Being Iranian-American in the Deep South | Short Documentary
PBS Documentaries
0:18 What's up, big son?
0:29 Well, he's wanting to bite.
0:30 Yeah, he is.
0:31 He's fired up.
0:32 It's hard to believe.
0:33 This time last year, I carried him out of the woods in my pocket.
0:36 Really?
0:36 Yeah.
0:36 I gave him to the kids.
0:38 I figured he'd die.
0:39 He was too little.
0:39 Yeah.
0:40 Then I had to go back to work.
0:42 When I come back, he was up that big following him around like a dog.
0:46 Now look at him.
0:47 Turn into a bore hog.
0:49 Now getting mean.
0:50 Them little old teeth like that's the worst on a dog.
0:54 Oh yeah.
0:55 Yeah.
0:55 That's They're like knives.
0:56 These won't keep a hog's tooth from going through them.
1:00 Mhm.
1:00 But they save a rip.
1:02 And rips where you usually get your dogs killed.
1:04 But when they bury that knife up, get an organ, dump their guts.
1:11 Yep.
1:12 It's hard to pull them back from that.
1:20 That thing has took a lot of lives.
1:22 There's been a lot of pork poked with it.
1:25 That's what we may be one of our That will be the tool.
1:35 Yeah.
1:36 Yeah.
1:37 Yeah.
1:38 Yeah.
1:38 They say in like the early 1800s, late 1700s,
1:43 Arkansas was the largest deciduous forest in the world.
1:49 That's crazy, man.
1:51 That's why like this East Fork Wilderness,
1:55 I'm sure Bill Clinton made it a wilderness so nobody ever
1:58 find the bodies he buried in that son of a[ __] Bubba,
2:02 did you ever think of me as Middle Eastern when
2:04 I was growing up when we were in school together?
2:08 I never even wondered like where Sergeani come from.
2:12 Like I never crossed my mind.
2:14 Yeah, man.
2:14 You know what I mean?
2:16 Yeah.
2:16 You were always coolest.
2:17 You're always funny as hell.
2:20 I always just considered you how you're a Russellville boy.
2:27 And I think that that's how most everybody thought of me.
2:32 When I was growing up in Russellville, everybody treated my family really well.
2:37 Like we had we were we had good friends and good family.
2:41 But I remember like certain instances where like
2:44 people from my mom's church would come over.
2:47 with good intentions and they were good good men
2:49 and good people trying to lead my dad to Christianity.
2:52 You know, when you're a kid, you don't you can't articulate all that.
2:55 You have no idea.
2:56 You just feel the emotions and like I felt embarrassed,
2:59 you know, like what's wrong with my dad?
3:01 What's like why are these people coming
3:02 to my house and not somebody else's on Sunday evening?
3:04 Like why are we a special case?
3:07 You know, right?
3:08 I think as I got older,
3:10 I did everything I could to distance myself from my dad's side.
3:14 You know, I played football and I did all
3:17 those things and was got into duck hunting and deer hunting,
3:19 squirrel hunting with those guys and just,
3:21 you know, drove the four-wheel drive and I did everything
3:25 that I needed to do to be one of the guys.
3:29 Hell, you remember me in high school?
3:31 I was a Mhm.
3:32 I mean, this I think I always thought you were good.
3:36 You had good character, but you you you had had a lot of issues.
3:42 Piss and vinegar.
3:43 Yeah.
3:44 and was ignorant and I didn't understand how to uh express my emotions.
3:49 It was easier to go straight to mad, you know what I mean?
3:54 Mhm.
3:54 It took me well up into my early 20s to get over that.
3:59 Did you go did you go to counseling
4:00 or did you go to like anger management or anything?
4:02 Or did you I got my ass whooped a lot.
4:06 I like that.
4:08 How much different is the landscape in Iran than here?
4:12 There's hogs in Iran, right?
4:14 Yes, sir.
4:14 Hogs thrive in all environments.
4:17 Oh, yeah.
4:18 They're burly as hell, man.
4:22 And that's not every animal can do that.
4:29 Absolutely.
4:30 What were you hoping to gain from going over there?
4:35 The initial trip at the time, I don't think I could articulate it.
4:39 you know, think that there was a deep hunger for me
4:42 to just connect with my dad's side of the family, right?
4:47 It's such a rich history and a rich culture
4:54 and I just kind of blocked myself off from it, right?
5:03 What was the most shocking thing that like like culture shock?
5:06 The biggest thing that like So when I went there and hung out
5:12 with Ibrahim and he kills this hog and he just starts harvesting it
5:17 and bust out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label whiskey and starts
5:22 smoking sigs and then they end up like processing their hog and cooking it,
5:26 you know, on the grill, you know, like no big deal.
5:29 And I was just thinking like they're this is
5:33 what just like this would happen with Yeah.
