maki

=SEYED ABOLFAZI MAKI=

Podcast
media type="custom" key="12081341"

BIOGRAPHICAL/GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Ebi or seyed abolfaz maki, was born in 1979, in bam Iran. His father owned a small date farm and ebi would often work there in his free time to help his father. In 1996 Ebi moved to Dayton Ohio because his father wanted them to go to medical school and struggled to learn English for three years before going to U.D. Ebi now works at terra data, and does not regret his parent’s decisions to come to America.

Iran is a small country in the middle east. Its capital is Tehran, and it’s government is categorized as a theocracy. The religious leader or the supreme leader has the ability to veto anything the government does.

=Creative Writing=

By: Steve Fawley
A fertile farm, a palette of bright Oranges ,dark greens ,and lush purples the roots of the date trees construed into the ground like words in a sentence. The wave of the pond reflecting the suns golden light was the image of the oasis. It was surrounded Surrounded by dry sand that sucked life from the earth sand that prevented the growth and life of everything The desert Onager, a humble donkey, barely surviving off the diminutive vegetation in the bare desert The extinct Caspian tiger that once roamed, but was hunted to extinction. The brackish pistachio tree’s branches layered with pinnate textured leaves sucked dry by the sun All slowly being sucked of life Survival Yes. Progression Unimaginable.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
This is an interview with Ebi Maki. The interview was conducted on 11/23/2011. The interviewer is Steve Fawley, representing the Dayton Regional STEM School.

STEVE: Ok, My first question is how do you pronounce your full name and does your name have any special meaning?

EBI: My full name is Seyed Abolfaz Maki. My real given name is Abolfaz, the middle name. Seyed is more of a family title. It just means sir or something like that. Abolfaz is my given name. The meaning of it is… its actually an Arabic name even though I’m Persian, I’m from Iran. It’s two languages that are exchanged quite a bit, they are exchanged special names. I really don’t know what the meaning of Abolfaz is. But when I was born one of my uncles gave me the short name Ebi which is a short name for Abraham in Farsi and the name got stuck on me, so everybody calls me Ebi now.

Steve: That’s cool. when did you immigrate to the United States?

EBI: My family moved to the U.S. in 1996, November of 1996, so about 15 years ago.

STEVE: Why did you immigrate here?

EBI: I think that the main reason [is] my dad thought we were going to get a much better education here, he wanted us to go to med school that’s why we came here so I have five other siblings. Out of six kids, my mom, my dad and four of my siblings came to the U.S. My older brother is still in Iran, and he stayed back.

STEVE: What’s your family like?

EBI : What do you mean?

STEVE: What do they do and what are their personalities like?

EBI: My mom is very loving. She used to teach in Iran, she’s a teacher. When she came to the US she obviously couldn’t speak English. So she had to get a job so that we could have insurance and some money. My dad was a farmer slash business owner in Iran. He used to go back and forth once a year [from the U.S. to Iran] so he could take care of his business and help out my brother and bring some money back. My dad is not as loving as my mom. He is very, very demanding. I think anything good I know comes from my dad. He gave us a lot of good advice throughout the years and the siblings we are six [children], three brothers, three sisters. Boy girl boy girl and a boy and a girl. I am the third one obviously everybody’s a little bit different. Two of my sisters actually work at Teradata, an older sister and a younger sister, they work here. My younger brother he works at Booz Allen, it’s a consulting company and the other sister I have she doesn’t work she just stays home. And obviously my older brother is in Iran. He still takes care of the farm and the family business.

STEVE: What do you do at Teradata?

EBI: Well I’m sure your uncle [DJ Parker] can tell you a little bit more about what I do. I work in the financial department dealing with a lot of numbers obviously. I help out a sales team that sells Terradata to my faction in the US. So for example, some of my biggest customers are Apple, Sysco, Boeing and G.E. I take care of my faction’s finances so anything from revenue, expenses, cost of goods. So that’s what I do. I just crunch a lot of numbers.

