1982 Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t matter. I was angry with my father. I was angry that he had a heavy accent and that people thought he was stupid. I wished I wasn’t Iranian, even though I’d only known Iranians—or Persians, you can use either word—to be kind and loving and generous family-oriented people. I wondered why my father had not yelled at the guy or punched him like a tough dad would. I told my father he should have said something. My father replied, “Don’t leesen to this man. There ees no point fighting with heem. He did not understand very well.” My father was usually graceful in these situations. Just like the oscillating sprinkler. But sometimes I wished he would be more like the impulse sprinkler.
    I was different in all the wrong ways in Thornhill in 1982. Rather than looking and acting like Bowie—which would be impossible, because then I’d be too cool to be seenin Thornhill—I was often distinguished from others because I was Persian. There were no other Iranians in Thornhill in the early ’80s. None. Or almost none, anyway. And this is ironic, because the place is now teeming with Persians who’ve settled there and constructed a mini “Tehranto” just minutes from where I grew up. But they weren’t there when I was young. Not when I needed them.
    Beyond assumptions based on accents, the dearth of Iranians meant people didn’t understand anything about our background. After Iran’s Islamic Revolution and the tumultuous events of the early ’80s there, people were still quite confused about who and what we were. This went beyond racism. Sometimes it was just confusion.
    One day, Annie McMillan from down the street asked me about our ethnic background. I wanted her to like me, because she wore tight, faded jeans and would always tan the way pretty girls did. Annie was two years older than me and she was quite tall. She saw me playing road hockey alone and crossed the street and came straight towards me. I was excited that Annie wanted to speak to me. Then, after saying hello, she asked me if my family were Arabs. She didn’t say it in a mean way. In fact, she said it in the way a pretty girl with a tan does when she’s being nice.
    “Are you guys Arabs?”
    There was a genuine curiosity in her tone. I thought Annie might think we were exotic, the way Freddie Mercury was exotic in his spandex and moustache when he was onstage during the “Live Killers” tour with Queen. But I wasn’t sure if she thought it would be a good or bad thing for us to be Arabs. So I decided to tell her the truth. We were not.
    “No, we’re Persians. Iranians. Like, from Iran,” I said. There was an awkward pause and Annie looked a bit puzzled. I decided to continue. “It’s in the Middle East. That’s where my parents come from. But I’m not from Iran. I mean, I was born in London. Like, in the UK. But we’re Iranian.”
    I tried to explain this as comprehensively as I could to cover all the bases. And I thought if I let her know I was born in England it might make me better in her eyes. She had pretty brown bangs and she could flip her hair like Kristy McNichol. And she had a very nice tan.
    “Oh, okay,” she said. “So, you’re like Arabs, though?” “Well, no. Iran is a separate country and the people are actually Aryans. That’s our race. Aryans.” I didn’t know what that part about Aryans meant, but I had heard my uncle saying something similar. And I knew the point was that we were different from Arabs.
    “So, are you from Arabia, then?”
    “No. Iran. We’re not Arabs. Like I said. We’re not Arabs … at all.”
    Annie still looked puzzled. It was clear she would not be able to get her head around this.
    “But your food is like Arab food, right?”
    It went on like that.
    This was not Annie’s fault. She simply hadn’t met any other Iranians. And she probably didn’t know any Arabs. I always wondered what she was thinking of when she asked about “Arab food,” but she probably didn’t know