DEMONSTRATION is scheduled ON BLACK DAY OF APRIL 28, 2000 at 11:00 AM In Washington DC in Front of the White House.

Somebody told me of your website. It was most interesting to read. However, with us it is "the other way round". My wife is Iranian and I am a Swiss man. We are together for 5 years now (whereof 3 years married). This kind of relationship is quite different from the woman-foreign-man-Iranian style. Is there a website called "shoharkhaleh" which is for us foreign men?

There are just two things I would like to mention here:

Travelling to Iran:

Learning Farsi:

Sorry for the male intrusion

Thomas Maurer

The "Loving a Muslim" (LaM) mailing list is a forum and support group for non-Muslim women (mostly Christian) dating or married to Muslim men. The purpose is to share our experiences and questions among ourselves, learn from each other and encourage each other.

Please visit our site and join LaM mailing list to participate.

I have just finished browsing through your web site and enjoyed it very much. I have been with an Irainian man for 5 years and we share a 4 year old son. He is a good man, and his family has been very welcoming. His mother came and stayed with us for almost 2 weeks, and I enjoyed her visit a great deal. She did not speak much english, but we did have great conversations using the farsi words I knew and the english words she knew. I was sad to see her go, and wish that I was able to travel to Iran to see her. It can be quite costly to travel there from Canada, but I do hope to one day go there.

I have done a great deal of reading about Iran and learned much about the culture, and find it to be one of the most beautiful cultures around. I really love the food, and enjoy cooking it. I have also learned to enjoy eating a lot of rice!!

I think that interracial relationships can be wonderful because you can have the best of 2 cultures, and I want our son to know both of them. I also think that children from interracial relationships are the most beautiful children, because they inherit the best characteristics from both cultures.

I also think that there are a lot of misconceptions about Iran and people, especially men, from Iran. I think that Western society may have more problems then Iranian society, because we can be a very rude and disrespectful culture. Also, abuse happens every where. Women in western society are probably being abuse more than Iranain women, however, there abuse is conceptualized differently because their laws are different from ours. Don't get me wrong, I love where I am from, but I hate how people are constantly giving me the reactions that they are when they hear that I am with an Iranian man. I love him dearly, and am proud that he is from Iran!!! May!! :w

What a wonderful initiative, to set up a site for multicultural relationships! My partner and I have been together for almost five years. He was born in Iran and moved to the US when he was 11. We don't experience any other problems than anybody else would. My mother-in-law is the sweetest person on earth, but unfortunately she never learned to speak English. I myself am from the Netherlands and have been searching for Farsi classes, but haven't been very successful yet. It would be nice if one day, when my mother-in-law calls, I can surprise her and have a conversation with her. What I'm hoping is that maybe someone who reads this can help me find out ways to get accustomed to the language. It would be fun to know some Persian expressions and sayings. Good luck to all of you. Manuela

Zanamu, I have some suggestions and ideas.

1. Ideas for teaching children both Farsi and English and developing fluency in both languages.
2. Tips for traveling to Iran with a small child (under 1 year old)
3. Ideas for teaching religion to a child whose parents are of different religions
4. Ideas for teaching Iranian culture as well as American culture to a child
5. Tips for traveling to Iran for the first time

Other Ideas:

• To have a travel area where people can write about their experiences while traveling to Iran. Perhaps we could include pictures, too.
• To have a list of suggested books for learning Farsi. Also include where the books can be purchased.
• To have a list of suggested books for learning about Iranian culture.
• To have an area where people can talk about cultural difficulties that have come up during their marriages and how the difficulties were resolved.
• To have an Iranian/American joke area
• To have a Iranian recipe area
• To have a cheap airfare to Iran area where we can recommend consolidators who can be trusted

I just visited your site and found it very interesting. I think it is a wonderful idea to have a site where non-Iranian members of Iranian communities across the globe can express their feelings and share their experiences on such issues as the Iranian culture, the Iranian-Amerian family, the Iranian-American identity, and the second generation Iranian-Americans who have a non-Iranian parent. As a social scientist with trainings in cultural and cross-cultural issues, I have to admit that these are some of the most urgent, but the least scholarly investigated issues, that have concerned many Iranian-American or I should say Iranian-NonIranian families in exile.

I hope more people visit you site and share their thoughts and feelings as well as their suggestions. I will definitely visit your site periodically and will try to share my views with other. Good luck to you and best wishes.

Mohsen

I am a mother of four and a new addition to the Iranian community through marriage.

My name is Annette and I have four children Savita, Kaevon, Arian and Keyaan who all speak the Persian language but I wanted to keep their interest in the written language as well.

To do this I created and designed a simple alef ba ye farsi poster with full colour and beautiful illustrations to help them remember and learn the letters.

I would like to get this poster out to other parents to help their children learn the language just like mine. There is no monetary interest in this, whatever it is, it covers my cost for the poster and helps me to finance a free colouring sheet which I create and distribute to Iranian children in Canada to encourage them to learn words and writing. In Shahrvand's newspaper from Friday April 24th 1998, please visit the children's page and you can see an example of the colouring sheet that I do, their web site is www.shahrvand.com.

The name of the poster is Avalien Ghadam and I would like to let parents know that it's available. The price is $12.00 Cdn and includes taxes and shipping and handling. The size is 22" x 34" and it's a beautiful four colour.

To order the poster in US, send a $10 money order (including shipping & handling) to;

Annette Baratifar
P.O. Box 31056
475 Westney Road N.
Ajax, ON
L1T 3V2

My e-mail address is Annette.Despot@grace.com

Thanks, Annette