Social "International Interview" Thread--All Are Welcome!

(Please excuse the double post--can I blame it on the attack of insomnia I'm experiencing at the moment?)

Meant to mention that I also particularly enjoyed Violent Violet Menace's earlier post about the impact of döner kebabs upon Norwegians' late night food cravings ("Do not separate a Norwegian from his bender kebab..."). The comment triggered the fond food memories I have of enjoying (non-bender) döner kebabs in Berlin some years ago ...That in turn prompted me to look at the (English) Wikipedia page on döner kebabs....Reading that "Similar dishes cooked on a vertical rotisserie are the Arab shawarma, Greek gyros, and Mexican al pastor." made me wonder if there is any "version" of the döner kebab in Iranian cuisine? Under the "Regional variations" section of the article, it did list Azerbaijan but not Iran...

 

No, the döner variety is not as popular in Iran as in Turkey and the Levant (The Levant was part of the Ottoman empire at the time of the invention of the döner kebab. Shawarma is an arabized pronunciation of çevirme, which is another Turkish word for rotating). It exists as street food in some parts of Iran as "kabab torki" (Turkish kebab). People know of it, but it's not regarded as highly as other kinds of kabab. Let's start with taking a step back. Kabab is an Arabic verb with cognates in other Semitic languages that simply means to roast or grill something. It's also a noun, in that anything that is roasted then becomes kabab. Lamb kabab, chicken kabab and so on. Traditionally, this has been minced meat or cuts of meat on a skewer. The döner variety, to my knowledge, is always made out of forcemeat. Perhaps there are non-forcemeat varieties, but what the world mainly thinks of as döner kebabs is huge slabs of forcemeat on a vertical spit. Now, forcemeat, as you know, is basically the same thing sausages are made of, and we've all heard the adage that if you knew how a sausage is made, you'd never want one again. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong about forcemeat, but the percentage of fat is usually higher than regular minced meat (which is also one of the reasons why it's so tasty ), which means that eating it is always followed with a distinct strain on my conscience. It certainly doesn't help that they dunk the whole ensemble in ladles of dressing too! In the end, you're wondering "am I in reality eating 50% fat, accompanied by optional meat and vegetables?"

 

Yeah, I also noted that the English Wik entry on it had a sub-section for "Health Concerns."

Döner kebabs are not as readily available* as cheap/fast food where I live (they are of course in larger American cities like New York, etc.), so I'm sure that's a big part of the reason it sticks out in my Berlin memories. Also because one time we got döner kebabs there, my husband and I had a really fun conversation with the guy who sold them to us. He kept asking us what the English words were for certain things, and we fondly remember his particular, bemused fascination with the word "cucumber," which clearly sounded absurdly silly to his ear as he kept repeating it and laughing

*Edit: to clarify--you can definitely get kebabs and shawarmas of various types in smaller American cities, but you'd typically have to go to a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant (and there are certainly usually a number of inexpensive ones in any decent-sized American city). You don't generally see them as commonly available as "street food" here except in larger cities. But then of course you don't generally see as much "street food" of any type (hot dogs etc) unless you're in a more urban area to begin with...

 

I agree. Cucumber is a funny and peculiar word. A Persian word that often cracks up foreigners is albaloo, which means sour cherry.

 

Objection, Your Honour!

First of all, I've already made sausages and even knowing what goes in them I still have no objection eating them. (The truth is, though, that I suddenly understood why I hate commercial sausages, but that's another story ) Second, I don't know what döner is made of in most other countries, but in Greece it's definitely not forcemeat. Gyros is slices of actual pork on a vertical skewer, which means that it's much nicer than Egyptian shawarma, for instance – in proper gyros you get pieces of crisply roasted pork and pork fat, not that tasteless bland mushy beef stuff they serve in Egypt. The best moment to get gyros is when they start it, because all the pieces on ths skewer aren't the same size and the edges that will be cut off get even crisper thanks to that

I'll grant you that it's not precisely a health food, especially if you like your pita to be oiled a bit before it's grilled – but then what's the point of bland health food anyway?

EDIT: I have (unsurprisingly) another food-related question for VVM, but I'll wait a bit to ask it.

 

How would you describe the norwegian pizza and what toppings seems to be popular?

 

The Norwegian pizza, much like most of the world outside Italy, is just a mishmash of whatever people want to put on it. If this is a convoluted way of asking me whether they put pineapple on their pizzas, I can report that the national opinion on the matter is split. As is popular to say in Norway: Smaken er som baken; den er delt. Translation: Tastes (opinions) are like behinds (butts); they are split.

