My Day in the Government Offices

Today I spent the day pursuing a renewal of my birth certificate. Since the government changed in Iran in 1978, they will not accept any document with the old lion and sun emblem. The Islamic Republic of Iran now has the word Allah (God, in Arabic) in the middle of its flag, and it is used as the official symbol of the country. The birth certificates in Iran also serve as an identification card and are small booklets that look similar to a passport.

Pursuing an errand in a government office is really comical. If you think it’s bad in the U.S., you don’t know what you’re missing. In order to help expedite matters, my Aunt Farzaneh had called the office ahead of time on a Friday (the weekend in Iran) spoke with a man named Mr. Moe (his name changed just in case). Mr. Moe is an administrator that works in one of the government offices dealing with documents such as the birth certificate and the national identification card. On the side, he also serves as an unofficial “expediter”. In Iran, an undertaking such as the one I was about to pursue would normally take weeks, countless visits to multiple offices, frustrations, bickering, bribes, and numerous cab fares.

I spoke to Mr. Moe, and he told us to meet him in front of this particular government office. As we arrived, he was waiting for us outside as promised. Mr. Moe is a middle-aged man who is bald on top with gray hair on the parts that remain and is blind. As we entered this building, someone looked at my documentation as told us that we were at the wrong office. We hopped in the car that has so graciously been put at our family’s disposal for the last 30 years by a family friend named Mr. Moshiri. Mr. Moshiri drove us to this other office, where I went in with Mr. Moe to a waiting area on the second floor. This place was a zoo. As we approached one of the counters, the man on the other side immediately recognized Mr. Moe and greeted him. We went to the other side of the counter, and handed the man my paperwork. He then referred us to another man sitting in a corner office. As we entered, he immediately greeted Mr. Moe as well. I was beginning to realize how this man planned on expediting our paperwork.

We then went to about four other desks in this building to get signatures and pull files. During this time, I happened to have my camera with me and took a picture of the office to post on my photo gallery. Seconds later, I was ushered into the office of the head administrator of this facility where I was immediately surrounded by three men. This administrator was a stern lady that addressed me and asked me why I took the picture. She then informed me that it was not allowed, and I graciously deleted the picture from my digital camera right there in front of her. Not a good start since it turned out I needed a signature from her a little bit later. Luckily, I was with Mr. Moe.

After about two hours of bouncing back and forth, we were asked to go to another office to get signatures from the “triumvirate”. I call them this because this office had three people whose sole purpose is to sign paperwork similar to mine. Three people who do the same thing on the same document. They spend the rest of their day drinking tea and kicking back as frustrated people come through the doors. We then had to fill out another form very similar to the two that we had already filled out, and go to get a number placed on the document in another office downstairs. They then sent us back to the office where we came from to finalize the paperwork. Here, Mr. Moe sent the documents back and we were asked to wait for about half an hour. He went back himself after a while, and then they called me back. It turns out that the man would have forgotten the paperwork had Mr. Moe not gone back there. I signed one final document and they handed me the new birth certificate.

As we left and dropped off Mr. Moe at the subway station, my parents and aunt, who were with us, we celebratory as if we had a new baby in the family. I think this is because it usually takes about nine months to get something like this done with just about the same labor pains. Mr. Moe was paid his “professional fee” of 50,000 tomans ($60 U.S.) for his services. It would have cost much more in cab fees, lost document fees, and aggravation to get this job done.

We then went to some shopping areas to pick up a few things, including some novels that my Mom wanted. We then realized that the 18th Annual Book Fair was in its last day at the city’s fair grounds and convention center in the north of Tehran. This convention center was a series of small buildings surrounding a beautiful outdoor fountain and rafters. My parents and I went into some of the buildings, and they bought some books. My Dad incidentally ran into a publisher of a book he has translated into English there. He had spoken with this gentleman in the past and by chance ran into him here. What a small world. This convention center is hosting a Medical Fair in a couple of weeks that I look forward to attending. As we were leaving, we passed by a building that was really beautiful architecturally. As I went to take a picture, some random guard posted in the middle of the street told me that I couldn’t take a picture of the building (see the picture on the picture gallery). It turns out that this was a building where they hold summits of Middle Eastern nations. These summits, I’m told, are not just political, but deal with such topics as trade, health care, and civil planning.

The mountains north of Tehran are absolutely gorgeous. They are a constant backdrop to a number of the pictures that I have taken. I look forward to doing some hiking in them. Driving in Tehran is a true art form. Someone had once told me that in a few short years, the length of all the cars in the city added together will be equal to the mileage of roads in the city. There is no observation of the traffic laws. Everybody drives all over the place. Motorcycles weave in and out of traffic. Cars rub against each other regularly and just keep going. People just stop in the middle of the road to drop passengers off. A car will turn right from the leftmost lane. It’s really a sight to see. I’ll try to take some video footage to post on the site.

