Bear with me as I explain this. It’s human to stare every
now and then, but my experience here has been that Iranians walking on the
streets tend to stare a bit more than average.
One thing I’ve learned here is to try to avoid prolonged eye
contact when I’m walking on the street, or else there’s a possibility I could receive
intense stares.
The most bizarre instance of this happened a few years ago
while I was riding the Tehran subway. I was sitting across from this one guy. I
noticed that he was staring at me, and being younger and naïve, I decided,
“Well, two can play that game,” and I stared right back, as if to say, “What
are you staring at?”
My stop was before his, and I got off. I was about 60-70 feet away from the train on the platform, and
the train hadn’t left yet.
I turned around for a quick moment… and the guy’s head was
turned, looking out the window, straight at me. *Shudders*
Although people can stare at you in such a way you think
they want to poke both of your eyes out, I don’t think it’s done with malicious
intent. Rather, I think it’s done in more of an intensely curious way. Another
interesting thing is that Iranians are pretty good at telling if someone doesn’t
actually live in Iran (even if that person has Iranian genes) by what type of
clothing that person is wearing and how that person carries himself. Iranians have
a lot of genetic diversity (there are blonde and blue-eyed Iranians and darker-skinned, curly haired Iranians... and everything in between... like the one or two redheads I've seen here), but they can still
recognize their own kind expertly and are really awed when they see a
foreigner, such as an American or European, because tourists aren't common in Iran.
With that being said, I will not miss the staring situation here.
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