乐生活Friends meet a little brother from Iran who is reading PhD Chemistry in Emory next door.
Greet each other and ask how summer vacation is going. He shrugged and said he had spent the summer in the laboratory. "But I went to the north of Washington for a few days."
"Oh, it’s far away. What are you going to do? It takes six hours for Atlanta to fly to Seattle, a diagonal line.
"My mother is in Canada. My brother and I went to see him."
"Ha-ha, you shouldn’t have met on the border between the United States and Canada." I joked.
"Yes."
"… I’m kidding. I realized that the atmosphere suddenly solidified.
"Really, we met at the park on the border between the United States and Canada." He said solemnly.
It is almost impossible for ordinary Iran people to get an American visa, and Trump’s Muslim ban has made everything worse. The little brother was awarded a scholarship, and after several twists and turns to Emory, the visa could only be granted once.
So, my mother had to fly to Canada, while my brother and I went all the way north. They chose to meet in Seattle to the north, Vancouver to the south, and Peace Arch Park, the westernmost boundary Park in the United States. This place is just out of their respective border stations, but did not enter the other side of the border checkpoint in the middle zone, people on both sides can visit the boundary marker here, and then return to the original road.
Brother and mother stayed here for three days. Every morning, the brothers set out from Seattle, bought picnic snacks, brought blankets to the park, met their mother from Vancouver in the park, barbecued, chatted, and then returned at night.
"We had a pretty good time actually." Little brother understates.
Bo San’s brother, who has not returned home, has not seen his mother for six years after he studied in the United States. I dare not and can not imagine the scene of meeting.
In fact, the park is very famous among Iranian Americans (or in the United States), many of whom meet their Iranian relatives here. And when Americans, Canadians, and even Chinese pass by and take pictures, they probably don’t know what a pleasant family picnic in the park really means.
As an international student, including myself, I often regard myself as a citizen of the world who goes abroad; then only when facing the visa problem, can I feel the real existence of the national boundaries; those politics which were originally far away sometimes stuck their throats and threw them into the long waiting queue.
But visa checks or entry into the cottage are just bad luck for us; however, we can’t really understand what the barriers and conflicts between countries mean for Iranians.
I probably can’t understand how this little brother, who calls himself an "atheist", would define his identity – many times we only know each other by nationality and define each other politically, but in Tehran, in Rusht, in the city of Gurkan, in secret bars, partying, pulling off his turban and drinking. What kind of life do you have, young people?
I later Google this Peace Arch Park, a small park. The boundary marker here is an arch symbolizing peace. It was built in 1921 to commemorate the ceasefire between the United States, Britain and Canada in 1812 and the border demarcated after the Ghent Agreement.
In the quiet Bay of Phuket, everything is fine as usual. Concerned people will probably find a sentence inside the arch: "May These Gates Never Be Closed".
Of course, it’s not just this door.
