Rebel with a Cause

Today, I’m interviewing my friend, Barbad (not of Jindagi barbaad ho giya fame) who is also known as Barbod or Barry.

With Moore’s miniature renditions, which he appreciates as an automotive design student, for its ‘iterative conceptualisation process’.

Maybe you can start by explaining the meaning of your name because it means something very different in Hindi.

What does it mean in Hindi?

Destruction.

Yes, my name means utter desolation (laughs). No, my name is a funny one even in Farsi. I recently went to Iran after 16 years and spoke to a lot of people. I introduced myself and they changed my name from Barbad. They said, oh Barbod, and I said no, I’m confident I know my own name. It’s Barbad. And they went, Barbad is not a name, Barbod is a name. Because they’ve changed all the names from old Farsi, with the name ‘bad’ in it, like ‘Farbad’ to ‘Farbod’, ‘Barbad’ to ‘Barbod’, because bad means bad in Farsi as well. They did this as a kind of censorship. So that’s the name most people are familiar with, but both names are the same. It’s this mythical musician who played for the king and he was very skilful and there’s this whole story they made of musical rivalry akin to Amadeus. It’s like a love story, but it’s actually not true, because they were bandmates. So its Barbad and Nakeesa, who was like his bro (laughs), and they changed it to female in a lot of the modern interpretations of the myth. But basically he played for the king, and the king liked him, and then the king was sad one day and so Barbad was banished from playing, and he went up a tree and started playing his instrument up a tree, where he wore green, and they couldn’t find him because he was camouflaged. The king could hear his beautiful music and that cheered him up and he was like, ‘I know you are out there homie, I know you are looking out for me.’

(Laughs) Is that where your interest in music comes from?

I guess, everyone was like oh the musician, you must play an instrument, and I’m like, no.

You spell it with AD or OD?

AD. This is the other thing. The passport office, like the Iranians, when my mum gave them the name, changed it. So the English version says Barbod and not Barbad. My official name in England is Barbod. But my real name is Barbad. (In Farsi?) No, in every language. They just wrote my name wrong and were insistent they wrote it correct. Anyway, I’m known as Barry here so it doesn’t matter. I’m not attached to my name.

A lot of Indian names I know also get shortened and anglicised when they move out of the country. Was that one of the reasons for Barry?

This wasn’t anglicised. This was farcisised. It was changed from Farsi.

No, I meant to Barry.

No, so I came to school and my name at home was Bari (emphasis on aa), not Barry. But because they can’t roll their Rs, they said Barry and I said no, I do not like Barry. Because I couldn’t speak English, I said ‘No, Barry is girl’s name’. And they were like no it isn’t, it’s a boy’s name. You are Barry from now. So Barry is my slave name (😭 like Stamp Paid).

Can you tell me about your early life in Iran and what brought you to London?

Yeah, so my parents brought me to London, I wasn’t inspired. I originally thought I was going to Australia. So when I was a kid in Iran, when I was eight, my dad got a phone call, an anonymous phone call telling him that he was eligible for a scholarship, to get a PhD from the UK or Australia or some other foreign country funded by the government because he did really well in some exams and he didn’t know. And then basically, we looked into it and they found out the requirements and originally we were all set to go to Australia and then Australia said because you don’t speak a lot of English, you need to do an extra year of study before you can do your PhD. And my dad didn’t want to do that. So he went to the British one and they said, you can come and do the course, you just need to do a foundation year.

Isn’t it the same thing?

Yes, they tricked him into thinking that Foundation year is a different thing. So I was all excited to go and see kangaroos and all, and instead we got sent to the UK. And they said, well the UK is just as good, they have a queen. And I was like, I don’t want to see a queen. And she’s dead now, so it’s worthless.

How old were you when you moved?

I was eight.

And what were your first memories, if you remember?

