Yesterday, I was walking in Park Shahrara in the early afternoon, and saw a man carrying a bushel of sabzi khordan. Sabzi khordan is hard to find in the afternoons during the summer, unless one is an early riser. I stopped the elder. “Sir, where did you get that sabzi?” 

“I bought it this morning at the fruit stand across the street, put it in the fridge at work, and now I’m taking it home. Take half of what I have here for yourself,” he responded.

I, an Iranian from the U.S., was shocked that someone would offer me half of his own. I immediately responded, “No thank you sir, I’ll find my own. Thank you so much.”

But he kept telling me to take his. “Please, take half of mine, you’ve been at work all day too, haven’t you? Take half of mine.”

I, of course did not take his sabzi, assuming I could find my own. My Americanness would not allow me to accept someone else’s offerings.

I have been in Iran for a month. From every direction, young and old, rich and poor, I sit and listen to stories describing how horrible post-Revolutionary, post-War Iran has become: “There is no more safety in the streets”; “Everything has become too expensive.” Complaints about the government, President Ahmadinejad, the dirty Tehran air, the rising gas prices, the packed metro, the lack of opportunities for young people, these are all never ending. Of course, I don’t mean to imply that none of these things are true. Tehran has in fact become very expensive, the air is filled with smog, and the metro is heavily overcrowded.

On one hand, I agree with the complaints, empathizing with the people who live here. These people who are afraid their children will never be able to go to college, who know they can never afford a house in Tehran. This is my American side, the side that understands what it is like to fear that you will never have the future you want, the side that has become accustomed to living paycheck to paycheck, week by week, wondering how and when I could ever afford to buy a home in Los Angeles. 

On the other hand, I also think that Tehran is becoming more and more like any other mega city around the world. Rising gas prices, mounting tuition costs, bad public transportation, unaffordable real estate, the dumbass Americans elected to be their ruler, my friends and I complain about these very same things when we get together for a drink and some smokes. Even the well-off kids are worried. Life in Los Angeles, in New York, in Boston and San Francisco has become so expensive that even the children of the upper middle class can’t afford to buy a home and go to graduate school.

On top of our tenuous economic status, American foreign and domestic policy is another one of our concerns. We know that unlike our parents, we live in an age where the government is using the very technology that brings us cell phones and email to keep an eye on us. Our telephones are tapped, our email is monitored and our activism is scrutinized. In other words, “big brother” was always there, and he is definitely watching. The American government is building a wall on the Mexican border, it continues to allow a vigilante group with KKK roots to sit on the border and keep out the Mexicans. And worst of all, it is killing, raping and maiming the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. My Latino friends worry that ICE may show up in their neighborhood and pick up their cousins or brothers. My Arab, Irani and South Asian friends are afraid to do anything for fear that we’ll be called terrorists, or worse. And my Black friends, well, by now you should know that story, there’s no need to explain. In essence, we live in a culture of fear, fear that we do not have the financial means to have the lives that we want to have, fear that even if we did have the money, we do not have the freedom.