YouSaid · the spoken record

Cyrus Habib

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65
first
2024-05-09
most recent
2024-05-09
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1
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  1. “And look them up So I was truly blessed to have a number, I mean, you know, obviously, I don't know what an iPhone visually looks like, but I wouldn't think that's significant. I mean, I remember what my parents looked like. I remember Cityscapes. And, you know, I think they tried to give me experiences during those years, both to distract me from the pain of all the medical treatments, but also yet to enrich me in that way.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I do. And that was one of the reasons why they did want me to have these treatments was to at the very least extend my eyeset, because those years are so formative. And, you know, you're just building up an archive. The difference between going blind at age five and at age eight is huge. I would imagine I've only lived one life. But I often joke that I was born in 81. I became blind in 89. So all eight years that I Could see took place within the 1980s. So all my visual memories are still from the 80s and everyone still looks like Cindy Lopper and Boy George. I told that joke. I mean, it's true, but I told that I was at a university commencement. I was a commencement speaker at Central Washington University a few years ago. And you could hear where the parents were sitting because the kids had no idea who Cindy Lopper and Boy George are.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “This is where I just have such profound admiration for my parents because, you know, they were in their 20s. Living thousands of miles away from their support system, from their country. Of origin. And my mom was 23 when I was born 23. And that same year to be told. That your son has cancer and may well go blind and then to have that happen by the time she was 31, let's say. But my admiration comes from the fact that as she put it later to me, we were so afraid, but we tried not to let our fear become your fear. And it's so true because my childhood, I mean, when I think about my childhood growing up, it was playing on big wheels with other kids, you know, it was listening religiously to Casey Qasom's top 40. It was all the things”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, shortly after I was born, I was diagnosed with a rare childhood eye cancer called retinoblastoma. And it appeared in the left eye at first. And I was treated for it, but by the time I was two, you know, the treatments were not working and the retina had to be removed because it was filled with tumor. And so I lost my eyesight in that eye at that age. And then there was this period of kind of watchful waiting to see, is it going to come back? This cancer can appear in one eye or it can appear in both eyes. And so they were just watching the right eye. And then I even received preventative radiation during those years. But unfortunately, it did come back in the right eye. And after chemotherapy, radiation, et cetera, I... Became completely blind.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “They actually settled in Maryland. They settled in Maryland in the Baltimore area. That's where this company was based, or my dad was working, and I was born in Baltimore. They moved eight years later. I see. Seven, eight years later, yeah, after I became blind, and we'll, you know, so we'll talk. Well, this is where.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, the Shaw had at that point been toppled and Iran was in this kind of chaotic period before Khomeini had consolidated power. And, you know, I mean, it was, but it was during the hostage crisis.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And so she has just crazy stories about, you know, the kind of the Islamic faction taking over classrooms, enforcing headscarves while she was a student there, but she only had one semester left. So she finished. Her studies and then moved actually to France for about a year because this was also during the hostage crisis. So, even though my dad had a green card, but it was not easy to get her a visa to come to join.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, I mean, my dad was a hippie in the early 70s in Seattle. I mean, my love of, you know, James Taylor and Kat Stevens and Van Morrison and all of that comes from my dad. Became ascendant, that was just absolutely not what he was there for at all. And he had the good fortune of working for this company that could get him a green card in the US. Now, my mom's situation was a little more complicated because she was in the middle of her studies. And like I said, my grandfather really believed that his daughters needed to be able to be independent and particularly he said, if you're going to move to the US with your fianc ⁇ and you're going to get married, you need to have your college degree. But the universities, the University of Tehran, where my mom was studying was like the center.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “But I would say most people in my parents' class were unaware or were largely sheltered from or maybe apathetic about what was going on. They were not in love with the Shah. They were not in that kind of crowd, but they were not particularly political.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “They were pretty sheltered from the discontent. So their experience of it, as is the case for so many Iranian Americans was that they had a joyful cosmopolitan upbringing. My maternal grandparents were landlords also to they had a couple rental properties. And one of them was one of their tenants was this American couple. And my mom really got to know this couple and practiced her English with them. And so it was a very cosmopolitan environment, obviously very pro-Western. And, you know, historians, political scientists continue to debate what the causes were of the unrest that was building. I mean, the Shah was a tremendous violator of human rights.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Got a few steps to take. So, yeah, so she was very influenced by that. And yeah, so then she went on to study at the University of Tehran. Now, my dad. Who's since passed away? He was five years older than she was. They were childhood friends. My mom and my dad's sister were best friends. So he was like the cool older brother for my mom. And he came to the US in 1970 and went and studied at the University of Washington, studied engineering undergrad and graduate school. Working for, well, working for an American company moved back to Tehran for a couple years. And that's when my parents started dating when she was in college.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And she developed at that point this real fondness, this real attraction to the life of these nuns and to Catholicism and to the liturgical experience of Catholicism. I guess one of the rules or policies of this school was that they could not try in any way to convert non-Catholics to the faith, which makes all the sense in the world if you have this power dynamic over young people. But my mom just had this attraction. She actually went back while she was in college and taught at that school. That's how much she liked these sisters. And funnily enough, way before my vocation to the Jesuits, she had told me the story that she went to one of the sisters at one point when she was like 11 or 12 and said, when I grow up, I want to be a nun like you. And they're like, well, there's just this little problem. We got a few.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, so you know, at that time, it was not uncommon, particularly if you were upper middle or upper class to send your kids to study in a Western school to learn English, to learn French. So my mom learned both of those. She went to what we would call middle school and high school at a school run by French nuns.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Sure, my parents were both born in Tehran to secular Muslim families. My paternal grandfather was a self-made businessman in the marble industry. And my mom came from a Turkish Iranian family, and her father was an engineer. And my mom was one of two daughters my grandparents only had two kids. They were both girls. And it was very important for them that their daughters be independently educated and able to be independent. And so she went on to study political science at the University of Tehran in the late 70s.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Thank you likewise. And President Obama did play such an inspirational role for me, which we'll discuss. And so it's an honor to, well, it's an honor to have met him briefly in politics, but a real pleasure to be able to get to know you and now to be able to sit down and talk about these things.”

    2024-05-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 579 — Cyrus Habib · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source