Well, I didn’t answer the other part of the question. (Yes, sorry I interrupted). Yeah, in Iran, I was a kid, I didn’t have a job. I was in school. I was in a private school. My parents had very high salaries. They were middle class working people. They come from poor families, both of them, but both of them did quite well for themselves in Tehran. They were just beginning their careers, but they got promoted. My mum was getting like 4 times the salary of my dad, because she was working in a multinational company, a Swiss company called SGS and they both met originally at work in a train company. And my dad stayed there, and he was doing cultural stuff on the side. And my mom was just dedicated to her job and she was a quality inspections manager. They had a very big house but they were renting it. They weren’t really about saving money. They didn’t really understand these things. They didn’t understand investments and putting money aside and these kinds of things. They were just kind of like having parties (sounds like the perfect life), yes, just having a nice life, and they thought, we’ll just make money down the line, we’ll work and make money. And then they came here. And it wasn’t so easy.

What was it like for you?

I was independent. I was by myself a lot of the times. My parents were working. I’d come home by myself (at the age of eight?!) yeah, I’d just get dropped off (there was a service from school), turn the key, go inside and be a little boy by myself till my parents came home. I was an only child. I didn’t have brothers and sisters taking care of me or anything. Sometimes, I’d have an aunt or be with my grandmother, but I remember from the age of six, coming home by myself.

Still turning the keys for home a few decades later.

Wow, I think I mollycoddle my nieces, though they are only four. They are turning five now. Ok, what were your first impressions of London as a young child and how did it compare to your life in Iran?

Yes, so the west in people’s perception in Iran was this faraway, intangible place. Not many people at the time had come here. There’s a lot more migration now. But at the time, it wasn’t so easy. There were a lot of illegal ones, but not a lot of legal migration, especially. So they were going with a semi-intention to live there but the terms of this arrangement were, you go there, you get a PhD, and come back. That’s why it was funded by the government. The Iranian government was giving a bursary for them to study in the UK and then bring their brains back into Iran to be productive members of society. The collateral was that they left their first house, which was just a place they had in their possession and were renting at the time, this tiny little house that they left with the Iranian government. So they needed to come back to get the deed and the house back. And then, um, what was the question again? (Your first impressions). Yes, so there was this thing that oh Britain is this land of freedom and democracy. Iran was very dictatorshippy at the time. I remember one time we were out in the mountains, in the woods, with my mum and my dad’s friend and me and it was very hot. And so we were walking and walking and then somehow my mum lost her headscarf, probably on some tree branch, and she was panicking because she didn’t know how to cover herself up. Because that was an issue, because if you lost your headscarf, you either had to go all the way back up to the mountain to find it or you had to like hide your hair somewhere. So she borrowed my shirt and put it around her head. And I was winning because I was too hot, I didn’t need a shirt. I could be naked and she had to wear a shirt around her head. Yeah, so there were a lot of such stupid restrictions, like my dad was coming from university and they gave him some VHS tapes, and the morality police caught him. And they sentenced him for having pornographic material because he had a copy of the little mermaid on the VHS that he brought from the university library (the animation movie?) yes, the Disney movie because she is in a bikini. They were like this is filth (laughs), you must be punished. They were very stupid about this stuff and very restrictive. So we thought the west is going to be this brilliant place and then you come here and my first impression is, oh it’s not actually that nice. It’s kind of meh. Like my literal first impression was oh, these people don’t have very good lives. It was just an instant like, oh this is not as clean, and as impressive as I was expecting. It’s alright. And then we went to this tiny house in this very foreign population area in Sunbury or Sudbury, one of those shithole suburb out of London areas that’s very cheap. And by that time, my dad had already come ahead of time and he was picked up by a friend’s friend who owned a restaurant and there he helped him acclimate, settle in, get a place. He could work there sometimes for a bit of money, less than minimum wage, but it was good. And he helped him set up, get insurance, whatever stuff that you need to know in England, because in those days you couldn’t look anything up online. So you had to have some kind of an introduction to a lot of stuff. And by the time we came here, we were very disappointed, especially my mum hated the house. She was like oh it smells, it’s tiny and damp and this and that. School was all foreign kids but they had lived here longer than me, so I spoke no English, and they were like even if from Pakistan or whatever, they knew how to live in the UK and they had British sensibilities, so they excluded me completely. And I didn’t like school. And I didn’t understand anything what was going on. And I realised there’s no punishment if you don’t do your school work, so I just went screw this, I’m going to be lazy. And I didn’t try very hard and I didn’t engage and I didn’t talk to anyone and I didn’t like it. It was a lot of bullying and my mum was very concerned. She wanted to do something. So we moved areas. We moved away from that area that was very foreign centric to South West London, like in inner Greater London and there were also the same problems with bullying and stuff, but at least the vibes were nicer, we had more greenery.

