Youth: Kasra Kermani

I’d always known that my parents had immigrated from Iran to the USA, but never really got to know about the specific details until now. It was really intriguing to learn about all the hardships they went through while being religious minorities and then refugees, and how they went from that position to where they are now.

Participant: Ramak Rahnemoon

I am really happy I got to share the details of my immigration journey with Kasra. I know over the years, he has heard me talking about it here and there, but the interview gave me the opportunity to get down to the details which he found quite interesting and eye opening, and I found it very refreshing to look back on.

A Rough Path to a Better Life: An Interview with Ramak Rahnemoon
Interviewer: Kasra Kermani
Date: 7/1/2023

Transcript
00:00:01 Interviewer
Hello, hope you’re having a great day from wherever you’re listening to this audio, and my name is Kasra Kermani and today I will be interviewing my mom Ramak Rahnemoon. Ramak, how’s your day going?
00:00:12 Interviewee
Good morning. My day is going very well. It’s pretty early in the morning, but I’m excited about this.
00:00:19 Interviewer
Alright. So just to find a bit of context, this interview is going to be asking my mom some questions about her background and the process of immigrating to the United States. So before we start that, would you mind talking a bit about where you’re from and how you got here?
00:00:36 Interviewee
Yeah, sure. I’ll be happy to. I was born in Tehran 47 years ago. I went to school just like everybody else in my hometown. I graduated from high school and I started studying to get my engineering degree in the field of material science in Tehran University. And I was about to graduate from university, when I got to know my husband at the time of my graduation, and we got engaged. And as soon as we got engaged, we started talking about immigration and why it’s a good idea to leave the country. And again, I can probably answer more detailed questions, but the thought of immigration for most of us that were born in Zartoshty family was always a talk in the family. I do remember I was a junior in high school and a lot of friends and family’s kids were immigrating at a younger, much younger age. Yes, and I do recall I was insisting to my mom that I want to immigrate and she kept telling me I was too young to do that. So, and, here we are. After I graduated, I got married and a year after that I would say a week after our first anniversary, we packed our suitcases and we immigrated to Austria to come to the United States.
00:02:18 Interviewer
Interestingly I’ve heard, if I heard right, you were in college doing engineering while you immigrated. So you stopped in the middle of college to immigrate to United States?
00:02:28 Interviewee
No, actually I finished my four years degree, but it was right after my four years degree that we started that immigration process and we migrated.
00:02:36 Interviewer
OK, so and for those of you that don’t know who are listening, in 1979 in Iran, there was a revolution and Islamic revolution and the laws, laws were made much more Islamist. And obviously, since me and my mom are Zoroastrians and my mom lived in Iran at the time, laws against her were made much more strict and that definitely affected her life. So, which brings me to my first question, my first point. So when you were in Iran, what societal disadvantages did you have to face since you were Zoroastrian? And how did this society turn against you after the revolution?
00:03:11 Interviewee
Well, that’s a great question. I was super young, but two, when the revolution happened. I do not recall any detail from the time that the revolution happened, but as growing up in my family, well, we were all new. We were Zoroastrians. We had a different religion from the majority of the people in Iran. And we always knew there are differences, and unfortunately the differences were in our disadvantages. I mean, I do recall growing up in our neighborhood, a lot of people were really open minded. They loved Zoroastrians and they loved knowing we are Zoroastrians and they were really nice to us. But at school, in the neighborhood, and in our friendships with the non Zartoshty people, there were challenges for sure. There were challenges, and we were, we were, facing it. I would say maybe not every day, but from time to time. We were facing challenges. One of the challenges I do recall was during the time that the kids at school had religion classes. Only maybe one or two of us were not Muslim, and we were either asked to sit in the class and learn about the Muslim religion, or we were asked to leave the class and just stay outside by ourselves. And as you recall, like cold mornings in the winter when it was snowing outside and there was no place to go, I either used to sit in the hallway, cold hallways and just waiting for the class to be finished or I had to go just, just do nothing until that time is over. So from that time, just, just recalling being so isolated and being so separated from everybody else and from time to time we did hear. I mean, it was fun between kids at the time in the school to share foods like share, share our snacks. I do remember I had friends and people in my group that they did not want to touch the food and even the snack, even the dry snack I brought from home. They did not like to touch it because they thought that Zartoshty people were, were not clean and they’re not supposed to eat their food.