STEVE: Do your siblings do similar things here?

EBI: My older sister works on the customer service side so sort of yes. She’s on the finance side so she takes care of the smaller portion of the business. My younger sister works in a management team and she’s more operations side.

STEVE: What were your living conditions in Iran and how did they change when you came to the US? EBI: well my living conditions, my parents were actually a pretty well to do family. We lived a pretty comfortable life for an Iranian family, but the living standards are totally different. So you can’t really compare the way I lived in Iran and the way I live in the US now. For example in the city I was born we probably lived in the top five percent of the population versus in the US where actually we are in the bottom of the middle class family. So the conditions relative to where we were, very good.

Steve: Can you tell me about your house and your land in Iran?

Ebi: The house… Our house wasn’t very big. Most houses in Iran they have…I shouldn’t say Iran…the city I come from they are walled, they’re gated, not very big. I would say the house I grew up in was about 16 to…1600 to 2000 square feet, so not a very big house. But probably the biggest difference between our house where I grew up and here, it was the guest room. We didn’t necessarily have another house, a guest house. The guest room was probably one third the size of the house. So there was a huge, huge room just for guests…if you have somebody coming in, staying with you, they always stay or if you had a party it was the guest house slash party room that you can go. The whole actually only had two bedrooms you know most of my siblings we shared our bedrooms.

Steve: If you could take one thing from Iran and bring it to the US what would it be?

Ebi: Um…that’s a pretty difficult question. I mean I don’t…from my perspective, if I could have my dad bring his family business here that would be very ideal. But unfortunately that’s very hard to do. They have a date farm, obviously you can’t grow dates in Dayton, Ohio. You can go out to the west like Arizona or Nevada and do dates but not here. What else…I mean …family, that’s the other thing you would bring. Just, so that’s a pretty difficult question…I really don’t know if I could pick only one thing to bring to the US.

Steve: Tell me about the date farm.

Ebi: Well approximately it’s about 80 acres so it’s not humungous. But there are probably about 2000 date trees. And a date tree, I don’t know if you know much about dates it looks very much just like a palm tree and they grow very high. They take a lot of work so before you can get any fruit out of a date tree it usually takes about 10 years. They require quite a bit of water. Obviously they have to be in warm weather. What else…and each date tree probably you can harvest close to I want to say at least 300 kilos…that’s 700 something pounds of dates in one good year.

Steve: Did anyone discriminate against you when you first came to the US?

Ebi: Obviously discrimination, anywhere you go there are discrimination…yes, but I didn’t let it stop me from what I was doing and what I wanted to do.

Steve: What was your native language and was it a difficult experience learning English?

Ebi: Native language is Farsi, and some people call it Persian. Persian is really the western name that the Greeks gave the Persians, the Farsi people. But the language is Farsi, the people are Farsi people, the country is called Iran. So some people say I am Persian, some people say I’m Iranian. Some people don’t mind either one. I am one of those…I don’t really mind if you call me Persian or Iranian. As far as learning the language, English, in Iran you’re required to take second languages. So Arabic, you have to take Arabic because the majority of population in Iran are Muslims so you are supposed to be able to read the Koran or understand it, so Arabic was a required language and English was a required language. However, you study those in high school just like Spanish is studies in high schools here so I couldn’t really speak any English when I came here to the US. I was 17 and I actually went to Oakwood high school and I want to say for almost the first 6 months I didn’t say much, just hi…bye…but it took me a good three years before I got a grasp on speaking.

Steve: Do you still speak Farsi?

Ebi: Absolutely. I mean I actually have a son…I am married to an American. Our son is two and a half years and I try to speak to him in Farsi as much as I can so he would pick up the language. But yeah… whenever I am with my parents I speak Farsi. Some of my aunts and uncles are actually here in Dayton, Ohio so when I see them obviously I speak in Farsi. Funny thing is my younger siblings, they were much younger when they came to the US so I speak English to them, although they can speak Farsi but we feel more comfortable speaking in English, at least they do.