5:44 I guess this would be a good place to turn loose as any.
5:49 Ready critters?
5:50 Here, here, here, here, here.
5:56 Find that out.
5:59 What' they do over in Iran?
6:02 One of them had like big big ass palm branches that he would use.
6:07 Yeah.
6:07 The other one would use rocks and then we would kind of split up
6:12 and they would contact my cousin and they say this one's coming, bust him.
6:22 Bust him.
6:24 Some deer hunter didn't find him.
6:27 Coy did.
6:28 Oh yeah.
6:29 Look here.
6:31 That's where a borehog been cutting.
6:34 They've been rubbing here.
6:35 Oh yeah.
6:36 This right here too, huh?
6:38 Yeah.
6:38 Them bors bars, them hogs come in here
6:41 and they'll cut this and rubbing their heads on it.
6:44 Get that scent on and they're getting this.
6:46 See that pine sap?
6:48 Yeah.
6:48 They're rubbing that behind their ears and stuff.
6:50 Killing bugs out.
6:51 But they'll cut that with their teeth.
6:53 Oh yeah.
6:54 Kind of like a buck.
6:56 There's more of their hairs in here, too.
6:59 Yeah.
6:59 Look how wide that track is.
7:02 I mean, that's a big hog.
7:06 You can see that's where his body laid.
7:11 See how the mud's What was your biggest fear like getting on the plane going
7:18 over there when Trump said he was going to bomb 52 cultural sites in Iran?
7:22 You know, my entire family there lives within
7:25 a 5 mile radius of six cultural sites.
7:28 They lived the fear of like wondering,
7:32 is this actually is this thumb[ __] really going to do it?
7:36 Yeah.
7:36 You know, I never had any clue
7:39 that there was anyone in Iran that wasn't America.
7:43 Burn that down.
7:44 Let's bomb these son of[ __] and cut all the Christians heads off.
7:49 Mhm.
7:49 before the conversation we had.
7:50 That's the what the world pumps out to people here.
7:54 Yeah, man.
7:55 And people are ignorant.
7:57 They're like dogs.
7:58 They'll eat whatever you throw in front of them.
8:01 Yeah.
8:01 But you put me in a position where Look, Andy's always been a great Mhm.
8:06 And those are his people.
8:09 Mhm.
8:09 Now I have some kind of connection to that.
8:12 Uhhuh.
8:13 And that'll make you change the way you think about Yeah.
8:16 Because before it was like out of sight, out of mind, you know,
8:20 they're in Iran, if they blow that to hell, I'll never see it.
8:23 Y So I'm like whatever.
8:25 But when I hear about this, if I run into you and you're in a, you know,
8:30 really bad place because your family just got bombed.
8:33 Mhm.
8:33 Well, then that's something that I've got to live with.
8:39 Mhm.
8:39 They found one.
8:41 We got him.
8:42 Come on.
8:46 Watch it.
9:45 What's the biggest misconception that you've heard
9:48 people say about not only our canons
9:53 but southerners or that people here are just dumb that we're just dumb.
9:59 The second one I would say is probably something to the effect of like,
10:03 oh, like, oh my god, I've never been through there.
10:06 Like, that sounds scary, you know?
10:08 Yeah.
10:08 That's the same as saying in Iran,
10:11 everybody's burning the American flag, you know?
10:17 Celebratory.
10:18 Yes, sir.
10:20 We ain't got no seagulls.
10:25 You don't see doctors getting off work to go over their dogs.
10:28 You know what I I agree.
10:30 Yeah.
10:30 If you see, you know,
10:32 these guys are guys that work with their hands and you know,
10:37 what do they call that?
10:40 Bluecollar, middle class, lower class.
10:42 And I that may be the way we done that may be too brutal for some people.
10:51 I understand.
10:52 But if you give a about quality of life for an animal,
10:57 and I'm not knocking hog farmers.
11:00 Mhm.
11:00 But that some[ __] right there is a hell of a lot
11:09 more healthy to eat than a somebody's raised in a car hog house.
11:19 Hate tape.
11:19 Mhm.
11:20 You come at me hateful and hateful is what you're going to get back.
11:24 If I never had that conversation with you,
11:26 I could have just lived the rest of my life
11:30 thinking that everyone in Iran was American Christian hating.
11:36 Woods to the table.
11:37 People need to set their pride aside and listen.
11:39 Yep.
11:39 And a lot of people are scared to be swayed another way.
11:43 You got to re-evaluate your whole life because you've been believing this one
11:48 certain way your whole life and now you're like, "Oh man, I'm wrong.
11:56 Dad, stop." It makes me feel better about me knowing better.
12:04 Yeah.
12:05 It's liberating when you're okay being wrong.
12:08 Yeah.
