A Persian poem quotes ‘we are like leaves fallen from the trees, we do not know where the wind will take us’
Amir, also known as Amiro, was born and raised in Tehran. Passionate about history, he misses no opportunity to tell anecdotes related to his country and his mother tongue, Farsi, which has survived centuries of domination and has been enriched by contacts with the Greek, Turkish, Mongolian and Arabic culture. In Iran, it is said that Farsi ‘is like sugar’, a language that has never been imposed but has found its way into the population and among poets. Today, what gives it even more richness, is the fact that “people speak an Indo-European language written with Afro-Asiatic letters”.
Amir tells us about the various historical changes that have taken place in his country in recent decades, but the Iran he wants to tell us about is very different from the common imagination and very dynamic within. He was born at a time when the era of reformism was over and religious laws left little room for individualism, something Amir has always suffered from. But at university, he found new life. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in “Animal Science” at the University of Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna) and at the same time, combined his passion for journalism with the need for political activism. He became part of a student movement that opposed the university institution through two means: study and dialogue. In the corridors of the university, they would initiate free discussions on topics chosen from week to week to encourage reflection and to obstruct the passage of students who could not fail to come across the issues addressed. At the time they were very idealistic and tried to be ‘sculptures that create their own sculptures’ with the aim of defining who they were and respond to a common need: take a side.
“We had memories of the era of reformism, of the need to shout for freedom. We were still quite brave back then”.
However, the heterogeneity of thought within the university was present and manifested itself whenever the girls’ loud laughter was interrupted by those who felt that as women, they were not allowed to laugh. Then came the 2009 elections. These were widely contested by the people and the student movement was at the forefront of the demonstrations. Many students were imprisoned, and they decided ‘to go lights out’ and changed the form of their activism. They switched from shouting to writing. They started publishing short articles in a student newspaper with a socio-political background. The aim was still to make people think about the country’s internal dynamism and they wrote about minorities, such as the Kurds or non-practitioners, or about women’s rights and the freedom to choose how to dress.
“The student movement had a motto: ‘We students are like the waves, we live and we don’t stop. We are those waves that never reach the shore”.
They started to occupy a column in the newspaper and introduced the topic of ‘universities in the world’ and that is how Amir came to know about the University of Bologna, the oldest in the West. He saw that there were also opportunities to continue his studies abroad but at the time, he did not give it too much thought, until everything changed. No matter how much they tried to self-censor, they were blamed for excessive radicalism, and the newspaper was never actually tolerated by the university. Accused of not aligning with the Iranian government’s thinking, Amir had his right to study revoked, for life. Together with many of the movement, he became in 2011 a starred student.
“‘In Iran, you get a star on your report card if you don’t pass the moral qualification. In my country, they put me in the political position of not being able to go on with my studies”.
Unable to continue his studies, he spent a year working as a transporter in a construction company, while seriously considering the opportunity at the University of Bologna he had come across earlier. He studied Italian, passed the ‘GRE’ entrance test and applied to university. He won a scholarship in March 2013 and moved to Bologna in September to start his master’s degree in ‘Animal Biotechnology’. Given his passion for history, this could not have come at a better time. 2013 was the anniversary of the ‘Magna Charta Universitatum’ and on his first day, he was able to attend a speech by Umberto Eco, whom he later studied in depth.
He loved his undergraduate years in Bologna. The oral exams were his first culture shock, but he established a wonderful bond of mutual help with fellow university students. They would revise before exams, help him with his Italian, unaware of their significant support. Amir, on his side, was trying to reciprocate on a scientific level. It was something so synergetic that at the end of his journey, when everyone went their own way, Amir suddenly realised he had no one else and no routine outside studying. He went through a moment of deep crisis, realised that there were other important things to cultivate besides studying, and although he passed the initial qualification for his doctorate, he decided to return to Iran to his loved ones. For several years he worked as a scientific consultant for coagulant and chemotherapeutic drugs in private companies as his star, prevented him from working in the public sector but, after a few years, he regretted his choice. He heard, through a friend, about a biotechnologist position for a PhD in Turin, applied and was accepted.
Amir recently completed his PhD in ‘Veterinary Science for Animal Health and Food Safety’. He highly esteems his current supervisor who encourages him both scientifically and personally, and to introduce as ‘an Iranian doing research in Italy’. In his post-doctoral career, he will continue working on the same research project, which aims to analyse parasitic pathogens by surveying environmental matrix such as water or soil. The application of biomolecular methods is helpful to understand whether the pathogens found may be relevant to the health of wild animals and whether they could also pose a risk to humans in the future. The detection of a pathogen also requires its specific analysis to understand whether it represents an alien pathogen or an invasive species.
He finds many cultural similarities between Italy and Iran, which he believes are a matter of geographical latitude. Amir still retains some of the idealism of his twenties and believes that science alone is not enough. Like many of the world’s greatest scientists, he does not want to give only a scientific contribution but also a cultural one, talking about his country and its history, even if it means finding people willing to listen.
He misses his family and his four lifelong friends. If they would give him space, he would return to Iran, but at the moment it is an optimistic view.
“A Persian poem says: ‘You cannot die in trouble in a place just because you were born there’. Better to choose another country than to suffer personally and individually”.
This is a story he has wanted to tell for a long time and, with his newspapers in his hands he quotes another Persian poem which metaphorically says that the people who leave their country are a bit like leaves that have fallen from trees and cannot regenerate. But, in Amir’s situation, being a fallen leaf can also be an advantage because ‘you don’t know where the wind will take you’.