00:05:29 Interviewer
So you said that you weren’t allowed, you didn’t attend the religious classes. Was that because you weren’t allowed to, or did you just not want to do that?
00:05:35 Interviewee
Well, obviously during that time I really wanted to learn about my own religion, and since there was, there were not too many kids in my school being Zartoshty and I really didn’t want to learn more about Muslims because we were, we were hearing from it everywhere in the news, in all the programs that and the radio in the TV, it was always about Muslims. So, and even in both actually I would say both the teachers were not very welcoming for us to stay in the class and I really didn’t want to spend time learning about Muslims. I really wanted to learn about our own religion, which, which at the time if that maybe helps you kind of with your next question, we had a school just for us Zartoshty kids that on Friday mornings, which was an only day off at school, we used to go to those classes.
00:06:33 Interviewer
So it’s interesting that you chose to stay outside in the cold hallway rather than go into that room and learn about Islam, which might make sense. You said the teachers weren’t very welcoming, right?
00:06:43 Interviewee
That’s correct, yes. And I would say it was very overwhelming.
00:06:46 Interviewer
Yeah. So you kind of answered part of my next question when I asked how many, in what ways were you permitted to still permit the facts to culture after the Iranian revolution? You said you had a class each, once a week on Friday and did that class, was it like limited by the government or anything, or could you do anything? Could you learn anything you wanted?
00:07:05 Interviewee
Actually, that’s a great question. I don’t remember about the exact details of the rules of those classes. I was too young to remember, but they were all basically coordinated by Zartoshty teachers. It was held in the school that had a lot of Zartoshty kids attending. For the people who still remember that region in Iran and that school in Iran, we were, I don’t think we were allowed to learn whatever we wanted to. I think at the time the organization, the Education organization in Iran had approved the books, the religious books that, Zartoshty people could read. So basically there were books that were approved by the organization and those were the books that were taught to us in the, in the school. For sure, there was nothing in the books saying that our our religion is better than everybody else, as it was prior to any, I mean, it was talking about the fact. But far from telling that this religion could be the best, or it could be, it was just basically learning the basis of the religion.
00:08:13 Interviewer
So you would, they weren’t allowed to teach you in that class everything about Zoroastrianism. And there were definitely some parts that had to be covered up in order to comply with the government.
00:08:20 Interviewee
Absolutely. Absolutely. I would say it was, it was an approved version of the Islamic Republic government. It wasn’t, It wasn’t all the truth about the history and the Zoroastrianism.
00:08:34 Interviewer
And that makes sense because they will promote their own image and there’s a lot of things about about the Zoroastrianism that might try to, like, underwrite Islam and make it seem like the fact that Zoroastrianism so much older and a lot of the stuff in Islam come from Zoroastrianism.
00:08:37
Exactly. 100%.
00:08:48 Interviewer
Something that makes sense. So they might want to quiet down a bit of that.
00:08:52 Interviewee
Yeah, 100%.
00:08:54 Interviewer
Yeah. So you said you want to, you graduated from high school, then you graduated from college, and then how long after that you start new process of immigration?
00:09:03 Interviewee
That’s a good question. So we started the process about a year and a half after I graduated and at the time the, the process that we started was, was very, very fast actually. It was immigrating to go into a third country, which was Austria at the time. The process was super fast. We, we actually filled out applications and forms and submitted our documents and then it took us about, it took us about I would say six months for the whole immigration process to happen and then right after that we went to Austria, did an interview and unfortunately at the time, unfortunately at the time the September 11 happened and all the embassies, including the American Embassy in Austria, closed down and we had to wait a long time for it to, to open back up so we could come to the United States.
00:10:14 Interviewer
OK, you kind of answered my next four to five questions, but how.. so you said it took a year and a half after you graduated college to start your process of immigration. So why did you decide to immigrate? What were the main factors that caused us to do this?
