For Iranian-Americans, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran evokes complex emotions

0:00Do you support or oppose U.S. military action in Iran? In an NPR-PBS News Marist poll conducted in the initial days of the war, just over half of Americans said they're against it. And whether you support or oppose the war, straightforward questions like this don't always capture the complicated feelings many Americans have about the conflict. And that's perhaps even more true for Americans whose family roots trace back to Iran. There was this immediate rush of something, you know, joy, maybe, but it was definitely mixed emotions. That's Iranian-American writer Nick Mafi, describing the moment he heard that Iran's longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed during U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.

0:46The ground you'd been standing on your whole life just shifted, and I felt that. So there was certainly hope, but I was immediately sober about it. I knew anything good that might come from this would be born on the back of enormous bloodshed and misery. In a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal, Mathy explained how, for many Iranian Americans, their sense of exile had become a big part of their identity. Every piece of Iranian diaspora culture was built on the bedrock of the regime's permanence. It gave exiles their shape. You, your family, and your closest friends were here because that was there.

1:24and that was not going to change. On Saturday, February 28th, that changed. As the war began, Mafi says he felt something like vertigo. The diaspora is navigating a feeling that has no precedent in our collective experience. The possibility that exile might end, not the certainty, the possibility. Impossibility, after 47 years of permanence, turns out to be the most disorienting thing of all. Consider this. For Iranians living in the U.S., the war against Iran was initially greeted with hope. Hope that the current regime might fall. But as the war stretches on, the uncertainty around it has given way to another feeling.

2:05Fear.

2:10For NPR, I'm Adrian Ma. Support for NPR and the following message come from Washington Wise. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Host Mike Townsend and his guests explore policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes, trade, and more. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen.

2:49It's Consider This from NPR. Nick Mafi grew up in suburban Ohio, but his Iranian roots run deep. How deep? Well, for one thing, both his parents are from Iran. And get this, Mafi's great uncle was once Iran's prime minister. That was decades before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when the current theocratic regime took power. When I spoke to Mafi, he described the myriad of emotions he's been feeling since the start of the war. But one word in particular kept coming back. Hope. First and foremost, I would say the hope is a simple one. And that is that the bombing stops. The killing stops. That's my first hope.

3:33I just want to full stop say that. The second hope is that this could be a catalyst for the world to one day see Iran for what it actually is. You know, the late Anthony Bourdain, when he visited Iran, said something I've never forgotten in one of his episodes. He said that of all the places he had traveled in the world, it was in Iran where he was greeted most warmly by total strangers. And I think anyone listening to this who knows an Iranian-American in their life knows this to be true. We are a warm, generous, ancient people. That's the Iran that I carry. And honestly, that's the Iran I hope survives this.

4:14For two weeks, we've been hearing daily news about Israel and U.S. striking Iran, as well as Iran attacking neighboring countries in the Gulf region and ships in the Strait of Hormuz. And still there is no clear end to this fighting in sight. So how are you processing that? It's difficult to say the least. I do still have family living in Iran right now. I won't go into specifics for their own safety, but I can say that the distance between us has never felt wider. I say in the essay, you know, I'm losing sleep over the videos that I'm seeing from Iran, but the fact remains the people in those videos are losing their lives.

4:58And the distance between those two experiences is the width of my luck. And that distance is something I now think about every single day. It wasn't something I thought about before February 28th, if I'm being honest. I took it for granted, really, but I don't anymore. We mentioned that you had a great uncle who was prime minister of Iran more than 100 years ago. How has that bit of family knowledge impacted the way that you view your own Iranian identity over the years? Well, it's an interesting story how I first learned about it. I remember the first time I really understood that my great uncle had been prime minister of Iran.

5:38I was in elementary school in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. I was maybe in second or third grade, and the teacher asked us to give this little presentation about someone in our family. And I remember one kid got up and talked about his grandmother's meatloaf recipe. And I remember sitting there thinking, I have no idea what I'm going to say. There's certainly no meatloaf recipe in my family. How am I going to follow that? How am I going to follow that act? So I remember going home that night and asking my parents. My mother said, well, my uncle was the prime minister of Iran. So that night, my grandfather came into my room and started telling me about his brother.

6:14The thing is, all I had to do was fill out my teacher's questionnaire, you know, simple stuff. What was his favorite color? What was his favorite food? And I can only imagine my grandfather is just sitting there hearing these questions. His brother had stood in the crowd listening to Lenin speak after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. He orchestrated the coup d 'etat that brought the first Shah of modern Iran to power. And here I am as a second grader asking what his brother's favorite color was. And the next day, I remember I stood in front of the class and tried to explain all of this. And every kid in the room, I'm sure, had the same look on their face.

