First Inklings of Culture Shock

I asked my family if we have an army here. They told
me that we do, but it’s more like the CIA than an
army. Instead of attacking other countries, they
attack their own people. My aunt said that once they
showed a woman getting stoned to death on TV and she
was the only one she knew that watched it because
everyone else was disinclined to feel “uncomfortable.”
Women don’t like to think about the fact that they
have no freedom here. They just drink their bootleg
vodka (which is gross, by the way, because of how it’s
made and stored) and make jokes and forget that it
sucks to be a woman in this country. I’m appalled by
their indifference but at times I understand it. My
aunt said that at first, women protested the new
regime but they soon met with the burning sensation of
teargas in their eyes. She also told me that they
would arrest female protesters and cut up their faces
so bad in prison that you could tell who didn’t agree
with the regime by the deformities on their faces.
Now there’s nothing anyone can do.

My family is considerably wealthy for Iranian
standards. Like America, the middle class is
disappearing here and my family happens to be on the
more desirable side of the gap. One of my uncle’s
in-laws has a male maid from Afghanistan in their huge
country house. We went there for a party and,
naturally, I was curious about his story so I tried at
every possible moment to “find myself in the kitchen
at the same time as him.” They caught me trying to
talk to him and made me leave immediately. They
couldn’t understand why I was trying to communicate
with him at all. Later, I found out that Iranians
have a bit of prejudice towards Afghanis because most
of them blame Afghanistan for the decline of Iran. I
don’t know which is better, my original assumption
that they are just hoity-toity bourgeoisie, or their
seemingly ridiculous prejudice.

In any case, they are a bit high class for my
standards. They are more concerned with clothes, and
makeup, and material things than anyone I know and
they are totally uninterested the things that I’m
interested in. It’s quite the challenge trying to fit in
with them. I don’t know what to do. I’m entering a
mild depression here. I feel that I have no freedom
to do the things that I want to do. I ought to just
suck it up, though. I am in a new place, and I don’t
have to work, and I’m meeting new family, and learning
Farsi, and reading, and writing. I have to remember
to make the best of things while I’m here. But
everything seems to bug me lately. Hair in my face is
just an annoying symptom of this scarf covering my
head. Heat is an annoying symptom of my dumb uniform.
I feel physically imprisoned in this thing. I look
like a black amorphous blob floating down the street,
sweating, and irritated by everything. Everyone is
unbelievably nosy here too. And why does everyone look at
me? I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary. My
cousins say that I just look like a tourist. I’ve
taken to just staring back at everyone and waving.

I have so much time to think here. It’s nice to able
to think about things without any outside influences
because I can’t talk to anyone about anything anyway.
I miss having girlfriends so much though. I miss
having a best friend. I miss friends. I get so
depressed without them. I don’t even see the
prospect of making friends actually happening. How am
I to meet them? Men and women are not supposed to be
seen together in public, so there is nowhere to meet
anyone unless you meet them through family. All my
aunts met their husbands through family. Boys and
girls seemingly aren’t friends here, it’s too much of a risk, I
think. The only time boys and girls converse is when
they are courting one another; so you either have a
boyfriend, or you simply don’t talk to any boy unless
he’s your relative. As for girlfriends, and all my
cousins met their girlfriends through school and even
so, they mostly just hang out with their sisters. I, in turn am a hopeless case seeing as I don’t go to school and my family is totally
non social. Now I can see why my dad left to come to
America. He is the only adventurous one in the family, and
this is confirmed by other relatives too. I’m in a
terrible bind. I’ve only been here two weeks and I
feel like I’ve exhausted my patience already.