بعد از یک هفته ای مهمترین :با ایرانیان

Let’s get one thing out of the way with this: I want to go to Iran. I’m in Tajikistan now because my requests to study in Tehran (and there were several) were denied by groups stretching from the Office of Study Abroad to the Dean of the Elliott School. Not saying I blame them for that decision, but it happened.

Now, onto the meat of this update, I've talked about language in terms of Tajiks/Russians. But there are always multiple sides to an argument, and after some lovely conversations yesterday, I figure it’s time to talk about Iranians. First, there are lots of Iranians (and Afghans, they’ll be making an appearance too) in Dushanbe. They may or may not own a bank in this city, so way-to-go sanctions, and I can usually find them in the Dushanbe equivalent of DC’s Moby Dick (non-DCers, look it up). They’re fairly easy to spot; women with shoddily placed headscarves that make you wonder why they’re bothering to wear the thing in the first place, and men looking surprisingly dapper aside from the bushy mustaches and permanent five-o’clock shadow. Normally, it’s fun to just find them on the street and start laughing because you can’t believe that the stereotypes actually exist (granted, the Western expats all look stereotypical as well, but come on, where’s the fun in talking about them).

Yesterday though, I figured I’d try to find some Iranians and strike up a conversation, using the masterful logic of Why the hell not? And, as luck would have it, I managed to walk into the Iranian café as lunch hour was wrapping up, so I ordered a pot of tea and a hookah, and watched (I shit you not), a Farsi-dubbed Home Alone. Simply put: Having fun where you can make it.

I ended up having conversations with three people yesterday, two of whom were Iranian and the other being an Afghan. The Iranians were a fun bunch, and aside from general ta’aroffing (‘No, we can’t smoke your hookah…) and making fun of the story I had to read for my class, we got into the seemingly inevitable halves of any conversation with people in this part of the world:

1. Why are you learning Farsi in Tajikistan?
2. Something about sanctions/US government not liking Iran/etc.

On the first one, it never seems to sink in that maybe, just maybe, the fact that the US and Iran don’t have formal relations might be an issue for me trying to study over there. And that the Iranian visa process for Americans might just be a bit rougher on students than vice-versa. (NOTE: I am basing that comment off of the number of Iranians who say they have relatives in America when I say “It’s impossible for me to get a student visa.”) Likewise, trying to explain away the US-Iran international enmity thing is difficult, especially when their list of grievances is a bit lengthier than ours.

But here’s the point I wanted to get to. Whenever you talk to Iranians, the feeling you get is that, by trying to learn Persian (not Farsi at this point, Persian), you've committed some grave injustice by coming to Dushanbe and studying ‘Tajiki’. And yeah, listening to conversational Tajiki, which can range from archaic, Ferdowsi-era Persian to a Russian creole, makes it blatantly clear that just speaking Farsi (at the level that most Americans do) isn't going to help alone. But ultimately, what is Farsi? The language is almost as Arabic as it is Persian, something Tajiks love pointing out. And I’ll be honest, the less ‘ع’ I have to pronounce, the better, I like not choking on my tongue when I talk.

And what about the Afghan, what happened with him? He shared his lunch (meat/fat off of a lamb femur with rice) with me, and we had a lovely conversation about our respective families. No politics. No culture clash. Just lamb and family.

It was a damn fine Wednesday.

As always: Ташаккуру худо ҳафез.