Kamangir (Archer)

From Iran to Canada…

Kamangir | August 15, 2005 | Category Iran

I had planned to leave Iran in Aug. 25, but according to some difficulties in the paperwork I am still here and will be here for the next few weeks.
Today we have a goodbye party in Chitgar park with all our friends. These days both Azadeh and I feel like a man with a deadly cancer, to which every body are nice. We are welcome everywhere and they treat us like somebody very special. This is nice, may be one of the only positive things about leaving Iran.
Iran is approaching a deadened alley. They insist on having the nuclear enrichment programs and the west will not allow them. More than that, we now have this president and his ultra dumb plan to govern Iran. Akbar Ganji is in the hospital and I am thinking about the nature of Iran people.
I am so glad that I am leaving this country. With the current situation, I am sure that Azadeh and I will never return to Iran as a citizen. I want to emphasize that the problem is not the political system or something major like that. The problem is that we, the Iranians, are ultimate illiterate people with an indefinite amout of pride (a very Farsi sentence!). We don’t know, but we pretend to know. We are desperately poor in making ends meet, if the oil disappears, but we pretend to be rich people that fund terror assaults abroad. The educational system of Iran is dead. I have never seen a M.Sc. thesis done by an Iranian student which may raise one rial in the industry. And the industry is only alive (if it is) because of special funds and illegal trusts. Unemployment is high. Though, the main sources of employment are the automobile industry and the education. One is inflating our lungs with smoke and our streets with cars and the other one is performing in an endless loop. People get educated to educate people which will earn buy educating! I am curious if the oil wells go down, what would we do!
I am leaving Iran because living here means being a member of the group of dumbs or the group of abusers. I have recently worked as a research assistant in a public institute. They paid me 5000T per hour (7$/h) which is a high payment in Iran. They gave me about one million Tomans, yet there were no results. The second round of research was a more funny joke and I quit the job. As I look back, there are tons of people in Iran that are in needs for their several basic demands (like being fashionable), and the political system rides these people, and in my opinion they owe it! Then there are a few percentage people that knew how to use the wave. As an example, just see the list of cabinet members proposed by the cute president Ahmadi-Nejad. There are many minister-to-bes in this list that have never been in the corresponding ministry! Even the supreme leader has criticized the list. As I want to be neither an abuser nor an abused, I leave this country.
I am thinking about the moment that I put my feet on the staircase to the airplane. The exact moment that I pick my feet from the Iranian earth. I have to eliminate parts of me at that moment. The dreams of living in a country that you are welcome because you have an acceptable appearance. The dreams of having fun with out paying for it. I presume that Canada is the place in which “after the feast comes reckons”.