Mina NASSERI

Story

In the Name of God.

A comparison of living in Australia with living in my country, Ahwaz.

I’m living in Australia now. Compared with my life before, Australian people are made up of different races of the world. Australia is a democratic country. Australia has many of the world’s ethnic groups and allows them to defend their race and culture in Australia. In fact, Australia is a highly developed country. Everything proceeds according to law and regulations. All of the families have a weekly salary. In Australia there is no place that does not care.

I lived in the south of Iran, in a country, Ahwaz. There are races and cultures in Iran too, but not spread across the country as in Australia. Ahwaz was a country, but is now part of Iran. Its culture is isolated from the rest of Iran, and the Arabian people in Ahwaz are not able to continue and practice their culture as they want to. They would like more freedom, but the government does not allow it. If found talking about freedom, Ahwazian people can be sent to jail for an indefinite time or even hanged.

Ahwaz has a flag and a president, Shikhkhazaal. But Ahwaz is not paid the same attention by the Iranian government as places like Tehran and Esfehan. The Ahwazian people do not have the clean water that Persian people in Tehran and Esfehan enjoy and government practices prevent Ahwazian women having the pleasure of motherhood.

The living styles of the rich and poor are very different. Rich people live in complete comfort, eat delicious food, have nice houses and cars. But poor people have no money for meat or even clean water. Some wealthy people give the poor money, but government financial assistance is non-existent. They receive no government support. Poor people’s houses consist of 3 rooms with more than 10 people living there. One third of families have no car.

People living in the poor areas help each other in times of need. I was working as a foreign language teacher there and my monthly salary was 100 dollars. I had to share my salary with my family. Usually the Iranian people eat three meals a day, morning, noon and evening. The men of the family – fathers and brothers – are usually the bread winners.

I compared my husband’s information about life in Australia to life in Ahwaz and reached this conclusion: living in Australia is very different to living in Iran. In Australia people are free in everything: to speak and in religion; and they behave well towards and respect each other. The government listens to the people – what they think and what they want to do. My husband receives sufficient rights here and we have a good life. When my husband is at work, I am busy with home affairs.

This is the way of life in Australia and Iran.

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