00:10:31 Interviewee
Well, that’s a good question. Sorry to jump ahead on the questions, but I’m going to take you one step back. So it wasn’t just because we were in the school, they were not sharing the snacks or eating our foods and it was not all because of that. It wasn’t just because we, I had to sit in the court hallway waiting for the class to get over. When we went to university, it was the same thing. It was still isolation. It was still feeling different. It was still feeling not welcoming. And it got even worse in the work environment. When I got to know my husband, when I got to know my husband, he was actually right in the middle of a struggle of finding a position for his, for his job. He did actually have a great position in his work and he was supposed to go and test an equipment that he worked on for such a long time. And when it came to the turn of him going to do that test and be on this fantastic trip that he was always dreaming of, he was called to the principal office and was told that well sorry there is just one thing we have to tell you..because you are Zoroastrian and your are not Muslim, we have some limitations on sending you for this trip. Therefore we have chosen this person, which that person had zero experience and zero knowledge of the project that your dad, my husband has worked on for three years. So I am hoping I am answering your question in the right way. So discrimination was pretty much everywhere – in the work environment, at school, in the society.
00:12:06 Interviewer
I see.
00:12:16 Interviewee
And again, we were always thinking about, let’s leave this country, but we, we kind of just like everybody else, had to wait for at the right time and the right place to start the process.
00:12:25 Interviewer
Yeah. So it feels as if most of the reasons you said you wanted to leave were because discrimination towards the Zoroastrians, not just pressure from the government like financial situations. So you think if you were not Zoroastrian, would you have stayed in Iran or? Would you have still moved?
00:12:40 Interviewee
That’s a great, great question. Over the years, not only the pressure of the freedom, I mean the pressure of not having freedom increased in Iran. It’s like, the government in Iran is pretty much defining your freedom, what you can and cannot do. I do believe rules and laws should be in place for everyone, but unfortunately is way beyond that in Iran. You don’t, you don’t have the right to speak your mind. You don’t have the freedom of speech. You don’t have the freedom of religion and you brought up a good point. – economics and financial hardships were, were other facts on top of being isolated and being discriminated as a Zoroastrian. So not only the Zartoshty people decided to immigrate. There were a lot of Muslim people that during the time that I immigrated were immigrating, or were thinking about Immigrations in future, and I think at this time of my life, I see a lot of those immigrants living around me, living all over the world. And so it was the combination of financial hardship, the dictatorship of the government, which we’ve all heard about it a lot recently, and discrimination towards our religion and culture definitely the deciding factor for us.
00:14:14 Interviewer
Yeah, so whatever your points there was why I asked this question. You said that you knew a lot of Muslim people who wanted to immigrate to the United States and actually did immigrate. So I thought that if it’s just discrimination, why would they immigrate? So it was the economics that left the hardship by the dictatorship that also added to the reasons they wanted to immigrate.
00:14:32 Interviewee
Absolutely, which is getting unfortunately worse and worse day by day as, as you hear it in the news and it’s pretty much all over the place.
00:14:40 Interviewer
Yeah, it’s pretty obvious to see in the news. So after, so you decided to immigrate and you, you said you have to move to Austria first before coming to United States. Why is that?
00:14:49 Interviewee
Well, that’s a good question. So there’s this umm, Jewish company based in New York called the Hias. They have been helping refugees around the world for decades. A couple of decades ago, they started getting more active of getting religion minorities from different countries and try they, they kind of expanded their, their organization and their range of services to non-Muslim or basically religion minorities in different countries such as Iran and at the time of the 2 1/2 decades ago it became a lot more popular in Iran and first hand, I started seeing a lot more friends and family members that applied through this organization. But since after the revolution, the American embassy in Iran was shut down and the relationship between Iran and the United States has been always sour. There is no embassy in Iran, so there had to be a third country for every one of us to go to, to go through the immigration process, the interview, and just to prove that the reason you’re immigrating is a legit reason. So that’s why there is, there had to be a second country, a third country I would say. And at the time Hias from New York had contract with Austria. Therefore, all the religion minorities and migrants, they went to Austria through, to go through that process to come to the US.
