My husband and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary. At a small and packed popular restaurant in New York City, they brought out our dessert with Proseco on the house and a chocolate inscription around the plate that gave away our celebration to all the tables around us, opening the door of conversation. Because the couple right next to us was from Oklahoma, my husband felt compelled to tell them that I was from Iran, figuring they probably didn’t run into many Iranians in their circle. He apologized later in the cab but I knew instantly why he did this. I have spent my 29 years in America playing the role of ambassador from Iran. And it has been a rocky three decades beginning with the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis in my college freshman year in D.C. to the present day of Iran as the face of evil.
The couple from Oklahoma nodded their heads approvingly at my story and the man declared very proudly that I am “living the American Dream.” This did not sit well with me. Like most Iranians who ended up as what I like to call “accidental immigrants,” I came to America from a life of privilege. I told our new friends that I grew up in boarding school in England. And I told them something that everyone is always shocked to hear: My parents still live in Iran. Really? How is it for them? Why don’t they leave?
My answer always brings me back to that phrase “the American Dream.” My parents stay in Iran to stem the brain drain; that’s how I see it. They are very loyal to their country and proud of their identity. To complicate matters, my mother is an Armenian Christian woman living in Iran with a very successful career, which surprises people even more. Her mother escaped the Turkish Genocide in 1915 and walked into Iran as a refugee. So I have a Christian family and a very secular Shia Moslem family too.
People who look at me quizzically asking, “Why don’t your parents leave?” are thinking in terms of the self. I have come to learn that the American Dream is about the self — my dream house, my little piece of America, my car, my job, my title, my vacation, my diamond ring, my status watch, my status whatever; my status. Not that there aren’t other dreams in America, but THE American Dream is about what the self can achieve, usually proudly from nothing.
This has never sat well with me. More and more, it feels like a race to the top, trampling anyone in the way, and when getting there, the person at the next table can look at you and admire that you are “living the American Dream.” No. For me, I would like to be living God’s Dream. And for me as a Christian, I like to remember that God’s Dream has a cross in it. The American Dream and carrying the cross don’t sit together well. In this day of the success of fundamentalist Christianity, it is difficult to remember that being a Christian is NOT about wealth and reward and the preachments of the Prosperity Gospel gang.
I just returned from a week in the Yucatán with thirty Presbyterians from national advocacy committees. According to the majority of American Christians, (and I am talking of the fundamentalists, as they are the majority), the poor people of Mexico must not be living life according to God’s will, for if they were, they would be rewarded with God’s favor. Our Presbyterian group spent time listening to students at San Pablo seminary and time listening to the indigenous Mayans of the village of Dzan far from the U.S. border in the Yucatán Peninsula. Everywhere we went, we saw and heard stories of the men having to leave and work far away in El Norte.
This was not news to any of us. What was news was learning that making this decision caused great strife and heartache. Families mortgage whatever they have to raise funds for this cataclysmic journey. If, God forbid, the traveler died crossing the border, the family would never recover from the debt of the mortgage as they would have no way to raise funds. We learned that coming to America commonly became a living nightmare here, but it was a better nightmare than the one in Mexico where corruption and poverty have consumed the country. According to the government’s own figures, 40% — about 40 million people, some say it is as high as 75% of the population — TRY to live on $2 a day. I told my daughter at college this statistic on the phone and she gasped and gagged. I said, “Are you okay?” “Yeah,” she said, “I just bought a bagel with cream cheese for $2.”
In America we are fighting about ways of getting 40 million people healthcare coverage. In Mexico, they are just trying to get enough to eat. Our American translator told us a story of going to a Mexican family’s home where he stayed for dinner. Being the guest, they gave him the first plate. He was surprised at how full and generous the plate was for such a poor family. They motioned for him to start and as he was eating, after a few mouthfuls, one of the youngest children grabbed the plate away from him and began eating off it. The plate was for the entire household and was meant to be passed around. What bothers me about this story isn’t the obvious part. It’s that this level of poverty exists in the shadow of America, the richest country the world has ever seen. To me, this is unforgivable. How can we be fighting here about whether this is a Christian country or not, and proclaiming that it was founded by Christians, when there are people so hungry at our doorstep. They risk their lives to come here to pick our food in the fields, clean our hotels and our homes, cut our lawns, and be nannies to our children. We all know our economy depends on them now.
Coming back from Mexico, the news was filled with the California fires. Only on NPR has there been real coverage of the migrant workers running from the flames. Otherwise, we are generally treated like the self-absorbed Americans that we are and shown the wealthy areas burned to nothing with chimneys left standing. This, the press knows, will get sympathy. The “illegal” Mexicans, let’s not worry about them. NPR reported that charred bodies were found at the border; and at the stadium in San Diego, Mexicans taking refuge there were accused of looting, summarily arrested, and handed over to INS for deportation.
What does this say about us as a nation? And what does it say about that American Dream? At what cost is this American Dream worth having? As long as we are willing to trample other people’s humanity to get what we want, not need, there will be people willing to come here illegally to help feed their families. In Dzan, we learned a surprising lesson: leaving for El Norte is the last card a desperate people play; it is not the first card, as most Americans believe. This is their last resort; they have no other card to play.
Until we look into the eyes of our neighbors and see our own reflection, we will be doomed to building walls and standing guard over our stash of marbles — our American Dream. In Mexico, there are very few marbles. I learned that where hunger is the law, rebellion is justice.
Maybe it’s time for a new dream.
Noushin Darya Framke is chair of the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns (ACREC) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
