Opinion | Melody Moezzi: Celebrating the Fourth of July as an Iranian-American patriot — who's never felt so hated. - NBCNewsTHINK
When I told my mom that I was writing this piece, she spoke for 20 minutes straight about all the fond memories she has of going to the American Embassy in Tehran as a child with Auntie Barbara to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July. “They were the best fireworks,” she tells me now. “Better than any we ever see in America.”
Today, my parents are both retired and living in Southern California, where they are members of an even larger Iranian-American community that now includes many of the same families we knew in Dayton. They’ve also started studying Spanish and adding avocado to nearly everything, including theirThey live 15 miles from the Mexican border and less than a mile from the San Diego Naval Base.
Ultimately, no matter how conflicted I am about my place in America and America’s place in the world at the moment, I am a proud American. But like so many of those seeking refuge in America today, my parents came here from a country that the United States helped wreck by staging a coup and fostering a war. If not for thethat overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, there would have been little to no impetus, let alone support, for the so-called Islamic Revolution that ensued in 1979.
To be sure, like many Americans, my family and I have experienced Trump’s presidency as an era of pure psychological warfare. Indeed, as an Iranian-American Muslim woman, I’ve never felt so hated and unsafe in my own country. But ultimately, no matter how conflicted I am about my place in America and America’s place in the world at the moment, I am a proud American.
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