00:16:24 Interviewer
So you went to Austria after… from Iran when you went to Austria, correct? OK. And so how long were you in Austria and how was your life there? Was it, was it better, worse?
00:16:29 Interviewee
Yes, that’s correct.
00:16:35 Interviewee
So that’s a good question. I probably answered these questions very briefly in two questions before that, but now I can expand a little bit on it. The Austria immigration process used to be very, very fast. When I’m saying fast, it was thunderstorm fast. People used to go there, turned their case in, they had a social worker and caseworker, followed by practice for an interview. And then it goes to American embassy for an interview. And here if you go, you have your passport and your work authorization and then you come to the United States and you basically have your green cards and your work permit, which to me it was, this process was a blessing. It was, it was, it was like a gift from the heaven for all the religion minorities in Iran. Unfortunately, the time that we got, we went to Austria, it was few weeks after the September 11 happened and it was not only a shock to the United States and the whole process, but it was basically a shock to, to every immigrant. So in answer to your question, how was our stay in Austria and how was it – It was beautiful to get out of Iran and see that beautiful, historic country. We stayed there for about 8 months. It was very, very stressful because every process had changed and we had to wait a lot longer with a little bit undetermined future of what’s going to happen to our immigration. So it was a stressful time. It was a little longer than we expected it, but we did our best to make the best out of it and after eight months, the whole process got back to normal and we were able to get to United States.
00:18:16 Interviewer
OK, so you said that your stay in Austria was postponed by a little bit. Was that due to the September 11th attacks?
00:18:23 Interviewee
That is correct. They decided to close all the embassies to re-establish the immigration process and doing the background check for everyone who enters the land of the United States.
00:18:36 Interviewer
OK. So that, that makes sense because they need to keep security…
00:18:39 Interviewee
Yes absolutely.
00:18:41 Interviewer
…Because of the recent events. So when you moved to the United States and you got to your home of San Diego, the effect of September 11th was that major roadblock. Did that affect you in any way? Because of September 11th, immigrating to United States, did you face discrimination?
00:19:00 Interviewee
Actually I would have. I would have to say since I wasn’t here before the September 11, I can’t tell you for the fact of what has, what would have been before, but for the people who were in United States before us, they said, yeah, it’s definitely different from the time that September 11th happened. Immigrants were not as welcome as they were before, and to be honest, I think I think it’s right. Right, when you think about it, when you think about it, such a tragedy happens, right?
00:19:28 Interviewer
Yeah, makes sense because…
00:19:33 Interviewee
Right. You’re scared of everybody that comes into this country, let alone these people are refugees and immigrants from a country that’s known for terrorism. Well, yeah, think about it. You put yourself in that position, right. Well, how would you feel?
00:19:46 Interviewer
Yeah, if you’re in the, if you’re in the mind of the average American citizen at the time. If you see that two people from the Middle East immigrated and did this, OK, 100,000 people immigrating from the Middle East, how do you know if that they’re not going to do something like that two days later?
00:19:54 Interviewee
Right.
00:20:01 Interviewee
Exactly. And because you’re responsible for the job that you’re doing, you want to do a better job of protecting your country, right? So I don’t blame anybody who treated us a little bit different. I mean, at some point, maybe it was a little bit overboard, but for every immigration process that we went through, I could feel everybody’s very strict and maybe it was not as welcoming that, that I would have expected it, but I could tell it was just because of what, what happened on September 11 and the whole nation was very angry.
00:20:35 Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. So you’re saying that the anger was justified?
00:20:39 Interviewee
I believe so, yes, yes.
00:20:41 Interviewer
That’s completely fair. So in the United States, when you got there, did you, obviously there’s been religion in the United States, but did you have more opportunities to participate in the Zoroastrian activities right away or was there not enough Zoroastrian development in your area, San Diego, for you to do any of that?
00:20:58 Interviewee
Oh, that’s great, great question. So that, that leads me into…So as soon as we came to the United States, we went to a friend’s family house who sponsored us getting here. The very second night they threw a big party and guess what? In that big party they were about and you know, I’m, I’m talking about your Uncle Rostam. He’s such a generous guy. So he threw a big party welcoming us and there were probably about 30 Zartoshty that I got to know the very second night that I got to the United States.
