Misc - Flag

Debating to buy the American flag
By Setareh Sabety (East Coast of the US)

Recently, I have been seeing American flags go up everywhere in the little town where I live. My neighbors have put out theirs and many mail boxes along our streets are adorned with them. Cars that used to fly Baltimore Ravens and Washington Redskins flags are now driving stars and stripes into the wind.

As an old hippie leaning always a little left, this kind of nationalism makes me cringe. I was sworn in as an American not too long ago on a balmy summer day at Faniuel Hall in Boston. Although very proud of being Iranian, I am also proud of being an American. I am proud of America's openness and diversity and its democratic anti-colonial heritage. When I say the Pledge of Allegiance at my kids' elementary school, where I am a substitute teacher from time to time, I always have to push back my tears. I always get moved by the "with liberty and justice for all" part of it.

But I have had a very hard time deciding to buy a flag and fly it. It is easy to live here and come to feel American even, but to become a patriotic American is somehow a big leap. It is also hard for me to rally behind a president like Bush, whom I did not vote for and as a Democrat and feminist, I never really supported or liked. A flag is somehow hard for me to adopt not so much because I do not feel very American but because I do not feel very nationalistic.

As a student of history I have always mistrusted nationalism. I always solved these ambiguous feelings about my sense of nationality by reasoning that I am a citizen of a globe that is becoming smaller and smaller. I am an Iranian in my heart and an American in my head but really a person who feels comfortable everywhere. I was never unaware of the meaning of the oath I took that day in Boston especially the part about defending the United States. I just never thought that that oath would be tested like this.

So in the past few days, I have been debating to buy the flag or not. Then I remembered that when the Iranian soccer team was in Lyon to play the U.S., I went and bought a flag of the Islamic Republic and, although it bothered me to hold our tricolors with the name of God smack in the middle of it, I thought well, I will hold it for the boys on the team to let them know that I want them to win. That was the only other time I had bought a flag.

I decided that, of course, I should now buy the flag of the United States for the same reason. Not because I am a patriotic American but because I want my neighbors to know that if I, God forbid, had to choose sides I would choose them. So it is time for me, personally, to test my new sense of citizenship and team spirit.

I will go out and buy that flag which has no God in the middle and fly it. I want to show my neighbors that I am grateful to be here and will stand by them to protect the freedom I have for so long enjoyed. I share with them the most fundamental common denominator: I want a safe and free America for my children. The fact that I would also love a safe Iran for them does not negate how American I feel today. It, in fact, strengthens it.

This is my home and I will show my adopted nation the loyalty it deserves because as tired and jaded an exile as I am I believe it when they say "with liberty and justice for all." If only that phrase could be the foundation upon which to build a global democracy. So I will fly the American flag for the freedom that it represents.