BURST
It’s not a busy night at Pub 1905. A few people have come in from Jasper Avenue to play pool. Only a few tables are occupied. It’s slow enough that the bar manager doubles as the server, and he’s called into action to sweep up some broken glass after someone inadvertently knocks over a drink while lining up a pool shot.
Iraj is the sort of manager who has a smile for all of his customers, and gets to know the favourite drink orders of his regulars.
Yet, Iraj carries a burden. His wife lives in the area of Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. There is a plan in place to bring her to Canada, and he hopes they can be reunited by this autumn. Until then, he works… and waits.
He spoke to her a couple of days after the initial Israeli-American strikes, and hasn’t spoken to her since. But, despite his worry, his support for the American-Israeli incursion into Iran is strong. His family left Iran to get away from a theocratic regime, and he’s hopeful that a new, secular Iran will emerge from the ashes of these attacks.
“She called me two days after the first strike,” said Iraj. “Somehow, she got a hold of me. And I was like, ‘I hope everybody’s OK.’ And she was like, ‘Finally, Trump strikes.’ We were all hoping.”
He said in the days before the attack his wife was losing faith that the Americans and Israelis would actually follow up their sabre-rattling with action. But Iraj was confident that this time was different,
“She was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to attack. Like, we’re all just kind of sad.’ And I was like, ‘You don’t move that many troops for no reason. That’s billions of dollars on just fuel alone.’
“I sleep better now that this is happening. As it goes on longer, the uncertainty and my imagination kind of unravels. I get more and more worried, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, the price for freedom is a bunch of our lives over there.”
Iraj has lived in Canada since he was nine. He hopes to head abroad to meet his wife this fall and escort her back to Edmonton. He doesn’t want her traversing the airports alone.
There’s been a long-standing plan to bring her to Canada, and he’s worked with government officials here to make it happen, legally. He knows that he and his wife have to stick to the plan.
Iraj didn’t want his last name used because he worries that could link authorities in Iran to his wife.
‘More scared before the Trump attack’
But, even though bombs are falling, he feels better about his wife’s safety now than he did before the Ayatollah Khamenei was killed in the first wave of attacks. He’s hoping for regime change, and that his wife doesn’t have to leave in a cloak-and-dagger fashion. He feels she was living in more danger with the authoritarian government in place and unopposed.
“I was more scared before the Trump attack, because Iran is an open dictatorship,” he said.
The citizen protests that came before the attack would have created a series of brutal reprisals which would have made Iran an even more closed-off country, Iraj believes.
“I think If Trump were to not attack, they would have started to just close down, and then it would have been slowly teetering towards North Korean-style dictatorship, where you try to gain more and more control. Even Sharia law itself is horrendous, incompatible with freedoms in the West.”
If the regime changes, Iraj said he would actually consider going back to Iran with his wife in the future. But a lot has to change. Right now, he’s happy to be a proud Canadian, and he believes that people who come to this country should strive to learn what Canada is about and leave their cultural baggage at home. He said that people who come to Canada seeking refuge need to dedicate themselves to being productive members of society.
“I’m trying to get my wife out of Iran, because that was the plan from the beginning, right? But what I really want is Iran to be liberated and have a democracy and a secular society, and then maybe one day I’ll move there. I would never live under Sharia law, but I do want to get my wife out of there. But it’s not one of those situations where it’s like, ‘Iran sucks.’ Iran is actually pretty great. But given the war, it could be painted a little different.”
Iraj said that believes “90 per cent” of Iranians (and Iranian Canadians) support regime change.
But the Iranian Canadian Congress, which advertises itself as a non-partisan group, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this week asking him to condemn, not support, the American-Israeli attacks.
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