeat against the Aryans, the AJAM (Arabs call Persians the AJAMS means the mute, the one who learned the language from Arabs) and we the Iranian people.
Saddam had the support of many powerful countries like Germany, Russia and in the end united state. Germans liked shah, Germans always liked Iranians, in 1935 Reza shah Pahlavi changed the title of our country from Persia to Iran because Hitler said Iranians are the true Aryans of 19th century, it was an unfortunate event. Of course for my paternal Jewish family it wasn't a good sign, my grandfather started to act as a member of left party and for many years hid his true identity. It was continued in my family as a duty, my father hid his identity from the government of Iran and his friends, in the time of Islamic revolution my father was one of the leaders of freedom party movement, SAVAK (Shah's intelligence Agency) arrested him many times, he was a prisoner for 3 years, what is weird is after almost 30 years he is still favor shah to these Islamic monkeys and puppets of Iran.
Saddam told the world he is going to capture the capital in 2 days, he couldn't the war lasted for 2 years and then Saddam offered a treaty, the Arab world promised to pay billions in dollars for the damages of war and other benefits. People were happy, the capital was a ruin, and people were tired form daily bombardments.
West supported and sold the infamous or maybe famous poison gas (mostly sulfur mustard) to Saddam; he used it against the Iranians and Kurds. About 100,000 Iranian soldiers died from it including my 19 years old cousin. She was a nurse, a beautiful girl, an angel. I remember she gave me a Persian new year red fish we call them the little newroz fish (newruz: new day - the beginning of the new year in Persian/Kurdish/Tajik/Afghani calendar). Maybe it was a sign from god but I knew my beloved cousin is dead before anyone. the little fish was left on the carpet, that sign from god or not, helped me to start a fight with that voice in my head, I started to not listen to him anymore, after a while he stopped talking to me, I lost my faith, I lost my god, I guess in the end some fish can fly...
Ayatollah Khomeini didn't accept the offer; they advanced to the Iraqi lands. Iranian regime lost in the end. The theory of exporting Islam didn't work in that way, their imam Khomeini died and another generation of murderers and terrorists came to power.
"Last Chapter - whispering with the gods while Praying to Satan"
Why I lost my faith, my passion over my god, over my guardian Mithra and the lord Ahura Mazda?
I was 9 years old when my parents divorced, my brother died in the scary Evin prison not so far from our house without us knowing about it. My mother had a panic attack, my father had an affair, and our family was separated and dead.
My name is Sepehr, a potential Iranian-American, born to be free, and inside me there is an Emperor, an Emperor from the Empire of glory, power and in the end pain...Yes we are Persian, a burnt generation.
[i don't have enough space to publish the rest of this chapter so i will submit it later]
"So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken." (Torah 3:23)
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