I remember the thread incessantly asking me about Norwegian cuisine before, and I wanted to get out of answering that question, but on second thought, I think the answer is actually simpler than I made it out to be in my head. Isn't it just 'white people food' in general? I mean, pasta originated from Italy, but the entire world eats it now, right? Norwegians, I imagine eat much the same as the rest of Europe and North America. Pizza, pasta, tacos, lasagna, sushi, wok, Indian chicken curry dishes, burgers, tapas et c. People mix and match from all over the world these days. Norwegians do stereotype themselves as always having tacos on Fridays, though. It's because it's generally something that you can assume anyone will like (minced meat with vegetables in flatbread) and requires minimum time and effort. Ideal for kicking off the weekend in front of the telly with Dancing With the Stars, so to speak. Speaking of pizza, if I'm not mistaken, we are ranked rather high in the world in frozen pizza consumption, which leads people to commonly joke that it's our national dish. Is that what you were getting at with your question?

Oh, and every autumn, at slaughtering season, it's tradition to make a dish called Fårikål (literally 'sheep in kale'), which is sheep and kale boiled together with whole peppercorns pressed into the meat. It's no longer as popular as it used to be. I get the impression that people still make it every autumn only to preserve the tradition itself. At Christmas, half or more of the population eats "ribbe" on Christmas Eve, which is a pork rib steak. It's also popular to eat Pinnekjøtt (literally 'stick meat') in the west, which is a dish made of cured mutton. It's disputed whether the name 'stick meat' refers to the ribs themselves or the sticks they place the meat on when they store it during the curing process. In any case, for a more thorough rundown of traditional Norwegian cuisine than I am able to provide without forgetting and skipping over things, I recommend reading this.

 

^that saying is awesome

Here's another question for Violent Violet Menace in relation to his family's experience as immigrants in Norway:

To what extent did (or do) you or your family ever encounter ethnic/cultural prejudice?

 

Pensivia

 

I have not read Samarkand, but from reading the blurb about it, I can see that it touches on the 1906 constitutional revolution, which sought to modernise Iran's government into a constitutional monarchy, and I'm happy that you consequently know about that part of our history. It shows that our desire and efforts to move toward democracy really started over 100 years ago. But then the next Qajar king, Mohammad Ali, under pressure from the British and the Russians bombarded his own parliament with members of the assembly still inside (!) to reverse the revolution and revert to an absolute monarchy. When Reza Savadkoohi aka Reza Khan committed a coup against the ineffective Qajar monarchs and seized power, he had the support of Parliament. He initially sought to title himself President, and modeled his modernisation project on Atatürk's concurrent efforts in the foundation of the new Turkish state. Ironically, it was Parliament that wanted him to crown himself king for continuity, in small part because they predicted that a presidency would be a foreign concept for Iranians to grasp at the time, but for the most part to placate the clergy, whom the Qajar dynasty had allowed to become a powerful and influential block of the societal structure. They were opposed to the very idea of a presidency, calculating that it would be against their interests.

Thus Reza Khan crowned himself king (shah), and adopted the name Pahlavi for his royal house, after the domestic name for the Middle Persian language of antiquity (spoken in Sassanid times). Reza Shah Pahlavi. Although Reza Shah ruled autocratically, he is near universally held in high regard except by die-hard loyalists of the Islamic Republic who cannot bring themselves to view anything associated with the two Pahlavi kings in a favourable light. But the facts speak for themselves. Iran went from a mismanaged agriculture-based feudal economy, run no differently from a mediaeval kingdom with one prime minister (vazir) under the king in charge of everything (which was not much) on the king's behalf, and where the sole avenue of education was either going abroad or joining a religious seminary, to a nation-state in the modern sense with a public school system, transition toward industrialisation, governmental administration divided and delegated to specialised ministries and rapid infrastructural development. Even though he was an autocrat, it can't be denied that he really oversaw Iran's development into a modern state during his 20 years in power. When the allied powers forced him to abdicate in favour of his son in 1941, his son was still too young to rule, meaning that the Parliament gained more power. Over the next ten years, this meant that we had a genuine constitutional monarchy where the king was mostly a ceremonial figure, until Prime Minister Mossadegh's move to nationalise the oil industry led to the joint US-British-led coup in 1953 that placed the PM in house arrest and the young king Mohammad Reza in absolute power. Parliament remained in place, but like during his father's reign, rather than the king being a figurehead, the parliament was the figurehead, serving merely as a consultative assembly for the king.