Steve: What was your favorite childhood memory from Iran?

Ebi: Ummm…I have lots of favorite childhood memories. Just, I don’t know, maybe going to the farm, picking out…also on the farm besides dates we also have citrus fruit, oranges, all kinds of oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, so I think my favorite, what I miss most probably was going to the farm and being able to pick an orange and eat it right there, or help out at the farm.

Steve: How were the schools different in Iran than the US?

Ebi: The schools, especially the elementary…so in Iran you have elementary school, 1 through 5th grade, then you have middle school so we have 7…sorry, so 1 through 5th than middle school is three years versus the US is two years right? And then we have high school. But obviously you go through school for 12 years. I think in the elementary, middle and high school in Iran the structure is much better as far as teaching the students. There were a lot more math and sciences that you had to study in order to get through school. If you couldn’t pass you had to retake them, you had to go to summer school. They’re not as diverse as schools are here in the US. For example you couldn’t study for an art major, at least the city I came from. You either had a math major that you can pick in high school or you had a science major that you can pick in high school. One of the two. So a lot more math, a lot more science, however when you get to college obviously American colleges, American universities are the best. It was really, really hard to get into university in Iran. For example you take an SAT or ACT in the US, in Iran you take similar tests, but you have to score very high in order to get in. You don’t have very many options. For example in the state that I came from there were maybe 3 different universities in the whole state and just to give you perspective the population of the state is probably around 15 million people. So you know everybody was trying to get in to those schools but you had to be very good in high school in order to get a good test score in order to get into the schools. So getting into the universities was much, much tougher than in the US.

Steve: You talk about your birth city. Can you tell me more about it?

Ebi: Sure. It’s a pretty small historical city called Bam, spelled b-a-m, some people might recognize it because there was a huge earthquake in Bam about 8 years ago, 2003, wiped out half of the population. It’s a pretty historic city. There was actually the biggest citadel made out of mud and hay is located in Bam. When the earthquake happened the citadel was estimated to be older than 2000 years, so obviously there were not many earthquakes that happened before this big earthquake in 2003. But when the earthquake happened in 2003 a lot of people died, the whole citadel got destroyed, a lot of houses got destroyed because most of the houses were made out of brick, and hay and mud, so they were not earthquake proof because there was no history of having earthquakes around that area. Population wise the city itself I want to say about 80,000 people, at least when I was there, probably less now. The greater city population, you know with all the suburbs, probably about 200,000.

Steve: Can you tell me more about the citadel?

Ebi: Yeah…you can actually look up pictures if you like. It’s called Arg-E, Bam (A-r-g-e), Bam. And what Arg-e means, it’s actually city. And it’s walled in, the size of it is approximately three kilometers square. So just like any old town you see in the movies, for example in Gladiator, you see the movies that have the mud cities. So there’s inner city, where the elite live you know, where the king or whoever the governor was and down, and that inner city was walled in, and beyond that there was another city for the common people, and then there was a wall. Then outside of the main wall there were obviously farms that the common people usually did agricultural work. And I believe almost everybody migrated out of the old city, out of Arg-e, about 200 years ago. They migrated to the suburbs.

Steve: Can you tell me about the government of Iran? EBI: I think the way we categorize it in the U.S. is we call it a theocracy, so you have a parliament you have a president however the whole system is controlled by a religious leader known as the supreme leader and obviously people know his name its Hamen A if the government wants to do something the religious leader gets to veto it so there’s really not much that gets done as far as reforms because the religious leader is pretty extremist well I actually don’t think its that extremist compared to the other governments in the middle east he’s an old fashioned Muslim leader so that anything that contradicts the Muslim law he vetoes.

