Shabnam Razeghian Jahromi, a 35-year-old Iranian woman has always dreamed about coming to United States to explore the Western World. However, reality kept crushing her American Dream due her ethnicity and America’s fear about Islamic countries. After her fifth visa denial, in 2012, she had been lucky and smart enough to secure a United States visa for educational purpose. Maybe Portland is her lucky city or six is her lucky number, she started her Ph.D. program in Computer Engineer at Portland State University. She now works at Jama Software as a software engineer.
Shabnam Razeghian Jahromi, 35, sings about her Parde Neshin poster, a song by Alireza Ghorbani inside her apartment in Portland, OR.,Sunday, April 23, 2017.
“I don’t wear hijab. A lot people can’t tell I’m from Iran, more likely they think I’m a Latino.”
"I landed the December 17th of 2011. It was three days before my birthday, and it was my 30th birthday. And the year before, like 2011 was a very, very..."
Jahromi celebrated her first-arrival in the United States with her brother Shahin Jahromi at a local restaurant in Santa Monica, CA., 2012.
"They will all be traveling and just half of their life here, half of their life back in Iran. This is immigrant life, half of us will..."
The experience of immigration in the distance between Portland and Iran shows Jahromi's angst. She grieves for her away parents, especially when they are out of reach, but not entirely gone. Despite the way it feels, her anxiety often has to do with the immigrant life. Jahromi displays her family photos in the living room inside her apartment in Portland, OR.,Sunday, April 23, 2017.
"I sat on that rug right in the middle of the circle and I was crying and I couldn't... I was crying so loud and I couldn't stop."
"Love is just this spectrum, that just like different variations of it, but it's all love."
Jahromi talks about her learning experiences from her book discussion club on Wine of the Mystic: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam A Spiritual Interpretation, from Edward Fitzgerald's Translation of the Rubaiyat in Portland, OR.,Sunday, April 23, 2017.
"We are here to experience, it's just life is all about experiencing. There's no good or bad, there is just choosing what you want to experience."