6:52You know, the meatloaf kid, he killed it. He got the round of applause, but not me. I was up there talking about a prime minister of a country none of them had ever heard of. Hmm. Well, I guess, how did that feel? It wasn't until I would say I got a bit older that I understood the weight of it. And I would say once the invasion, the American invasion into Iraq began, I started to get, like most kids growing up during that time, a greater, let's say, political understanding of the Middle East. This would be like in the early 2000s? Yeah, but growing up in Columbus, Ohio, there were only a handful of Iranian families living there.

7:36And I remember at every dinner party, there were really two certainties, that rice would be on the table and that at some point the adults would start talking about the regime, about politics. And that was kind of the background noise of my childhood. So at home, Iran was everything, but at school, it was almost nothing. I remember in school we were taught about the glory of the Romans and the Greeks, but never the Persians. They were always the ones that needed to be defeated. And really, I didn't think too much of it other than the fact that, you know, I needed to memorize these facts to get a passable grade, which I might add didn't always happen.

8:16My parents can attest to that, unfortunately. But it wasn't until years later, I remember I came across this line by Chinua Achibe. It was an interview in the Paris Review. And the line was something like, until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. And that line really struck me cold. And I realized that if we, as Iranian Americans, if we don't tell our own story, someone else will tell it for us. or worse, no one will tell it at all. And honestly, that's part of why I wrote this essay. I had that quote in mind as I was writing this essay.

8:56Well, that's an interesting way to put it, because one thing I was curious about was with all of the news coverage around the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran right now, what do you think is being missed? Like, what do you wish people knew more about when it comes to Iran? You know, I want Americans to understand that Iranians truly want the same thing they do. Safety, dignity, a voice. My parents never went back to Iran because those things disappeared. They came to America because they believed those things existed here and they were right. The people that the American public are watching on the news right now, the ones running from the bombs, the ones celebrating in the streets one moment and then retreating indoors for safety the next.

9:42They want the exact same thing every American already has, and they're dying for it right now. In your piece, you talk about how you are having these discussions now in Ohio with family. So what kinds of things are you hearing from family members about all this? Again, I think it's a lot of that vertigo, a lot of oscillation, and hope mixed with fear, followed by hope again. It will be very interesting. Next week is the Persian New Year. Every year the Persian New Year is on the first day of spring, and that is coming up next week. So Iranian families from all over the world will be getting together.

10:20I will be getting together with my family in Washington, D.C., and we're going to be doing what every other Iranian family is doing, which is setting a table with seven symbolic items. But this year, for the first time, Iranian-American families are gathering to celebrate the new year, but they're doing it with the backdrop of this war in Iran. And I think it's going to be an extremely strange moment. I think there will be a lot of heavy feelings, to say the least. And the Persian New Year in Farsi, it's Noruz. Noruz means new day. But I don't think anyone in the diaspora knows what kind of new day we're walking into.

10:58And I think that's the reality of every conversation that's being had right now. I'm curious, have you ever been to Iran? I visited Iran once when I was young. My parents took us before my brother would have been old enough to be forced into military service. So we went while there was still a window. Not memories, of course, but they're fleeting. The Iran I really know is the one my parents and grandparents built for me at home in Ohio. That Iran consisted, of course, of photographs and phone calls and grandparents who prayed five times a day and read ancient Persian poetry before bed. I also remember, you know, watching my grandparents baking Persian desserts together at night or even the sound of dice hitting the wooden backgammon table when my grandfather was teaching me how to play.

11:47Or even how his words would slightly slur from the sugar cube resting on his tongue when he'd sip his tea. I was living in Columbus, Ohio, of course, but this was my Iran. It was a private one, but built from these fragments. I mean, you sort of whiplash between hope and pessimism in recent days. Do you ultimately have hope that you might be able to visit Iran again? I truly think it's too soon to tell. This is quite a seismic event and so much bigger than my creativity. So I pray that I can, but I, in all honesty, I don't know. We've been speaking with Nick Moffey. He's an Iranian-American writer who's based in Brooklyn.

12:33Nick, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. I really appreciate it. This episode was produced by Daniel Offman and Michael Levitt. It was edited by William Troop and Christopher Intagliata. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adrian Ma. Support for NPR and the following message come from Washington Wise. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news in Washington. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. This message comes from NPR sponsor 1Password.

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