12:09 Hang on tight.
12:11 Give me your foot.
12:13 Who wants to live their whole life in wrong, man?
12:19 Now, you know, I think that like in some ways, Bubba,
12:22 there was this part of me as a kid that like was afraid
12:26 of this certain entity that I was like that I needed to be accepted by.
12:31 Does that make sense?
12:32 And in some ways, like you represent that entity,
12:35 the white American side of me that embodied what I wanted to be.
12:39 But at the But I did that at the cost
12:44 of like denying like who you were who I am.
12:48 Yeah.
12:49 You know, you've dealt with that pull from either side.
12:53 There's been times that I was battling internally.
12:59 The things that I just took as being depressed or I rate, you know.
13:11 Mhm.
13:11 with myself, I never thought and broke it down like me and you talked,
13:17 but then talking with you about that kind of stuff.
13:21 I'm like, "Oh, I've been there.
13:26 I know how you feel." In a lot of ways, it's like processing an animal, man.
13:34 Yeah.
13:34 But yeah, getting the good out of it, cutting out the bad.
13:43 When I was younger, I'd sit in a real quiet room.
13:45 I'd hear screaming in my head just screaming.
13:49 And I always thought, man, you[ __] up.
13:54 It made me feel good that I wasn't the only the struggles.
14:02 Sometimes you think the stuff that you think
14:05 internally is is like a secret even from yourself.
14:09 Look at the fat inside of it.
14:16 Beautiful.
14:16 That's speci just fry the whole son of a[ __] up for breakfast.
14:25 I don't know why, but it's like if I smash my thumb and hurts
14:28 real bad and I see another smash his thumb and it hurts him real bad,
14:32 it doesn't hurt mine as bad.
14:33 is a lot like look man you're not the only you're
14:37 dealing with suck it up and deal with it but you
14:41 can also like it also helps I think think outside yourself
14:44 like if you see somebody else hit their hand on a hammer
14:47 you're going to be like damn that hurt for that dude
14:50 you know like I think that that's like have a little bit
14:55 of uh oh what's it called empathy is that what you'd
15:00 say that'd be yes sir a little bit of empathy Yes, sir.
15:04 I don't get to have conversations with people like this much.
15:07 It's nice to be able to have a conversation with somebody
15:10 from an opposing view of things and then not be like,
15:17 "You you bigoted racist piece of I think
15:22 that's where me and you're pretty strong on things.
15:26 These conversations can take place." Yeah.
15:29 You know, like they they can take place.
15:36 Why is there not more people doing this?
15:42 The red stuff is saffron.
15:44 It's actually the most expensive thing in the world by weight.
15:49 No.
15:49 Yeah.
15:49 I don't know that I've ever had anything with saffron in it.
15:52 Gormma sabzi is the national dish of Iran and it's typically served with lamb,
15:58 but today we're eating it with your wild boar.
16:03 Straight here from the Ozark.
16:06 So, we got the Arkansas Iran, the Ozark Iran fusion going on.
16:13 Over in Iran, they make sausage.
16:16 They just cook a chunk meat.
16:18 They use lamb and goat, do they?
16:21 Yeah.
16:21 So they typically won't.
16:23 This is I mean that's why one of the things I like about this is
16:27 that because they don't most of the population is Muslim so they don't eat pork.
16:32 Oh yeah.
16:34 Well Andy your Iranian dish speaks for itself.
16:38 Me and you both man.
16:40 That's that's what's up.
16:41 That's some good stuff.
16:42 Thanks for sharing that with me man.
16:43 I might have to get some more of that.
16:44 Get you some more bud.
16:46 It is good isn't it man?
16:47 I like that.
16:48 That's get you some, man.
16:50 It's that's the first Middle Eastern food I believe I've ever ate.
16:56 Really?
16:57 I Yeah, I would say 100%.
16:59 That's the first Middle Eastern food I've ever ate.
17:03 That makes sense, man.
17:07 That makes sense.
17:11 You think about it, Andy.
17:12 When we were younger, you had a You had a temper when you was younger.
17:14 Mhm.
17:15 I had a horrible temper.
17:16 Mhm.
17:17 And I used to let that sit and I'd get madder and madder and madder about it.
17:22 And then I usually when I blew up on it,
17:25 I blew up on somebody that didn't deserve it.
17:28 And you know, I wasn't even that mad at them.
17:32 But they just happened to be there the day that I couldn't cork it anymore.
17:37 And that's what's going to happen to this country.
17:40 Death by a thousand cuts.
17:41 And when we finally do explode, we're probably going to explode on the wrong
17:50 But I think that the conversations should come first.
17:52 We should have those hard conversations.
17:54 These conversations that any of us can have, you know.
18:00 That's a hell of a journey, big son.
18:06 It's got to start somewhere, brother.