This also touches on Pensivia's question about prejudices. Many people assume that because the Islamic Republic has been in power for 40 years, and because we have not risen up against it, that we as a people either support the system, or do not care enough to change it. But it must be noted that almost immediately following the revolution in 1979, we were invaded by a Western-backed Iraq, and were at far for 8 years. In the reconstruction years after the war, the appetite for uprising understandably wasn't there, and in the two recent decades we haven't been blind to what is happening around us in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Egypt. The cost of uprising is high. We would rather try to slowly reform a corrupt system than to descend into the sort of chaos that reigns there. Even taking our own history as a lesson, the last time we engaged in sudden upheaval, we got something worse in return for our trouble.

Even the French Revolution took place over a tumultuous 10 years of upheaval, and even after all that, Napoleon took power.

 

Do you know of any norwegian and/or iranian fantasy or science-fiction that you would recommend?

 

I don't know if you play video games, but from your own country, I would recommend DICE's two Mirror's Edge games. They are fun to play and have a very stylish and attractive science fiction aesthetic. The Norwegian development house Funcom has made the two critically acclaimed fantasy point-and-click adventure games The Longest Journey and its spiritual successor Dreamfall. There is also the episodic series Dreamfall Chapters, released between 2014 and -16. Furthermore, we have Teslagrad, made by a small startup development house in Bergen that is set in a steampunk alternative universe.

There is an "Iranian" vampire movie (!) called A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) that is set in the fictional Bad City. It's produced in the US, but played by Iranian actors and the dialogue is in Persian. I haven't seen it myself, but I've read that it's not bad. Speaking of video games, there was an Iranian-made fantasy action game released around 5 years ago or thereabouts called Garshasp. The game's story and setting borrows from Iranian mythology and folklore. It's rough around the edges and doesn't have the polish of a Western- or Japanese-made game, but is a commendable effort from what I've read. I once saw it at the library here in Oslo, but didn't pick it up. Instead, I borrowed a point-and-click detective game set in Tehran in the 1930s, but I was too busy with school at the time to invest much time in it, so it just became a fun novelty for a couple of days and then I returned it.

For Iranian mythology and fantasy that you can read, however, ask your library about the Shahnameh, or The Book of Kings. I haven't read this myself, but all Iranians, at least within the country will be familiar with this work. In the diaspora, not so much. This is our Homerian epic if you will, and chronicles the exploits of all the ancient pre-Islamic kings, at least according to folklore. The funny thing about it is that the latter parts of it features real Sassanid kings and attributes events to them, which might be based, at least in some part, in reality, while the beginning half is completely fantastical. This work was written and compiled by the celebrated poet Ferdowsi around the 10th century, and can almost singlehandedly be credited with keeping the Iranian identity alive and the resurgence of the Persian language after the Arab conquests. Mediaeval kings of Turkic origin who ruled India and had really nothing to do with Iran proper named themselves after kings in this work.

This is a phenomenon of Iranian culture, that it created what some historians have dubbed the "Persianate" cultural sphere, which means that you will see foreign rulers adopting, idealising and further spreading Persian language and culture in places that have nothing to do with Iran as such. So that rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal dynasty of India will title themselves Shah, and that both the Indian and Ottoman royal courts would cultivate and produce Persian poetry. The Taj Mahal itself is a prime example of Persian architecture, yet it's built by a Turkic ruler in India. Of course, this concept is old news to Chyntuck. Foreign rulers and societies adopting Greek culture and styling themselves Greek goes back to antiquity. And Anglo-American culture really dominates the world today, to the extent that, for example, upper class Indians in today's society will mix in English vernacular in their everyday speech as a marker of status.

 

To follow up on Pensivia's question, I asked my parents and, like me, they have never experienced overt expressions of racism or bigotry. But your question is regarding prejudice, which is a bit different from bigotry. Prejudices may even be benign, like when people assume that Asian children are good students. It's a positive stereotype, but still a stereotype.