But weren’t the kids who had also moved from different countries acclimatising like you? But ok, they were kids and had probably moved sooner.

Yeah, it’s a faster pace. A lot of them were born in the UK and they were just brown kids and black kids and whatever. Literally there was only one white kid and the teacher. Everyone else was like foreign. But they treated me as more foreign than them.

I think you’ve already answered my next question about specific challenges.

Well, I was good at Maths. I was way ahead. I understood it and so I was trying to jump ahead. They were asking stuff like how many metres in a kilometre and I was doing trigonometry and algebra. So I was like I know this. But they didn’t encourage that. The teachers weren’t very smart. They didn’t care about your individual performance. Like I was reading some of my report cards and they were all saying something like oh Barry is a very smart boy but he doesn’t pay attention. None of them even picked up on the fact that I’m clearly not doing very well, I’m struggling mentally with being in school and stuff like that. They said oh he’s just distracted by the birds and the trees. He has a lot of potential but we don’t know how to foster that. And I was like no, you just talk to me, and try to engage with me and get me to do some of the work. But they didn’t want to spend their time. They wanted to go home and live their lives. They were underpaid teachers. But they weren’t even trying to pick up on these things. And one time my mum came to advocate for me in school and I’d made something out of play-doh, a little family, little sculptures, and my mom brought it in front of the teacher in assembly. They were all lined up in the assembly outside and she said ‘look at what my son made. Isn’t it great?’ The teacher just said ok and my mum went, ‘no, look, it’s really good and detailed, there’s like a little banana in the fruit bowl and this and that’ and the teacher was like ‘ok, what do you want me to do, put it in the classroom or something?’ and my mom just got embarrassed and disheartened by that interaction, she said, ‘you know what, never mind.’ Since then she didn’t really engage much with the teachers, except for PTA meetings, where they didn’t really understand anything, and I didn’t like the vibe and stuff, so yeah, not very good schooling.

That was very sweet of your mom to stand up for you in school.

Oh yeah, that’s what they should do.  Like if you are bringing your kid over, you should make sure to advocate for the kid. I think they are a lot better at it now. I’ve seen some other people’s experiences and the teachers actually try to make sure that the kid is welcomed. I think if you socialise, then the rest of it comes a lot easily. But if you are not socialising, they need to fix that first and then focus on schoolwork. But they were just like oh he’s not doing his work, not understanding that there’s something deeper going on.

Did anyone try to hone your maths skills or is that something you got into yourself?

No, they put me in a special class for 3 days and were like oh he knows how to spell words, so he’s better than most British kids, let alone the foreign kids, so they took me out of the special foreign class and just put me in the normal class. But they put me in the middle set or the bottom set for a lot of stuff. They didn’t put me in the top set where you would be encouraged and where the kids were paying attention. I’d be in the middle set or the bottom set and there’d just be chaos and the kids were throwing stuff and talking, and I wouldn’t like it and I wouldn’t pay attention (so it became a vicious cycle?) and so yeah I was going from being a very high-level academic in Iran as a little kid to going into an area where I didn’t like it and I was in this stupid academic environment. And so I didn’t try, but it wasn’t my fault.

I think at the age of eight or nine, you’d be too young to notice the differences between the two cultures other than the academic stuff you’ve mentioned.

Yeah.

Um, was there any moment when you felt a strong sense of belonging in London, or conversely, when you felt very disconnected from either or both cultures?

