Memories of A Sanctioned Boy - Part 1 (The Beginning)

START OF PART II—SEE PART I

I will explain my living conditions, as well as the hardships of living in modern-day Iran, in my future notebooks.

Thank you not only for reading my post, but also for helping me to improve my writing.

Hi, Amin. Good job! The changes that I made were to allow your sentences to sound more natural to my native ears, to clarify and explain your ideas, and for ease of reading. Apologies if I misinterpreted your thoughts!  I hope that this helps you. J. *The word emigrate means to leave one’s country to live in another. The word immigrate means to enter another country to live permanently. Therefore, you emigrate from your country, but immigrate into another.

**As an ordinary American, I am greatly disheartened to hear that my government’s political and economic actions are negatively affecting you and your country in this manner. Such things are far beyond my limited understanding, and even farther beyond my ability to change them. Other than expressing my personal apologies to you, and to the people of your country, I am truly at a loss for words… ***The information I reviewed from internet searches, admittedly dated from 2017, fails to place Iran in the top ten worse countries for inflation, so naming your source would be helpful. However, Venezuela did consistently rank #1 in every instance. While this point is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, using readily verifiable information in your posts gives it more weight, as well as strengthens your viewpoints and statements.

****At least in my mind, your sentence (The Middle East…) does not tie into the preceding paragraph, or with the text re The Black Swan below it (in my edited version). Absent the ME or oil being mentioned in the book, I do not see the connection. If you put it there for a reason (as a broad statement, to provide context, etc.), please make its significance clearer for the reader to easily understand why. Had you used it as your second sentence, as an introduction to everything else that followed, then... !

Regardless, Amin, I work forward, with great anticipation, to reading your future posts…

Memories from A Sanctioned Boy - Part 1 (The Beginning)

My name is Amin, I am 26 years old, and from Iran. I wanted to emigrate to study for a Ph.D. degree three years ago, but I could not begin the admission process due to the lack of financial resources. Thus, I remained in Iran, and worked for IT startups as a digital marketing specialist instead.*

Last year, the US imposed sanctions on Iran again, and as a result, the living conditions for Iranian citizens have grown harder each day. Since then, monetarily, things have also gotten trickier here since our national currency has been gradually undergoing an extreme devaluation.  In fact, the combination of the tough political and economic situations in Iran have resulted in our national currency (the Rial) losing about 2/3 of its value within just a few months.**

If you can, just try to imagine living in a country where you constantly hear of, and personally deal with, bad news every day—with no sign of hope. Week after week, month after month, with no indication that it will ever end, or that any improvement in the living conditions of ordinary people will happen. The inflation rate spiked in Iran as the sanctions began, and we rank within the top two countries after Venezuela that have the highest rate of inflation.***

People are losing hope here every day, and my only solace is thinking to myself that human suffering has been consistent throughout history. I think about how people managed to live through the terrifying years and massive upheavals of WWI and WWII. I honestly do not know what is going to happen next, but the situation here is reaching an extreme point, perhaps even leading up to the start of another war.

The Middle East has always had complex problems throughout its history: earlier, due to being the birthplace of major religions, and more recently, because of its vast oil reserves. I recently read Nassim Taleb’s famous book, The Black Swan, and it scared me a lot because he explains how rare, and low probability occurrences (or, black swan events), combined to change history and significantly affect people’s lives. His book not only somehow touched my heart, but also helped me to understand the broader picture of how the world's uncertainties—both natural, as well as man-made--can impact human lives.****

END OF PART I—SEE PART II