This is probably one of the famous composition topics for teachers all around the world. When kids come back to school after a long summer of mischief and play, this is the best way to keep them busy and in the meantime to prepare them to start doing schoolwork again. And how did I spend my summer? I tried to enjoy my vast beautiful prison. Yeah, I mean it:
prison.
We Iranians are subject to a lot of scrutiny and trouble even more than Arabs while we had absolutely nothing to do with 911. Actually, when the US went after Taliban and al-Qaede in Afghanistan in 2001, Iran risked al-Qaida reprisal and helped the US. And what did we get in appreciation? Being labeled
Axis of Evil and getting even more restrictions on our travel to the US. Disgraceful to say the least.
We come here to continue our study after going through a maze of nerve-racking paperwork in Iran and abroad as mentioned in my
Happy New Year 2007 post. There's no US embassy in Iran. So we have to visit a US embassy outside Iran at least twice; once for interview and then wait for God-knows-how-long, maybe
months, to get a clearance and visit the embassy again to pick up the visa. And that assuming we don't face irrational visa officers who reject Iranians for no reason (as it happened to me over my first effort in Dubai).
Then, we get a
single-entry visa. That means we can use the visa (that has cost us a fortune)
only once just to
enter the US. It cannot be extended and if we miss our school registration deadline as a result of stalemate bureaucracy in the US Department of State and visa issuance, that visa may turn completely worthless (it's happened to some of my friends).
Once we enter the US, we must stay here for the
duration of study. We cannot go back to Iran to visit our family. Before 911, we could at least visit Canada. Now, we cannot go even that far. Of course, we
may leave the US, if we choose. But to return here to continue our study, we have to apply again for a visa and go through all that hassle and stress all over again. A PhD program usually takes 5 years. To understand how that feels, imagine a
forced bereavement from your family for just 5
months (not 5 years).
So basically, Iranian students feel imprisoned here. A very big beautiful prison, but still a prison. And that means depression and anxiety. It's happened to some of my friends here to lose a parent back in Iran without being able to go there for the funeral. Inhumane. Probably, now you can understand what I mean by prison and depression. Maybe that's why I was so unmotivated about updating my blog over summer.
To complicate it even more, a lot of Iranians are fond of the places they've lived and feel homesick about those places. Fortunately, I'm not nostalgic about hometown, lived places and that sort of stuff (well, I do miss religious places in Iran, especially over religious occasions). Although it's not easy to be away from family and friends, I can enjoy any place I live in and can easily socialize with people from anywhere in the world. In that sense, I feel at home here. And whichever country I visit, I feel the same. Actually, one of the reasons that I chose America to study Sociology was its ethnic diversity and the opportunity to meet a vast variety of people in a single place.
To alleviate my depression, I started visiting Mother Nature right after my study-intensive semester was over. I don't have a car and as I was mostly stranded to a home-campus-home routine, I felt more like a
zombie (add the imprisonment factor to that). And well, I admit that I do miss something about Iran: Tehran is at the foot of Alborz mountains and as a mountaineer, I really miss my weekly mountain-climbing (Northwest Ohio is completely mountain-free). And unlike what people here think, Iran is not a
desert-land. Iran has an environment as diverse and beautiful as the US (if not better). We have mountains, forests, prairies, marshlands, everything and also some beautiful deserts. And my best time was when I could visit Mother Nature.
There are a couple of beautiful
metroparks around Toledo. One of the good things I got over my summer here was regaining my self-confidence (or maybe not merely
regaining). When I was in Iran, I'd never left Tehran metropolitan area with my bike. Whenever I visited northern Iran, I always wished I could ride my bike around farms and forests. And riding my bike for a distance of more than 20 miles inside Tehran sounded like a
great achievement to me. Now, I visit nearby cities covering distances of 40-50 miles.
On my birthday, I went on a
Tour de Lucas (riding around Lucas County). I'd planned to visit
Oak Openings Preserve which is unique in this area (some people say in Midwest). After I got there, I told myself in a
Forrest Gump manner, now that I've made it here, let me visit Swanton (known for its farm produce, especially its apples). I enjoyed my time watching horses and cows grazing while I was riding through farms and country roads (and BTW, Swanton is actually in Fulton County, not Lucas County). Then, I told myself, now that I've made it here, I can go to Berkey (another countryside area). And from there to Sylvania and then back to Toledo.
And another interesting similarity between Iran and the US. I'd written in my
first post after arriving here that I love strangers greeting you. In rural areas you might be greeted even
before you see or notice the person. While I was riding, it happened to me several times hearing somebody saying hi. Then, I had to look around to find the person and return the greeting.
In contrast to this countryside tour, I had gone to a completely urban experience a few weeks before.
When I was an engineer in Iran, I actively followed all conferences and expos in my areas of specialty and interest. And I was always keen to see how similar events in the US would fare. My family had forwarded the last batch of my magazines from my PO Box in Tehran. And there, it was the last issue of
PEi magazine which was among my favorites for years. Although I'm no longer an engineer (in practice), I looked through the events page instinctively. I found a conference/expo on solar energy in Cleveland. Well, it was an opportunity to visit Cleveland (which is a big city) and also have a look around the expo and conference.
It was a change in my boring life here. To me, having lived almost all my life in Tehran, Toledo is far below urban standards. Even Mashhad (where my parents have recently migrated) or Shiraz (where I've been born) fare better than Toledo in urban settings. Maybe that's one of the reasons I need to see flags here to remind me I'm in the US. But in Cleveland, I didn't need flags. I could simply look around and find myself in the US.