I was disconnected from both cultures because when I came I was very young and then when I was here, I didn’t belong. And Brits are very protective, not intentionally, but they are very guarded people, and they know what they know, and if they don’t know something, they don’t like it and they react with hostility towards it. Like I don’t have a very good memory of my childhood, I remember just some specific bits and bobs, but I remember I was like trying to stick to the teachers, because the kids wouldn’t talk to me but the teachers were also like, ah, screw this kid, he’s so annoying (laughs). I could clearly get a vibe from them that they didn’t want me around because they thought I was clingy. But I was not clingy, I was just not able to talk to the kids. Anyway, the issue was not just mine. I’ve got a cousin, my dad’s cousin, he’s in France, and he’s a musician. And he plays this stupid Chinese drum. It’s called a Hang. It’s like a still drum you play with your hands. And he brought that over to the UK, and we went to Camden, to this rotunda (a theatre, more like a cultural space). And he was playing it out loud and everyone was just ignoring him. Everyone was looking straight ahead, even though it was an artsy kind of an environment, they were just pretending he wasn’t there making a lot of noise. And he goes to me what’s wrong with these people. And I was like, I told you, this is England, they don’t acknowledge you. They find you doing something that is awkward, this stiff upper lip personality that they’ve got means that they just pretend that you don’t exist. In France, if he was doing that, they’d be like oh wow, what are you doing? Isn’t that exotic? Isn’t that interesting? Do you play professionally? You’re from Iran, that’s amazing, I love Iran, heard so many good things. But in the UK, they were just like what, go away. I think that was the biggest reaction I’d get to anything when I would try to put myself out there. And it’s not just my issue. My parents still have this issue with the neighbours because they are too awkward to be social with them and so my parents might think it’s racism, but it’s not racism, it’s just them being uncomfortable in their own skin, and to something that’s external to them, that feels completely foreign. So yeah, they don’t know how to have a conversation with Brits, whereas I can. I just choose not to, because they are not very interesting.

How did your friendships and social circle evolve as you grew up? Did you gravitate towards people with similar backgrounds, or then did you seek out people from different cultures?

I was never friends with Iranians. I didn’t have any friends and then I started to be more social by the time I went to college, that was literally the first time. Before that, in secondary school, a boy called Nathanael was very nice to me, and he was a Christian. His family was American Christians, well his mum was, and they were both very religious, and so the kids were nice. He was trying to be nice for Jesus points (laughs). If you go all ‘I don’t like Christianity’ but actually, that was my experience with him and I thought they are better than other religions. If he was a Muslim kid, he wouldn’t be oh that boy is by himself, let me reach out to him in school. So they are actually trying to teach what they were at the time. Now they are all Trumpist weirdos. But at the time, their values and morality was actually quite a positive thing. Then I was friends with him and these two boys Saul and Josh who were Jewish. And this one other boy called Alain, who was a French kid. And they were all very smart but, well Nathaneal wasn’t so smart, but he was kind of in that group of nerds that was separate from everyone else. And then there were some other groups of nerds together in a chess club and stuff like that but I wasn’t that good at chess. I wasn’t trying to be a chess wiz like you (untrue story) but I was trying to make my friends in that kind of an environment. I didn’t get much time with them because none of them were in any of my classes, they were in separate sets and groups, so I never got the chance to be with them outside of lunch break and stuff like that, and I wouldn’t do anything outside of school. Once or twice I got some interactions, where some kids would come to my house or whatever and I’d get very exuberant. I gave this one kid my nunchucks that I got from my uncle and was like oh no, why did I do that? I wanted it for myself. I just got too carried away. And the guy’s now a pilot. I saw him on the streets once and I was like, give me my nunchucks (laughs). And yeah later on, when I was 15 in college, 16, I started to make some other groups of friends, different kinds of people, different backgrounds, they were more the working class kind of people, not the posh kids, the nerds or whatever, and they were a bit different to me. They had a lot of character. I discovered I can be funny. I watched Top Gear and stuff. I was like these guys are funny, that’s why they are having fun. I can do that. And so, I tried to rely on my humour. I made some friends there, but nothing too lasting, except for one of my friends Sam, who I see a lot. He was also from college and then I stayed in touch with him after Uni. I went to visit him when he went to Oxford, when he got his Masters there. Nathanael from secondary school, the Christian boy, I’m also friends with him, and then later in university, I managed to socialise a bit more, again not like girlfriends or anything but I was doing stuff, and then by the time I was in adult stage, I managed to get back in touch with Nathanael and he was running some kind of an international community thing. We were going to pub quizzes but in coffee shops, because most people don’t drink when they are foreign, they don’t have drinking cultures, so they go to coffee shops. But it was cool. There were different groups of people there and they made up separate spinoff groups of friends that would do stuff, and they were all kids, and I didn’t do other stuff as a teenager, so I was just hanging out with them and going on London adventures and things, and that was quite interesting. People would come from America and other places, and I made some good friends there. 2 people I even went travelling with. And I met some female friends, like mostly online. And we got in touch, and I had some relationships from that and later on managed to talk to people outside of internet dating and stuff, but yeah I mean I was a late bloomer when it comes to having relationships and even friends and socialising, but I’m pretty comfortable with it now. I make friends everywhere I go. I made like 20 friends at the airport (laughs).

