Age of diaspora: Iranian seniors in Toronto.

• Author: Moghissi, Haideh

OLD AGE IS VALUED AND VARIOUSLY defined in different cultures. Despite socio-economic and cultural advances in liberal democracies, and institutionalized state responsibility in providing care for elderly citizens, old age generally seems associated with negativity. Aging creates many pressures and anxiety for the aged and different sorts of concerns for the society at large. Despite semantic changes in the way older citizens are identified and addressed, and regardless of some attempts at putting a positive spin on old age, anticipation of one's older years is a daunting prospect for most people. The ever-growing age-prevention industry, including sophisticated cosmetic techniques for refuting the encroachment of age, reflects the perception of aging as an affliction in advanced capitalist societies. While the popularized market for products that help push back age-related defects speak to the release of the middle classes in these societies from bread-and-butter worries, it also has something to do with the politics of aging, how society perceives and treats old people and how, in effect, they perceive themselves. The negative delineation of old age is therefore understandable, as aging, for the majority of people, involves loss of occupation, social status, and valued functions within the family and society. More often than not, aging involves poor health, scant resources if not utmost poverty, abandonment, withdrawal, a sense of uselessness and, sometimes, senility.

In her book, Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir rejects the idea that everyday life for the aged is easier because they are no longer required to work, and that they can let go of their obligations and devote themselves to "the delights of inaction." This is untrue, she says.

The society of today, as we have seen, allows old people leisure only when it has removed the material means for them to enjoy it. Those who escape utter poverty or pinching want are forced to take care of a body that has grown frail, easily fatigued, often infirm or racked with pain. Immediate pleasures are either forbidden or parsimoniously measured out: love, eating, drinking, smoking, sport, walking (de Beauvoir 1972: 448-449).

For de Beauvoir, only a privileged few can avoid this situation. The majority, being relegated to "the fringe of humanity," become social outcasts, and this has serious effects upon their mental states, causing neuroses, melancholia, depression and cessation of life altogether. De Beauvoir acknowledges that old age does have certain advantages, as the old person no longer has to please anyone and worry about public opinion; she can at last be herself. Still, she draws a negative conclusion from the positive outcomes of age, identifying the coming of old age as a semi-death (de Beauvoir 1972: 539).

Others have noted that over time, as a result of dramatic social and economic changes, societal attitudes towards the aged have also been transformed. That is, there has been a shift from respecting, honoring and valuing old persons to an attitude of contempt, aversion and neglect. In this period of frantic change, wrote Malcolm Cowley in 1980, when "memories have become irrelevant, experience is less valued than youthful force and adaptability," when childlessness, impermanency of marriages prevail and neighborliness is a fading ideal, one can predict lonely age for the now young (Cowley 1980: 34-35).

To be sure, as a result of unleashed market forces, economic instability, structural inequalities, consumerism, and skewed social policy, people's attitudes towards older people are undergoing change in Eastern cultures, such as Iranian also. For example, anecdotal testimonies abound about the increasing difficulty of life for older people in Iran : how their access to reasonably good health care is slipping farther away; how the rising costs of living and unreliability of hiring helpers have increasingly made it difficult to care for ailing parents in the family; of family quarrels over who should take care of parents who can no longer live by themselves; how sprouting retirement and nursing homes are replacing the care of the extended family; and how depositing the elderly in institutions no longer brings social stigma, condemnation and disgrace to the children, as it used to. Hence, the popular blessing of the old people for the youth in Iran, pir-shi (may you reach the old age) that reflected a positive understanding of old age may no longer be a blessing at all.

Nonetheless, getting old does not constitute as much of a calamity in the East as it does in the West. It is not the terrible infliction that older citizens have to endure and the society has to tolerate and worry about. The insubstantial state responsibility towards older citizens and spares social services certainly mitigates against too much concern and too many debates over old age and the costs of elderly care for the society, not to mention that life expectancy in non-Western societies is lower than that in the West. Compare for example, differences in life expectancies in the North and the South, as reported by the UNDP Human Development Report (2007-08): Bangladesh (63.1), Pakistan (64.6), Iran (70.2), India (63.7) and Sierra Leone (41.8) to name a few. Compare these figures with those in a few advanced capitalist countries such as Japan (82.3), Canada (80.3), Sweden (80.5) and US (77.9) and United Kingdom (79 years). However, the fact remains that in many Eastern cultures age adds to one's standing within the family and community, particularly if financial means are not at issue. For example, loss of desirability and interest in sex, the source of sorrow, anxiety, and preoccupation for women and men in consumer-ridden, youth-oriented Western societies is seen as liberation, particularly for women, in many cultures. Or menopause, which Germaine Greer suggests, is an utterly negative experience and a source of continuous grief because of a combination of ageism and sexism in the West (Greer 1993: 251), is in fact an empowering experience for women in the Middle East, liberating them from the confining sexist and patriarchal rules of moral conduct that restrict their life choices. Seeking advice and blessing from older persons, behaving in a respectful manner in their presence, or simply providing them with the best or most comfortable seats at family gatherings are norms in Middle-Eastern cultures. Respecting and assisting the elderly are moral and religious obligations and are taught to children at an early age (filial piety). It is quite rare for an elderly person to live alone, feeling bored and purposeless, or to consider residing in a nursing home a normal stage of one's life. The latter, in fact, reflects a family's despair and dramatic economic decline and social crisis.

Now the question is whether this positive perception about old people and the psychological security that it gives older citizens travel to the new country when people are dislocated from their birthplaces. Hardly, for example, it is not hard to imagine how negatively Canada's older citizens are affected by alarming reports about the growth in the senior population; the dwindling economic resources for elder care; and many commentaries about the terrible burden the 'sandwich generation' endures in caring for elderly parents, or reports of elder abuse in nursing homes. Most likely all these take away older citizens' psychological and emotional comfort, their sense of confidence and entitlement to care and respect in a society to which they have given their whole lives. Presumably, the elderly immigrant of color takes to heart these commentaries and reports much more than their Canadian-born counterparts because of social and cultural exclusion and covert and overt racism.

What follows is an attempt to glimpse the experiences of this group of citizens through the windows of oral interviews conducted in Toronto with Iranian seniors who had lived in this country between five and ten years. The sixteen face-to-face interviews with Iranian seniors conducted in the summer of 2004, as well as some of the data extracted from 450 survey questionnaires and interviews conducted with Iranians in both Toronto and Montreal as part of a research project among four communities of Muslim cultural background, form the basis of this essay. (1)

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