Steve: Can you tell me more about Islam and how it affects your life EBI: Islam is a monotheistic religion you believe in one God And say that Muhammad was the prophet and brings similar awards as Moses and Jesus did. As a Muslim you’re supposed to pray five times a day unfortunately I don’t do that. You’re supposed to fast almost every day 29 thirty days out of the year a month called Ramadan basically you don’t eat or drink after sunrise or fter sundown as a Muslim You’re supposed to travel to Mecha once in your lifetime I have not done that. You’re supposed to give to the poor I try to do that. And I can’t remember the fifth pillar. I try to do as many as I can I guess I’m a pick and choose I pick what I want what makes me happy. The meaning of Islam itself is peace there are a lot of different perspectives on Islam. It’s just like any other religion. Some people use it for bad needs some people use it to help themselves it has helped a lot of people like Catholicism. It’s like Christianity. People have used the religion to do bad things.

STEVE: How do you feel about those negative stereotypes people give Muslims.

EBI: I usually try to just make fun of them and joke about it that’s all I can do. I feel as a Muslim is that I can educate people. so for example with your uncle Dj he makes fun of me and I make fun of him but one of the best ways to educate people is to make fun of your religion constantly. The best way to deal with stereo typing is to educate people

STEVE: Can you tell me about your culture?

EBI:The Iranian culture if you take the religion away is just like the Italian culture it very family oriented people are very close to each other for example I came from a very small city and my parents knew everyone within a 5 block radius where as in the U.S. you may know your nextdoor neighbor and maybe the one behind you but that’s it. However my uncles family lived in Tehran, a much bigger cityand he only knew his neighbors in the apartment across the street. As far as culture goes its very family oriented Persians in general are very hospitapal. So for example as a westerner and you o to Iran and knock on somebody’s door anyone’s door they wont take advantage of you they will letyou in feed you and help you if you need it. STEVE: do you remember any of your neighbors in Iran EBI: in fact I do but most of them passed away in the earthquake however I do keep in contact with my friends on facebook STEVE: what was the hardest thing about immigrating to the U.S. EBI:I think for me Out of our family of six kids I was the only one who didn’t want to go to the U.S I think that I was seventeen I was a pretty popular kid in high school by the way high schools in iran were all segregated and boys and girls were separated beacause of the Islamic rule elementary schools were different you could mix them up but anyway I was a pretty popular kid in high school I was on track and going to med school and didn’t want to lose my friends and I felt that the us was this big bad thing like what you said about stereo typing in iran they alsoi stereo type about others too. So anyway it was really hard to leav my friends and learn the languageand my parents as loving as they are are very open minded. They did zero planning. We maybe had two weeks of planning we came to the us my mom couldn’t speak English my dad couldn’t speak English the kids couldn’t speak English we lived with my aunt who was very good to us she helped us out kinda advised us and guded us through our day to day life it was very difficult for me for the first two three years luckily they tried to go back once a year and stay in Iran that’s their home if you ask me what my home was I would say the Dayton Ohio because I’ve gotten used to the area however if you ask my parents they will say bam Iran because that’s where there friends are and if you ask the other kids the younger kids especially they will say Dayton,Ohio

STEVE: Did you have to help translate for your parents

EBI: Yah as soon as we were up and running my older sister helped a lot I still take care of most of my parents finances I even have access to all there bank accounts that’s how much they trust me t My mom does ok now she speaks English my dads probably to old and to shy and probably is incapable of speaking English because the older you get the harder it gets.

STEVE: Have you ever regretted coming to the U.S

EBI no my parents did because my dads expectation was that all his kids were going to med school

ANALYSIS

 * There are lots of stereotypes against immigrants. In U.S. history we read cartoons that implied a negative stereotype on immigrants of many different cultures. Ebi faced some stereotypes while first being introduced to the us “ ** Obviously discrimination, anywhere you go there are discrimination…yes, but I didn’t let it stop me from what I was doing and what I wanted to do.” Ebi said the best way to deal with stereotypes is to educate people.