You said you went to college at the age of 15-16. Isn’t that high school or is it different here?

It’s pre-university. So classes 11 and 12 are called college or sixth form.

How important was language for your integration into society here? And was that like a concern or because you moved here so young, that wasn’t really a problem. Like in Iran, is it only Farsi or is a mix of Farsi and English?

No, it’s only Farsi. No one in Iran speaks any English because it wasn’t a colonised environment. They have some schooling elements from the French system, for a lot of their grades and processes. It’s out of 20 in France as well, how they mark you, but there’s no language skills. The English that’s taught in Iran is very weak even now, but specially back then, it was very very weak, and it wasn’t useful. And I asked someone why is a pencil spelled with a C? And why is a car spelled with a C? What’s with a soft C and a hard C? (those are good questions) The woman didn’t have an answer for me, so she’s just like, you need to listen, PENCIL. If you don’t pay attention, you are not going to get these things. She didn’t know she was being an idiot and just trying to be no, you just have to listen more. That’s how you figure out rules. Anyway, the main language barrier issue for me is that culture and language is very intertwined, so I’ve tried to translate stuff. It’s very easy for you to pick up a language when you are younger. My parents still haven’t done it. Even though I picked up English, I didn’t pick up the culture very easily. I didn’t have any guidance, so it was very difficult. I think nowadays it’s a lot more fluid and I think language has become a lot more ubiquitous, like everyone knows English, they all interact, and it’s good coming here as an 8 year old, you are already online, and watching Cocomelon and stuff and it’s a different environment, and I think a lot more people are comfortable with picking up a language and integrating and people are not as harsh on people who speak poorly in an age where all the famous figures who are talking are idiots, they can barely string a sentence together, bloody Joe Biden and Trump, they can barely speak and they are running the world. And I think language has become a lot more lax and easy-going now, but at the time, it was very much a problem for me. Took me about six months to get started talking and about 3-4 years to get to intermediate level, to get comfortable talking to people and express myself. And then it took me 10 years to figure out UK cultural norms and mannerisms and subvert them and mess with people.

And you speak Farsi at home?

Yes, I speak Farsi exclusively with my parents and no one else.

What about your relatives?

Well, my relatives aren’t here, so I talk to them on the phone. They don’t know any English but most of my talking was in Farsi at home and the rest of my talking was with my friends when I made them at school but like whatever, that was all in English.

Are there Iranian traditions or cultural practices that you and your family continue to observe while living in London?

There’s only one, it’s called Nowruz. It’s the New Year and it’s a week from now, two weeks. And it’s the celebration of spring and new life and then the beginning of the calendar year in Iran, the solar calendar and basically for everyone there, it’s their Christmas. They throw a spread with stuff in it.

We also celebrate the arrival of spring in India with Basant Panchami.

Yeah, I think it’s all very religious paganism (yeah, also nature worshipping). Basically, when we came here, my dad was like we won’t celebrate Christmas, because we have Nowruz, and we’ll do gifts and all then. And then when it’s Nowruz, it’s like who will we have a celebration with, there’s nobody here, we’ll wait for Christmas. So we just ended up doing nothing for both holidays. He tricked me (laughs).

So then, how do you celebrate it here? You said that’s the one festival you celebrate.

