I'm not there with its people to bear their sufferings with them. Maybe if I was, I wouldn't have said this, but I love Tehran. I have nothing but good memories from it, and I'm always proud to tell my Iranian and non-Iranian friends that I'm from Tehran. The city with the population of 15 million. A city where the diversity you'll experience sometimes far exceeds what you will see in Dubai or Canada! People don't have to be from different countries to be considered diverse.

All great cities have ugly scenes. Tehran, is clearly far from ideal, but for what it's worth, it's where I was born, and where I will ultimately belong. I might have failed to help it flourish as a citizen, but I will always love it, perhaps, not because of what it really is, but because of the childhood memories that I have from it.

Pooya | March 27, 2006 08:25 AM

---