Kathy Hadizadeh Mehr
Original letter in Farsi, Submitted to Iranian.com
"Letter Home" Essay Contest, Posted: Mar 31, 2005
My dear friend,
It was so wonderful to get some news from you after such a long time. And what a breaking piece of news you gave me: You’re considering immigrating to California!
You had asked me if I like living in Los Angeles and how do I feel towards this city after spending 5 years of my life in it. Well, this seemingly simple question has a rather complicated answer.
Honestly, this question engaged my mind for some time. It took me back to a trip to those good old nights in Tehran that I stayed awake all night and analyzed my life and my purpose in it. I remember eating pistachio nuts and listening to the nightly program of Rah-e-Shab (Path of night) while devouring my thoughts.
It struck me to the point of looking at my life in LA from an outsider point of view. Like, me watching myself and thinking the night away. Well, next day at work, I was tired with a dysfunctional brain begging for some sleep! You know in this land, working is way different than in Iran. You need to sleep deeply at night and be fresh the next morning with an absolutely functional mind, no excuses!
The result of all this thinking was nothing but adding yet another confusing turn to the endless labyrinth of my life. Well, and also this letter that you will read in a few days!
Surprisingly, I received your letter in the week of Dec.26th. This was the exact same day that I arrived at LA some five years ago. This coincidence in date took me back to the time that I was searching for housing in downtown LA as a Graduate student at USC. Not even in my wildest dreams I could imagine that I would see such things in US: old and dirty houses, kind and simple people who could barely speak English. Their English was even worse than our school kids! It was not like those American movies we had seen. Now, that I think about it, those Spanish courses that I had taken at Mexican Embassy in Tehran, really came handy.
Finally the luck knocked on my door and I found a clean, cozy, furnished apartment close to USC. Right after, I went to the superb 99cents store. It’s hard to believe for us but these are the stores that you can find almost anything in it for less than a single US dollar! I bought all I needed to get me going initially for a $20 green note. Then I humped on one of the shop carts and rode it all the way home. Now, imagine that you want to establish your own place in Tehran. The first few prerequisites are: a bag full of $10000 Rials notes, a full week of spare time, a car, and of course nerves of steel!
So, just wanted to give you an idea of how easy it is to settle in this land from the beginning. Now, one big issue for any body moving to a new place is the weather. LA has the most gorgeous weather ever and it always feels like spring. The only problem is this great weather becomes monotonous after some time. This year, the winter is somehow cold and it rains a lot but that is an exception indeed. I really miss the four seasons we have back there, the cries of the autumn fallen leaves under my steps in Pahlavi street, the juicy spring fruits and those colorful blossoms blooming in yard and the white snow covering the whole city over the night. Oh, how I crave I could have all these back again in here. You might find it hard to believe but I even miss the hellish hot weather of summer while wearing scarf and that dark colored Islamic uniform in my dear A/C-less car!
Let me see what else I can share with you. Aha, got a good one: Life in US, it’s like a machine. You become part of this gigantic machine and should feel happy that it drags you along. Till the time that you are active and landed at a nice job, meaning that you function well within the machine, you have everything. Trust me, all you need is there for you: nice car, clothes, beautiful home and furniture, gourmet restaurants, live entertainment and whatever your heart may desire. But you don’t want to see the day that for some reason, you stop the run. Then you’re expelled out of the machine. You’re alone and miserable on your own.
This system is good because you get a chance to try anything you like in your life. It’s in contrast to our lives in Iran that is filled with sighs for things we can’t do or can’t have. But on the other hand it’s like Cinderella story, once you stop, the clock hits 12:00 Am right away and all the glamour and luxury vanishes in a second!
One more thing that I’m struggling still to adjust to and might not get it done in my lifetime is the spirit of this city. One significant one is the eating time habit. People eat at 6:00 PM and after 10:00 PM, you hardly find any descent restaurant to dine at. Your only choice is nothing but FAST FOOD. At the beginning just understanding the fact that LA turns into a ghost town after 10:00 PM was really shocking for me. Whenever I’m desperate to find a place to eat late at night, I think of Tehran where everywhere is up and running till 1-2 AM. Well, obviously in Tehran, people did not have to work so hard and diligently as in here and half of their lives were not spent in freeways. Oh, just remembered, this is another remarkable feature of LA. It has a kind of traffic that easily beats Tehran traffic. One of its main freeways, I-405 is nicknamed as “the biggest moving parking lot”!
I said all the pros and cons (may be more cons!) of living here. But I want to tell you explicitly that I’m so happy to live in California. I thank God so many times for this opportunity. I know (and now even you know) I don’t feel like LA is my type of place but I know for sure how hard it is to manage life in Tehran and it should be even 1000 times harder by now! However, from you my friend I can’t hide the ultimate truth. My hometown, my house at the bottom of my heart is Tehran, the place where I was born at and even if I live away from it all the rest of my life, I won’t pass a day without thinking about it.
Big hugs for you and all
Kathy
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