You throw a spread. You throw some grass, my mum likes to do that. We had fish. We bought goldfish. You are supposed to put a table with goldfish, 7 things that came with the letter S in Farsi. So it’s a kind of a flower that’s purple and long, it’s like a bellflower. I don’t know what it’s called. Then there’s garlic, coins, rice, some fruits and nuts that you only see during Nowruz most of the time. There’s special dried food, jojoba beans (have heard of that) and a bunch of other stuff. And you just put it on the table and its cute. And that’s the Christmas tree and you need to exchange gifts. That’s it. And on the 13th day, you have to leave your house and you have to throw the grass into running water, so you go find the stream in the Thames, and everyone looks at you in surprise because you are dumping shit into the river, and you are like no, it’s like a tradition, and it’s green and it’s food for the ducks and it’s not doing any harm, whatever. Leave people alone during Nowruz, let them dump their shit in the water (laughs). The Wednesday before is like bonfire night.

Do you have a strong Iranian community here?

No.

Have you encountered prejudices and stereotypes?

(Laughs) Yes.

And how do you navigate that?

By having thick skin. I have had a lot of issues. I went into it. In school they were like oh your coat smells because you are eating curries, so you are curry boy. And I was like we don’t have curry at home, we don’t use strong spices, but you can’t explain this stuff. Or another time, they don’t really try very hard, they ostracise you based on surface level stuff. This racist was lying on the street, and I was like hello, do you know how I can navigate my way around? It was like 4am, and I had a cold, and I was drunk and I was trying to get from one place in university to another club or something, and I asked this guy for directions, and he started trying to fight me and he’s like why don’t you fuck off back to Pakistan, Paki, and I was like I’ll have you know (laughs) that I’m from a completely different country and this and that, and he was like PAKI, and he hit me in the face with a header, and he bent my nose, and he punched me in the eye, and I got a black eye. But I didn’t do anything, I just walked away. It was like when I was in Uni, it was the beginning of the English Defence League. Before that it was the BNP or the British National Party and they were the racist party and they hated the Jews and then the Islamic fear sentiment came at the time of the English Defence League, in 2010-11. They just rebranded the racism and hatred towards everything to do with Islam. And that’s where the aggression came to beating people up in the streets for wearing headscarves and stuff that became prominent, but I wasn’t scared or anything, or going like oh no, racists. Because I was already being bullied in school by people who were doing it on racist grounds, so my exposure to racists was quite high. I wasn’t intimidated by someone being racist, but obviously if they catch you and beat you up, that isn’t very nice.

I’m very sorry to hear that.

That’s ok. And it wasn’t just white kids. There was a black kid who was like, oh there’s curry boy, he stinks. And I was like I don’t smell bad, and even if I did, that’s my business. It was just an excuse for them to joke around and have fun, but nowadays I don’t think it’s as acceptable, though Europe as a whole is becoming highly racist again, due to a massive media propaganda campaign, public push by the government and everybody else.

How has living here influenced your views of the world and yourself? I think you’ve partly already answered that.

I mean I just went back to Iran after 16 years and I thought a lot of stuff would be very different in terms of you know people’s cultural approaches and views and things. I mean they used to be very mean to street cats and kick them and stuff, very horrible behaviour. And now I thought you know, now that they are nice to cats they must know all sorts of stuff, now they probably don’t throw rubbish on the ground and stuff like that but they still do throw rubbish on the ground. There’s still some guy who’s an educated man and he goes and sees a cat and he kicks it, but also, the worldview hasn’t updated as much as the surface level stuff that they’ve seen on social media. They are still very stupid, angry people in a lot of ways. They’ve just seen a lot more, been exposed to more.

I think that’s the state of the world, stupid angry people everywhere.

No, they are a lot more behind than the West. The West is still fairly enlightened. Iranians are king racists, the no. 1 best racist people in the world. They hate Afgans with a passion. All social media feeds are like look at this Afgan, he’s wearing sunglasses, we should kill him. They are very radical people. I was very disappointed in the people there and I was glad I was raised in a different environment. Like I was talking to a girl who was there, and she’s a scientist. She’s very well educated, has a very high-level job, but a lot of what she deals with means she has to think quite differently than me and this shapes her views and much of what she is concerned with in life. Even though they are exposed to western media, they have different problems they need to deal with immediately and that’s what they concern themselves with. They can’t think the way I can in their immediate environment. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but they don’t seem very happy.