00:21:18 Interviewer
Yeah.
00:21:29 Interviewee
So in answer to your question, I was so excited. It was not any Zartoshty related ceremony but I got to know 30 Zartoshty people in a country that I was 100% a stranger in. Right. Yeah. So it was, it was very heartwarming. It was very welcoming. And then few weeks later, we did hear about the Orange County, California Zoroastrian Center and I think there was a religion ceremony at the time. And our families drove us there because we still didn’t have a car. We couldn’t drive ourselves. So we all went there. And you’ve been in that place. It’s the beautiful “Dare-Mehr” in OC. Yeah. Yeah. I got to see probably over 100 Zartoshty & surprisingly enough, among those there were.
00:22:10 Interviewer
Yeah, I know.
00:22:19 Interviewee
Quite a few old friends that hadn’t seen for years and years. They were lot of family members that I had heard about them many, many years ago, so I don’t know if I’m answering your question correctly, but yes, we were, we were allowed to do whatever we wanted to in San Diego at the time. We did not have a place of ourselves for Zoroastrian ceremonies and activities. And if you’re interested to hear how we did perform when we did not have a place, every time the group of volunteers were coordinating something, if it was Mehregan or Tirgan or Nowruz or Yalda, they were renting banquet halls.
00:23:01 Interviewee
And they were basically trying to do their best to keep the community together. And even after the education classes they were renting out spaces and trying to gather community members together.
00:23:16 Interviewer
So one, one thing you said before was really interesting. There was a Zoroastrian center in Orange County. So when you went there at first, like a few months after you immigrated and you went in that center, was the Zoroastrian culture there different from what, what was happening in Iran? Was it basically the exact same things?
00:23:21 Interviewee
Yes, yes. It was, I would say it was a little different. It was a little bit of Americanized. It was not as probably traditional as it had been in Iran, and I don’t blame anybody here for not doing it and maybe, maybe what I love about this part is you’ve always heard about Zarthoshtra’s message right? And we, we always often talk about it, right? Just, just take my words and do the best you can in, in the timing that you’re living, right? If, if people back in Yazd or back in Kerman, older days they were doing a lot of traditional things that you don’t have access to when you are in the United States. Right. You, you modernize that and you, you practice it in a way that it makes sense for the time you live in. And that was exactly what I saw in Dar-e-Mehr in OC. See, I think, I think I still, I’m still very proud that we’re still in this country. We’re, we’re doing what we want to do as Zartoshy. So yes, the way that the ceremonies are held, a little bit different for lack of a better time, I would say maybe. They’re a little modernized, which, which makes sense for the timing. Right? But I would, I was still proud that we were, we were still holding all of our religious ceremonies.
00:24:42 Interviewer
That makes sense. So I’m going to ask this question here, so I think it’s really obvious at this point based on what you said previously, but do you think you face more discrimination as a minority in Iran or as an immigrant in the United States? You said, you didn’t experience much discrimination as an immigrant. But if you have any examples, you can just share them.
00:25:08 Interviewee
Right. Just share them. Yeah. I mean, maybe my comparison was just comparing it to discrimination in Iran. I would say the discrimination here, I’m not going to say it’s nothing compared to what we’ve faced in Iran, but the discrimination here has been somewhat bothersome too. There were, there were times that, especially when I went to my first job, I mean, not that they were discriminating me. I would say I was very lucky in that sense. But I do remember people coming to me and asking me if I’ve ever seen a car in my life. If I have ever, if I have ever seen a freeway in my life. It was, it was kind of humiliating and it was, it was sad, but I couldn’t understand it. So yeah, the discrimination was definitely felt during the time of the immigration. I’m still feeling it. Maybe not as much as before. Maybe my level of understanding is much more and I think because of the level of diversity and the number of immigrants in this country, especially the state we’re living in, we, we feel it a lot less. But there is still discrimination. I mean, maybe because you’re my son now you’re, you’re interviewing me. Maybe you and I, a couple of times talked about instances, right? I’m dropping you off at school and I see this specific teacher that always talks to the the girls with the blonde hair and the boys with the blonde hair. And I just, not that I don’t, I want to think about it. I often ask you, Kasra, do you ever see him talking to anybody other than people with blue eyes and blonde hairs? And what’s your answer?
