Issue 13

 Ehsan Foroughi

First time I visited Canada was four years ago, when I attended a gathering in  Vancouver, staying there for little more than a week.  It was on the third or fourth  day, just after my jet lag problem was starting to resolve, we went to sight-seeing around the city.  Our friends, as the first place to see, brought us  to some beautiful place with an interesting and scary bridge, the suspension bridge they called it.

The other side of the bridge was the start of a hiking trail that was going  through a forest, and was a long long one I suspect.  At the start of the  trail, by the management cabin and the washrooms and other things, was a big sign stating that everyone going for hiking should fill a form!  It was a bipartite form.  You write your name, address, and some  emergency contact on each part and detach the two parts, drop one in the box under the sign, and keep the second part with you.  When exiting the park, you drop this second part in another box.

I was totally confused and curious about the purpose of this system, so I asked  a someone local (or someone in charge - I do not remember exactly) about  it.  It was some kind of controlling mechanism to track who has come back from hiking and who has not.  The reason behind it was shocking.  I was told that there are many people that go into the area, specially many of older ages, that are alone and nobody will notice if they do not come back at the end of the day or even in a few days,  so by the end of the day, the staff check if there are people that have not left the park, and they will inform the emergency contact on the filled form.

It was the very first time that I felt I am a stranger here!  Before that, the language or the looks of the people never gave me that feeling.

Four years later, now that I live in Toronto, each day I notice this difference in socialization model and guess I will never get used to it.  In the subway or in the waiting lines, nobody opens a discussion with an stranger, because it is common knowledge that you should not break other people's privacy!  What if they do not feel like talking!?  Everybody is extra careful not to approach anybody since (s)he may not be interested.  Although there are a lot of very social and communicative people living here, but among non-Iranians, it is a common social protocol, to minimize the people inter-relation.  How many of you will knock on your neighbor's door if the fuse goes off and you need a flashlight?

In Iran on the other hand, when you want to eat something in a public space, you ask the one sitting next to you if (s)he wants some, even if (s)he is totally stranger.  It is not quite polite for people to just start eating their own food without saying some nice words to others around.  There is a word for this in Persian, they call it "Ta'arof", which doesn't exist in English.  This alone shows the difference between cultures.  In the Iranian model, one constantly keeps communicating with other people, both in formal and informal social templates, and it is even considered rude to let existence of other people around you go unnoticed, no matter you know them or not.  If you are sitting in a bus and some older people come by, you have to give your seat to them, sometimes they say they are fine and you keep your seat and etc.  This last example may sound familiar to Canadians, but there are much more examples.

I admit that the Iranian socialization model has a big downside: gossip.  Moreover, there is a belief that says that in the formal template people do not mean the kindness they offer and are just practicing the formality of the situation, but I believe most of the times people mean it.  

At the end of the day, here in Canada, you feel like you are living in a city, but there is a wall between you and all other people in the city, as if you were in a solitary cell as big as a city.  You live alone, resolve your problems alone, and die alone.  If you don't approach somebody, how will you know if (s)he likes communicating with you or not?  Time to time I get this feeling that the Canadian society has a conservatism crisis.