Won’t a scientific temperament and more exposure to the world affect your worldview and make you more open to ideas?

Yes it can but the challenges of ordinary life get in the way of that, even if they might know English or engage with different communities online. The majority of the time they are not exposed to English language discourse because it excludes the stuff they need to care about. They are limited to Farsi language discourse and Farsi language discourse is either propaganda from the regime or propaganda from people who want to change the regime for their own nefarious purposes, so if you are watching the news to understand what’s going on in the world, you are going to have a very warped worldview. And even though in the UK, people aren’t that actively watching the news, or reading or whatever, they are still exposed to the discourse that’s around the world and up to this point (before the anti-muslim fervour that’s going to take over the world), a lot of the discourse has been around inclusion. We like the gays, we like this people, that people, we want to include people. We want to be nice, we want to make the world cohesive. We want to save the environment. And a lot of that has been proven to be a bit of a sham. It was a ploy by the capitalist classes but at least the effect that it left on people is that they want to virtue signal. They want to seem like good people. So there’s this stuff, and they don’t have that in Iran. They might see it on TV but they’ll not absorb it as deeply as the average person here that just got like a nice job and has come to London, and is exposed to the culture and sitting with their friends in a café, going oh, isn’t it terrible with so much pollution and wildfire and whatever, or racist or anti-gay hysteria.

I have a question here. Even if you say that all this discourse was shaped by capitalism, there would be something shaping the discourse there as well, and it can’t all be propaganda. Like religion was supposed to be imparting moral education in a lot of countries, so there can’t be a vacuum, right?

Because education is so far removed from people’s everyday life. The government’s advice and stuff is treated as obvious bullshit, as superstition and propaganda. Most people’s concerns are with items of status and accumulating wealth, of buying this nice car. There is a lot of materialism that’s superseding any other sort of focus that people have on discourse. Like I see someone and they go like, oh that’s a Samsung Galaxy S10. No one cares unless you are a phone repair shop guy. You are not going to know what kind of a phone I have. You are not going to be impressed by my phone from 5 years ago that I bought second hand, but I’m saying because they don’t have these other things, this woke virtue signalling ploy by capitalism actually helped the culture become nicer. It helped people become more embracing of change and differences and things like that. Whereas in Iran, they didn’t concern themselves with any of that, they were just told to buy the thing because it’s nice and shiny. They are even less culturally, not culturally, but less sociologically enriched people as a result, whereas in the UK, they are more sociologically enriched even though its all…

Do they blame the US for the coup that happened?

No, no one blames the US. They love the US, they love Israel, they hate the Palestinians.

What nonsense. Iran is an ally like you said, supporting the Palestinians.

It’s true. You are saying the government. I’m saying the government is not the people. The people hate the government and that’s what’s caused this cultural disintegration.

But why would they support Israel just because they hate the government?

Because it’s just that. My aunt said to me, ‘I want to dissolve the Palestinians in acid.’ That’s how they talk. There’s two sides of news. There’s TV news and then there is internationals called Iran International. It used to be called a bunch of different things, it keeps changing but this one is the most explicitly pro-Zionist. They literally play in the clip, where just before the news starts, they show the ticker and some bits of news, they show bloody Netanyahu go like ‘Zan, Zendegī, Āzādī’ which means ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ which was the slogan of the people that came out onto the streets a couple of years ago in favour of democratisation and women and all. It’s been completely co-opted by these deranged interests. They would potentially help Iran economically if Iran was like, you know what, we love Israel now, let’s become friends, and they remove the sanctions and it becomes this normal country. It would improve those people’s lives but they are terrible. They are not nice people. They don’t want to help the everyday man. They don’t want to help the guy that’s struggling. They use that as a cudgel to say that see every day the conditions are getting worse, and it’s the government’s fault and I wish Israel would just nuke us. And I’m like you missed a couple of steps in between getting killed and not liking the mullahs that run your country now. They are very stupid people because they don’t know any better. They are very smart people because they are very good in their studies, they are very good at figuring out how to make money or whatever to survive, but very stupid people politically and sociologically and ideologically. As are British people. Most people are stupid Srishti, I don’t know how to tell this to you (laughs). But they are stupid in different ways.