There was a short period of my childhood in primary school where I used to get harassed by some classmates who used to gang up on me on my way home from school. In hindsight, it wasn't that serious, as they never beat me up, but they would push me around and throw slurs at me. Paki was a popular one. But, being that we were all so small, I'm not sure if you can class that as racism, really. Kids that small aren't bigoted. More likely, they were just looking for something to bully me with, and ethnic slurs were the easy go-to choice. In my adult life I've never felt overtly that someone has looked down on me or feared me because of how I look and what they might assume about me. On the whole, though, it's rare for Iranians to experience that sort of thing in recent decades, because we're neither outwardly religious nor that many in number. We don't tend to group together like other immigrant communities and we tend to make efforts to blend in more than other immigrant groups. So, the kind of people who would have negative attitudes toward immigrants and Muslims in the first place tend to single us out as "the good ones". And, sadly, rather than stick up for the other "bad ones", we tend to accept this dubious flattery and run with it. Because our diaspora is by and large irreligious, we're not directly offended by anti-Muslim sentiment either, and are sort of apathetic to it. It doesn't feel like an attack on our identity in our community like it does in other immigrant groups.

I don't wear a full beard and I'm not a woman with a veil. If I were one of those things, or if I belonged to an immigrant group associated with a poor track record of integration, like Somalis, I would likely feel more affected by prejudice. I have light skin, am not religious and don't have an accent, all of which makes my situation easier. Even so, I am always aware of the fact that my foreign name makes it harder for me to get hired, and that I have to be twice as qualified as a native Norwegian. I don't work twice as hard, but I know that that is really what I should be doing. I know that if I were ever to (highly unlikely, but still) do something incredible or heroic and become famous, I would be called a Norwegian, whereas if I were ever to commit a crime, I would be called an Iranian or an immigrant.

EDIT: I want to make it clear, though, that I am on the whole happy about living here, and don't hold any resentment toward Norwegians.

Case in point: being that I live here, I didn't watch any Iranian media growing up, but there was this one puppet show I used to watch during my childhood called 'Kolah Ghermezi' ('The one with the red cap', or 'Red Cappy', if you will). It's a sort of Iranian version of Sesame Street, where there's a host called, conveniently, "Mr. Host" and a little puppet boy with a red cap. It started in the mid 90s and I think it's still going, though I only watched it for a brief stint when it used to air on Swedish state TV. Yes, that's right! In the weekend mornings, I think it was 10 to 12 AM or some such, Swedish state TV would air children's programming in the languages of the largest immigrant groups in that country, with half an hour devoted to each. So, like four languages on Saturday mornings and another four on Sunday. This was in a segment of programming called UR (Gamiel and Obi Anne are probably somewhat familiar with this). I don't know if this still persists today. It might have been discontinued. Anyway, what I wanted to highlight, is that it was thanks to Swedish state TV that I was introduced to this programme! Progressive folk, those Swedes.

As you can tell from this page, artists have signed their works as far back as the 15th century, but it has not been a widespread practice until later. The page I linked to features some prominent artists. Today, Mahmoud Farshchian is the pre-eminent artist in the field. When Googling for sample paintings to put in my post, the results were either mediaeval works or his paintings.

Regarding your first question, all of it is wrong. Omar Khayyām is certainly viewed as one of the greats (especially after the revolution), but not the greatest. He is simply one of the greats alongside figures like Hāfez, Sa'di, Ferdowsi, and Rūmi. Rūmi, I think, is more popular overall than Khayyām, even abroad. I remember reading that Rūmi's Masnavi/Mathnavi is the most bought poetry collection in the world. I think Hāfez and Sa'di are considered the two principal giants of Persian poetry domestically. Abbas Kiarostami is not that well known in Iran, and certainly nobody knows Marjane Satrapi. So, your prediction that what people themselves hold in high esteem would be different to what foreigners assume is entirely correct.

I've seen Satrapi's Persepolis film, and consider it a very good representation of Iranian 20th century history and how the average Iranian views it. I know you don't play video games, but another piece of media that captures the zeitgeist of the 1979 revolution in a very accurate way is the game called "1979 Revolution: Black Friday", which you can find both on Steam and on GOG.com for PCs. It's a simple game to play as well, an entirely narrative-focused point-and-click interactive movie. Your dialogue choices will change the course of the narrative toward the conclusion. It's not taxing on the hardware to run either, so it will run just fine on just about any laptop.

Regarding Kiarostami, it's not that strange that he is not that celebrated in Iran as abroad. His films don't have broad appeal. Iranian audiences generally gravitate toward comedies. People have enough stresses and troubles in their lives as is. Kiarostami's films are more contemplative and meandering. They're more like musings on life, really. They don't have that much plot, even; they're just... I don't know, character studies? To compare, it's like if I were to think that the films of John Carpenter, David Lynch or David Cronenberg are smash hit tentpoles of American audiences. They're not. Those auteurs have niche appeal, but they are very good at what they do and are therefore acclaimed and praised internationally. American films that go to the Tribeca and Sundance film festivals and the like are likewise not pictures with broad appeal. It's the same with Kiarostami, Makhmalbāf and Panāhi's films.