I visited Cleveland Convention Center (the venue for the conference/expo). It was not so much different from what I'd seen in Tehran expos. More or less the same kind of facilities. And almost the same atmosphere. Some specialists who'd come for their business and some spectators who just enjoyed being in a technical/business environment and gathering catalogues/brochures (or bags). However, unlike Iran, these spectators where mostly on the aged side.
There's something I have to admit: in the US, those amongst senior people who are not highly educated, are more into learning about technology or at least feel more like connecting with it or may I say want to add to their knowledge in any area (not just technology). As an engineer, when I talk to such people here, I find that although they may not be well-versed in science or technology, they're more inclined toward learning and still they have some understanding about it all. In Iran, it's the younger generation who is more like that.
Before visiting the expo, I attended Sunday services at two historic Catholic churches downtown:
St Peter's Church and
Cathedral of St John the Evangelist. At St Peter's, they had renovated both the building and the
worship setting. Instead of historically-known setting of pews facing a raised altar in Catholic churches, there were chairs put in a
semi-circular arrangement and the altar was not so distant from the chairs. Look
here for more. It reminded me of
Corpus Christi University Parish and my
thoughts on their modern setting. But that church is recently and modernly built. It's interesting to see such modernizations in a historical church. I regret that I left immediately after the service to attend the mass at St John and hence missed the opportunity to have a talk with their modern thinking and highly educated pastor. But I was still lucky enough to watch the baptism of a baby in their cross-shaped baptismal font. It was fun.
At St John, I experienced mass at a real big cathedral for the first time. And with the limited knowledge I have about Catholic churches, it appeared to me that it had every element of a classical historical cathedral. A virtual tour of the church is available
here. I noticed something in the church over my both visits (I returned there in the afternoon for the Vespers) that immediately reminded me that I was downtown in a big American city: in both masses, a police-officer was standing on guard at the door. Although I'd gussed why, I asked the first one after the noon mass. He explained that he was there to prevent problems (including robbery of the offerings). And he was not stationed there merely on his duty shift. He was a worshipper and church member also. I wish I had written in detail about my other intersting observations at these 2 churches in July.
There's something funny about the location of St John Cathedral. It's located on E 9th St. However, as
Rock & Roll Hall fo Fame and Museum is at the end of this street, the street is named Rock & Roll Blvd. So, one can say that a big
Catholic Cathedral is located on
Rock & Roll Blvd (which one came first?). Although I'm not much into Rock & Roll (except for a few hits), I visited their ground floor. But I didn't feel like paying $18 for visiting the museum on the other floors of this big crystal pyramid building.
All in all, visiting Cleveland was another strange experience. When I was in Tehran, I always hated the traffic and pollution. And I attributed that to living in a megacity and believed that if I go to a smaller city, I would feel better. While I worked at a powerplant under construction on the Karun river (in southwest Iran), whenever I came back to Tehran for my monthly rest and got stuck in traffic jams, I impatiently yearned for going back amid mountains in southwest Iran.
Since my arrival here, I've never felt homesick about Tehran even for a single day (apart from the mountains north of the city). Although I'm very unhappy about my life in Toledo (especially its terrible almost non-existent public transportation), still I don't feel nostalgic about Tehran. But while I was wandering around downtown Cleveland, I found myself telling myself: OK, this is more like downtown
Tehran, this looks more like a
city, this is more like
America. And then, I realized what I was saying. And that while knowing bigger cities mean higher crime rates and more social problems. Furthermore, there was a big difference between downtown Tehran and Cleveland. Here, downtown was virtually a city of ghosts over Sunday morning; I couldn't find a single open restaurant or anything like that and very few people walked around (places opened after 4 pm). And one of my friends tells me the city closes after 9 pm. So, it's not completely like a city I like. And I wonder which city (or place in general) I would ever call hometown.
However, my summer was not all about hanging around and having good times. One day I fell off my bike, kissed the ground and got wounds all around my nose and chin (fortunately, I'd worn my helmet; things could have got much worse without that).
Health insurance is rip-off in this country. You don't have to compare it with Canada; just compare it with Iran and you realize that Iran was paradise in that respect. I visited the University Medical Center to care for the laceration under my chin. Although it was not so deep, they sent me to the UT Hospital. I assumed it would make no difference because it was the
university hospital and it was part of the UT system. I was wrong. Later on, I found that I would be charged. Although I'm insured and although the university charges us over $1200 a year for health insurance, I have yet to pay near $400 for hospital bills.
And then, I broke one of my teeth for being a faithful American; i.e. eating pop-corn for Independence Day. The
financial pain was more distressing than the physical. I already knew that dentists everywhere in the world (especially in this country) are big money-makers. I was so panicked and assumed that I have to go back to Iran to fix my tooth. And my choice of going back to school after so many years as an engineer has caused me a
downward social mobility (as my advisor jokes about it); I've gone from a
middle-class engineer in Iran to a
poor-class student here.
But it was not as gloomy as I had feared. Although this country is ruled by cut-throat capitalism, there are still some people who care for the poor and the less-fortunate. I was told that there's a dental clinic downtown for people below federal poverty line (like me) that provides services at a considerably lower price. Over my visit to the
Dental Center of Northwest Ohio, I found that I've got problems with other teeth also and have to root-canal two of them. Still, I have to pay something like $700 for 2 root-canals and something like $100 for repairing that broken tooth. If I were to do it at a private dentist practice, it would have been something like $2000 (or more).
Well, that was my summer. And now I'm back to school to sit classes, read a lot and write a lot.