Woman, Life, Freedom - A feminist revolution putting pressure on the Iranian regime. Source: IPS

Everyone is smart in different ways also.

No, they are all stupid. People are too stupid for their own good and too smart for their own good. Nobody’s just smart enough for their own good.

Ok, what do you hope future generations of Iranian British folks will experience here, like if you could give advice to someone in a similar situation, like who’s moving to London from Iran now at a young age, what advice would you give to them?

I’ve got a friend who’s Indian and he married an Iranian woman and that lady brought her sister, her sister’s husband and an 8-year-old daughter over to the UK. I came with them to give them advice because I came to the UK around the same age and I saw this girl go and be there and she’s been here for around a year while her dad’s been studying, her mum’s been working in some shops in Iranian language, some Turkish store or whatever. They have been struggling but the kid has been doing much better because the school has become a much more inclusive environment and she’s a girl and I think girls are more social, so she’s managed to make friends. Even if she can’t talk, she can bond with them over dolls or whatever and yeah, I think the advice I would have first and foremost for parents is to advocate for your children. It doesn’t matter where you are from. You need to figure out the rules of how to get the best for them. Don’t be annoying, don’t go and harass the teacher all the time but figure out what’s wrong. Get a sense of what you can do to help to improve that and then also, try to work on your own skills of integration. Learn the language by going out and speaking to people. Don’t be afraid if you make mistakes. Keep doing it. Make those mistakes but learn from them at the same time. Challenge yourself. Don’t stick in your own community, because your own community can be comfiting for a while but in the end it will make you stagnant and shunned and reclusive and it’s better to be integrated, I think. Although I haven’t done the other way, I assume it’s pointless because the only time we tried to engage with other Iranians, it led to people getting scammed and ripped off and there’s a lot of vulnerability and overfamiliarity which can be taken advantage of. So yeah, just talk to people of the world, expand your horizons.

Scammed by people?

Yes, my mum got scammed by an Iranian and she lost all the money that she didn’t have from the bank. So it’s better to not do that kind of thing, it’s better to see other people, do other things. They are loads of free classes, initiatives done by the council, even in this stupid austerity government, there’s still lots of opportunities for people that have come here to find ways to integrate and do things that are different and challenging and improve their mental state and understanding of life in the UK, their position here. And yeah, if something is not right for you, you can change it, don’t be stagnant.

My last question is, how would you define home, is it London, Iran, a mixure of both, or something else?

Yeah, I don’t have a home in Iran. I try to go back and see what it’s like. It can be a home but obviously because of the restrictions, physical ones, I’ll have to go to the military for 2 years, and also mental ones, like the traffic is crazy and the driving is crazy. I don’t want to live there and get killed in traffic. But there’s also other cultural and different things.

So after running from traffic in Iran, and not feeling very hopeful about Britain or Europe, what’s the 4th place you want to live in?

No, I think it’s tricky. You can’t live anywhere and say this is my home, and this is the only home for me. I think humans are very adaptable and versatile and they need to keep finding their home and keep affirming, is this my home? And that can be a very challenging thing. And you know, you are dealt the cards you are dealt and you have to handle that and whatever position you are in. I think I have been inspired by a lot of people I’ve known, especially I think women are a lot better at just getting up, packing their stuff and going somewhere else and starting anew. I think men are much more comfortable in their familiar environment and they are a lot less willing to take that risk with uprooting themselves. So I’ve seen a lot of girls that have moved from all over the world here and they build a life for themselves and they try to make the most of the opportunities that are available to them like you for example or others (thank you, I love your last answer). Luckily, you’ve got your brother here and family, but even people that just come that don’t know anybody and they make a life for themselves, I always found that to be very impressive.

Yay and thanks so much for what has turned out to be a pretty long interview.