Pollution, drought and traffic aside, living in Tehran had one important perk: my repertoire of close friends was continuously growing. I constantly made new acquaintances and apart from a few exception who left Iran very early on, all my friends were pretty much around (i.e. in Tehran). Then it arrived... the time of departure that is. In retrospect, I think I was lucky to be among the very first to leave my group of friends. Basically, I didn't have to watch them leave one by one, I think that would have been incomparably more painful. I went through an acute withdrawal phase and I pretty much rebounded in a matter of months. Not that it wasn't painful... it was. But you knew the pain existed and you could deal with it.
Now, five years in, the reality of living in the US sets in. Over the past couple of years, I have met new people, bonded with them and bode them farewell so many times, as they moved on to pursue their careers somewhere else in this country (or other countries for that matter). Thinking back, I have met three generation of students/scholars in Princeton and I dearly miss every single one of them. Every time a friend leaves, the pain is small, but it is constant... and after every separation, you die a little bit inside.
By a friend of mine in Princeton :(