 

Before I ask my next question I want to say once more how awesome I find it Violent Violet Menace that you take the time to give us such detailed, well-thought-out answers. I'm learning a lot right now

So, my question, and unsurprisingly it has to do with food. Tell us about Iranian rice, please

There are so many Iranian dishes that use rice in so many different forms. What are your favourites? What do you recommend we try? Any recipes you (or your parents) would be willing to share?

Also, on a less mouth-watering level, are there any known historical/climatic reasons that explain the presence of so much rice in Persian cuisine? Is it produced locally, and does that mean that there are extensive irrigation systems? I know that Ibn Sina is considered the father of pilaf, but that's about all I know about it.

 

Rice was brought over by the Mongols from China, if I remember correctly. I believe the Iranian method of preparing it was then spread via the Timurids and the Mughals as a cultural export to India. There are rice farms in the northern provinces overlooking the Caspian Sea, but in addition to that, we use Indian rice. Northern Iran is very lush.

About Avicenna and inventing pilaf (or polow/polou, as we call it), I really don't know. But since you mentioned him, I watched this recently and recommend it.

Edit: I think my final edit of the above post was after your reply, so if you haven't read the final paragraphs, go back and read them. There, I answer your initial question about perceived Iranian giants, viewed from the outside as opposed to the domestic view.

 

Can you tell us the true history of the secretive Norwegian Ninjas or will they make you disappear if you do?

 

This is pure gold.

 

Today, I learned from overhearing a conversation that you call damp weather sour. In Norway, we call cold weather with a biting freezing wind sour.

To the American readers of the thread, I recommend that you try to seek out the reality show Alt for Norge (marketed in the US as The Great Norway Adventure). It features a new group of American contestants with Norwegian ancestry winning a trip to Norway every season, where they will be competing in challenges in each episode to become as Norwegian as possible by doing typically Norwegian things and knowing trivia. The winner of the season wins a cash prize and research into their family history about where exactly they're from and who their closest living relatives are. There are also Swedish and Danish versions of the same show.

 

Sorry for the late reply.

The short version is that I don't know but I think that, beside the points you mentioned, that the standards norwegian farmers have to work under are a bit higher than most of Europe's thereby making it more expensive to produce the food which mean that it costs more in the stores. But at the same time farming is heavily subsidised in Norway since they early decided that they wanted their whole country to live and decided to subsidize farmers, thereby making it possible to be a small time farmer in Norway (something that is in practice impossible in Sweden).

I know that by Swedish standard everything is expensive in Norway (and Sweden is often seen as expensive by outsiders) which is the reason for why norwegians travel over the border to buy large amount of food and other stuff from Sweden.
Sweden actually have Towns who more or less live from the border shopping.

I made a quick look around but the only other language I could find childrens program in was Sami, but I could have missed stuff. When it comes to radio Sveriges Radio (the radio part of public broadcasting service) have one chanel, P6, where they have programs and music in many different languages.

 

Thank you for those contributions, Gamiel! Much appreciated.

Back to the question about rice. There isn't that much hocus pocus to our way of cooking it versus other methods. We like our rice to be more grainy as opposed to the more sticky texture it has the way East Asians eat it. To achieve this, one thing we do is to wash it before cooking to remove some of the starch. Soak, run it through a colander, repeat once or twice. The main difference in the way we prepare it, though, is that after boiling it, we return it to the pot and steam it. You add some oil to the bottom of your pot, a little bit of water, wrap the lid of your pot in a towel and wait. When it's done, you will have long grains that don't stick. If you use a non-stick pot, you can reverse the pot right onto your plate and get a beautiful golden crust that we call tahdig (lit. "bottom of the pot"). Here's a more thorough guide.

Look around that site for other recipes. Returning to the topic of pilaf or polow: we call rice in general berenj (Turks have borrowed this as 'birinç'). In a dish, we call it chelo if it's plain (as in chelo kabab -- rice with kabab) and polow if it's mixed with something during cooking. Examples of polow dishes are lubiya polow (rice cooked with green beans, minced meat and assortments), baghali polow (cooked with fava beans and herbs, mainly dill, I think), sabzi polow (with an assortment of herbs), zereshk polow (with barberry and saffron), adas polow (with lentils and assortments), shirin polow ('shirin' means 'sweet', cooked with raisins and/or other dried fruits). There are probably more that I can't think of right now, and there are regional and local variations of each of these, just as you will find a million different variations that purport to be "pasta Bolognese".