00:26:59 Interviewer
No. he never does. One of your points was really interesting that I’ve, you said that since you live in an area that’s already so diverse, it isn’t going to be that much discrimination towards you. And because I’ve heard that in different parts in the U.S., a lot of people do get discriminated against. But in here, where we are in California, it’s already so diverse…
00:27:00 Interviewee
Yes. Yes. Yes.
00:27:18 Interviewer
…That it doesn’t really make sense to discriminate against someone who is not American because there are more people who aren’t than there are.
00:27:23 Interviewee
Than they are exactly and quite honestly, the, they’re gonna be in trouble if they they do it in a very obvious way. Yeah, there’s, they can still do it in their own way. I mean, a person who is going to discriminate is going to discriminate no matter what, right? The more opportunity they give to these people, the more they’re going to do. But I think for the most part I would say if I want to compare it back to your question, you want to compare it to Iran, the level of the discrimination in United States is nothing compared to what non-muslim people experienced back in Iran.
00:27:57 Interviewer
Of course, because when the law of the land in Iran is Islam and you are not Muslim, that’s what obviously going to be way worse.
00:28:04 Interviewee
That’s 100% true.
00:28:05 Interviewer
So obviously went through a lot being in Iran, immigrating through Austria, September 11th attacks in the United States. So those are a lot of good experiences, bad experiences. So how did those experiences affect the decisions you made as an immigrant in the United States or during your time from then to now?
00:28:10 Interviewee
Right.
00:28:24 Interviewer
Did they?
00:28:25 Interviewee
It did. It did. Yes. When I came to the United States, I told myself everything you couldn’t do as a woman back in Iran, here is what everybody calls it as land of opportunity. Take it and do it and move on. I’m not gonna say I, I achieved 100% of my goals, but I would say whatever I decided to do, I was able to do it. And get excellent in it in a way that it satisfies myself. So I decided to improve in my career and one thing I can maybe share and you know, but I want to share in an interview, I work for a company that is I would probably say I’m one of the very few who is not American in working in this company. They’re by no means any discriminations. It’s just the culture of the company. Everybody was, it was hired over the years, it was just happened that there is less and less people of immigrants or from different nationalities working in my company. And the owners and the Board of Directors of my company, they’re all males. When I started in this company I had one position in engineering department and I said but, but the environment of the the management team was very welcoming and very open for anybody who wanted to improve and move up. So one of the things that I’ve been always proud of is, I had the stepping stone, I stepped on it and I moved up and after 20 years, I was able to become one of those owners of the company among all the other eight males that are the owners of the company. I was able, as an immigrant and as a girl, to be able to be one of the owners of the company and when thinking about it, looking back, it still makes me proud because all the gifts and all the opportunities that were given to me in this country, they were actually true. It was. And I was able to use them and move up and do what I wanted to do.
00:30:44 Interviewer
Yeah. So that’s great. Like in a company that’s an environment that’s so like white based and male dominated and white dominated you were able to work your way up all the way to the top level. That’s actually really inspiring and it just highlights the opportunity one needs to be available to someone when they immigrate to the United States.
00:31:04 Interviewee
Exactly. Exactly.
00:31:05 Interviewer
So what I was going to get towards my next point was when you got to the United States, after a few years, did your opinion on the Zoroastrianism change because you told me in Iran you weren’t allowed to learn the full story? Yeah, maybe you did at home, but you can only learn so much but in that state, so have you learned anything extra that you didn’t not did not know.