The Rest of the Flight and My First Day in Iran

The rest of the flight from Paris to Tehran was marked with my Mom realizing that my Dad did not have his watch on. Dad suddenly realized that he had left it at the metal detector earlier when we came into the terminal. The plane doors were already closed and the plane was minutes from take-off. He jumped up and asked one of the flight attendants to see if he could get off the plane. He assured my Dad that he would call the terminal and take care of it. My Mom and Dad were slightly panicked. The watch was one that my Mom had sought for a number of years to give my Dad for their 30th wedding anniversary. I assured them that everything would be okay. Moments later, the flight attendant appeared with the watch and a ring that he had left as well.

The flight was about 6 hours long and 2625 miles. Landing in Tehran was similar to Paris. We were let out on the tarmac and were bussed to a terminal where we got into line for passport presentation. A distant relative of my Mom had arranged to meet us in the terminal as we arrived and was there as planned. The idea was to get us through customs easier. This man has a high post in the government and as he showed his identification, they swept us through customs without so much as opening a bag.

On the other side awaited family. Aunt, uncles, cousins, and close family friends had come to the airport to greet us. After 20 years of absence, I recognized everybody. The two halves of our family have grown up getting to know each other over occasional phone calls and pictures and, more recently, the internet. The greeting was overwhelming. Immediately there were reminders in conversation to test the memory of this nine year old kid who had visited Iran so long ago. We all hopped into different cars and went to my Aunt Farzaneh and Rouhi’s house. Spending the evening getting to know this side of my family in person was a blessing. Occasionally, I sat and just listened to the conversations of others as I soaked it all in. While I listened to their laughs and looked at their smiles, I wondered why I had to grow up apart from this side of my family for so long.

The next day, everybody came over to my aunts’ house again for lunch. I then went over to my cousin Saeid’s house where I was able to access the internet and check out his drum set. He’s really into hard rock and is really into System of the Down, Metallica, Tool, Linkin Park, and others. His dad (my uncle) and brothers have moved to the U.S., and he is the last one trying to get his paperwork in order to join them. To give him a little sense of closeness, I pulled up his parent’s place on Google Maps (maps.google.com) and showed him a satellite photo of his parent’s house and neighborhood. Modern technology has really affected us in more positive ways than we sometimes realize.

As we were surfing the web, I received an error message stating that “The Islamic Republic of Iran has disallowed access to this website.” A whole country with censored access to the Internet! Not to worry, though, because Iranians always find another way to get the job done, and he showed me a roundabout way that they had established to get to the same website. Now, this website we were trying to get to was not a porn sight or one that had anti-government propaganda. It was one of those friend network sites. Once again, it makes you count the blessings that we have over here every day.

The trip there

Well, I’m in Paris now. We went to the airport at around noon in Houston and got checked in at the Air France terminal. There was the three of us and about six bag worth of souvenirs and gifts for friends and family in Iran. My Mom had the thankless job of putting that all together and making sure that no one is forgotten. She forgot to weigh the bags before getting to the airport though. Every single bag was overweight. We had to redistribute the weight of each bag into this overflow box that Air France gave us, and pay a ridiculous overage fee for it.
The flight from Houston to Paris was 9 hours long and just over 5000 miles. The seats each had a touch-screen where you could watch movies or TV shows. The selection was very limited. I got to catch up on my MacGyver reruns though. The monitor had an interesting feature where you could see exactly where the plane was on a world map along with time remaining and distance traveled. Anyone who knows me really well knows that I love keeping track of stuff like that. The plane took a really interesting path. We went North through Canada, and as we were going over the Atlantic Ocean, we were never more that a short distance from land. First it was Greenland, then Iceland, then Ireland, England, and eventually France.
I also got to start a book that I had been meaning to read. It’s call Persian Pilgrimages by a young Iranian born columnist named Afshin Molavi. He writes for the Washington Post and went to Iran after a long absence to explore the culture and the politics. Reading the first chapter, I started getting a strong feeling that my experiences over the next 32 days are going to be very similar to his.
The Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris really sucks. We got out of the plane third-world style down the stairs onto the tarmac and to a waiting shuttle bus that took us to one terminal where we had to wait for another bus to take us to another terminal where we had to go through security again since we had technically “left the building”. Sometimes it takes a trip out of the U.S. to realize how good we have it here. More to come…

Day Before Departure

Well, I finally packed everything and came over to my parent's house for the evening since we are all traveling to Iran together. I am really excited about going, but to tell you the truth, I'm a little nervous. I have appreciated all of the well wishes that I have received in person and via email from everyone. It's good to know that people care about you. Hopefully my pictures and comments from Iran will be educational for everyone. I know the trip will be for me. Having grown up here in the U.S. and only having traveled out of North America once in my life (to Iran 20 years ago), I will definitely have many new experiences. It's going to be a long flight though. We'll be in transit for about 20 hours. The flight from Houston to Paris alone will be probably about 12-13 hours. Hopefully I packed everything I need. I will be posting some pictures here and some on a picture gallery that I have just set up. Bookmark the page when you go to it.