Zereshk polo usually goes together with chicken. It's not eaten on its own. The same goes for some of the others I mentioned. Sabzi polo is with fish. Baghali polo is with meatballs. And so on. If it doesn't have some kind of meat as one of it's ingredients, it's likely added to it on the side. Speaking of pasta, the Iranian way of cooking pasta is the same as with rice. After boiling and running off the water, we return it to the pot with slices of potato at the bottom of the pot, and with layers of the sauce and pasta stacked interchangeably. You steam it for a while and stir it all together before serving. It's possible to flip the pot into the plate with this too for a golden potato crust, but it might collapse.

My favourite dish is chelo with a stew called 'ghormeh sabzi'. The Indian word 'korma' is likely of the same origin. I believe 'ghormeh' simply means stew, but we usually use the word khoresh/khoresht for stew. Funnily enough, the word khoresh means "something that you eat". Iranian and Indian cuisine is some of the most time-consuming in the world, so I advise against starting with the stews. Begin with something simpler. But yeah, ghormeh sabzi is a stew of mutton, dried limes, beans and an assortment of herbs. Many foreigners cite this as their favourite Iranian dish too. Other popular stew dishes are 'gheymeh bademjan' or just 'gheymeh' and 'fesenjan / fesenjoon'.

The simplest dish you can make is probably chelo kabab. You can't be roasting your meat on a skewer every day, right? So, usually people fry it in their pan. Run an onion through a grater or crush it in a blender. Mix it into your minced meat, add seasoning and fry in pan. When the meat's done, roast some tomato slices in the pan and you're done. Sumac is an essential condiment.

Edit: Forgot to mention that you have to use Basmati rice, not Jasmine.

Edit 2: It turns out that 'ghormeh' does not in fact mean stew. Rather, in the days before refrigerators and freezers, a way to preserve meat for long storage was to cook the meat, then soak it in its own fat. Ghormeh thus refers to cooked meat that is stored in a pot of its own fat. Any fat the meat might have absorbed during storage will separate from the meat when it's reheated. The name 'ghormeh sabzi' means that the meat used in the stew is pieces of stored mutton, cooked together with 'sabzi' (herbs).

 

I'm sure you'll google any of the above dishes that seem exciting to you, so I didn't expand on any of them.

About why we have so many rice dishes; before the introduction of the potato from the Americas, the staple in most of the Old World was bread, Iran included. When rice was first introduced by the Mongols, it was something exotic and rare imported from far away, reserved for the elites. It was so valuable due to its rarity that it was considered a delicacy, served by itself. For this reason, it became a centre piece food item, and over the next couple centuries, court chefs would experiment with it and develop their own distinct style of preparing it. By Safavid times, serving invitingly decorated and richy aromatic rice as the centre piece of a dish had become a hallmark of Iranian court feasts. I'm not sure when we got to the current point, where it became common enough for ordinary people to use it as a staple in their everyday diet, but I suspect it's a 20th century development. Locality likely played a role as well. It would have been harder for southerners to obtain it than northerners, I would imagine.

Update: so I asked my mother about this, and she replied that, yes, it was indeed rare for ordinary people to eat rice in pre-modernity. In fact, while she grew up with rice as a staple, in her parents' days, it was limited to holidays and festivities among ordinary people. Regular people ate it in the northern coast provinces, but anywhere else, it was only the upper class who could afford to have it regularly. Its broadened accessibility to staplehood began with Reza Shah's reign. And Reza Shah himself was also northern, from Savadkooh in Gilan province.

Finally, you asked whether they achieve rice farming because of irrigation systems, and the short answer is yes, they do. But also, more importantly, the north of Iran looks like this:

 

I like it a lot. The most common herbs to use are parsley, coriander, basil, mint, garden cress and tarragon. It's also common to eat raw radishes on the side with food. Parsley and coriander is used in just about anything, I feel like.

How large is the Iranian community in Sweden compared to other immigrant communities? My impression is that Iranians in Sweden, like Pakistanis in Norway, are one of the oldest and largest immigrant populations. Is this correct?

 

Here's a funny interlude:


Edit: bad language warning

You might be familiar with this already, but after Donald Trump's inauguration speech, where he presented his policy of "America First", a Dutch talkshow made a satirical response, where they explain that they understand it's going to be America first, but can Netherlands be second? Since this Dutch original, many people from countries around the world have made their own response videos in the same spirit. Some even representing fictional places, like Mordor. The video above is one of these.