00:31:20 Interviewee
Yes, yes, I did. I did actually. Even I’m still learning. I’m still learning and you know I’ve been, I’ve been co-teaching and learning a lot about Zoroastrianism and myself because of the past two decades. I have to, I have to admit that it was, life was so busy that maybe I didn’t have enough time to learn about my own religion and the culture. And it was just everything that I knew growing up, and it’s been only the past few years that I became very interested to know a lot more detail. And all these details I’m learning about, yeah, I knew it was hardship when Muslims attack Iran and Iranians became the Zartoshty, actually I’m sorry – became Muslim. But I knew it was a lot of hardship and bloodshed for that process to happen. But and there were a lot of details that I learned about over the past few years that I had no idea it happened to the Zoroastrians and, and it just, it just makes me more proud and more grateful for our ancestors to stay through all these decades and centuries of hardship for us to remain Zartoshty.
00:32:39 Interviewer
Of course when you were in Iran in that Zoroastrian class, they probably wouldn’t let you talk about the hardships that Zoroastrian had to face due to the rise of Islam. You never learned about that, did you?
00:32:48 Interviewee
Absolutely not. No. Maybe as you said, around the fireplace at home, winter nights, grandpas and grandmas were talking but definitely not in a school setup or written in any text or books. No, it was not allowed.
00:33:03 Interviewer
OK, so I think we’ve highlighted most of the important parts here, but I have one final point that I want to ask you. So looking back on your process of immigration and assimilating to the American culture, would you change anything that you did?
00:33:17 Interviewee
Ah, that’s a good question. I have this life, is so busy you don’t have time to sit back and think what you would change. But quite honestly, I think I’m gonna say because I spend most of my adult life now in United States, I don’t think I would change anything. The only thing that I would have changed, which may sound a little funny to you because you’re my son and you’re my, you’re interviewing me, I wish, I wish, I had you a little bit sooner in my life. So my age gap with you would be a little different. But anything that had to do with the immigration process, I probably wouldn’t change. I think we did it at the right time, even though it was, it was very hard right after getting married and establishing a new life and wiping out everything and moving to a new country. I don’t think I would change anything. Quite honestly, if I go back, I would still pack my suitcase, put my life in six suitcases would have done the same thing. And I think I would say I’m grateful. I’m happy and I am very, very satisfied with the decision I make every, every single day I see you and people like you who are the result. The fruits of this immigration generation, I enjoy it even more. I’m like, I am so glad we did this. We went through.
00:34:34 Interviewer
Yeah.
00:34:40 Interviewee
Of that hard years and now the results and the fruits of that immigration is the generation like you who is enjoying all the freedom here.
00:34:46 Interviewer
Yeah. So I already know that you and my dad, your husband, went through and had gone through a lot of hard work to get where you are now, which included like learning English from scratch and also finding a job, making that job secure and working both of your ways up. So yeah, it’s been great. Is there anything else you want to add?
00:34:58 Interviewee
Right, right.
00:35:07 Interviewer
I’m just wondering, you don’t have to, but…
00:35:09 Interviewee
No, no, this is great. I’m just happy. I’m happy I’m doing this interview with you. I was actually very excited about doing it. The fact that I talked about my immigration for the first time in 35 minutes period of time, maybe I talked about a couple of minutes but not 35 minutes and sitting in front of my son, who is interviewing me! And just watching you grow and just talking about it, I think it’s, it’s very rewarding. So I want to, I want to thank you for choosing me for this interview. You had a lot of other, you have a lot of other options to, to basically have your interview with. But I appreciate you chose me. I’m very excited about this project and I’m very excited about the future of our religion and I’m sure we’re going to flourish and we’re just going to expand it on to the next generation -. who’s you. And we’re gonna pass on the torch to you guys to tell to your next generation about what your mothers and fathers and grandparents did to immigrate to this beautiful country.
00:36:14 Interviewer
So yeah. So thanks. I’m hopeful none of these subjects were, like, uncomfortable for you to share with me. Yeah.
00:36:23 Interviewee
No, no, you can share everything I shared with you on this interview with, with FEZANA, or with whomever you want. Thank you for the opportunity, really enjoyed my time.
00:36:31 Interviewer
Yeah. Thanks so much for your time. Yeah, thanks for coming here and answering my questions and listening to them and for everyone listening on this recording. Thank you so much for, for your time and listening, and hopefully this interview taught you something. It also inspired you to continue Zoroastrianism and yeah, thank you so much. Bye.
00:36:52 Interviewee
Thank you. Have a good one. Bye bye bye.