This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

Roya Hukakki.

Her new book, A Beginner's Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious.

Roya is an immigrant to America from a country of my grandfather and grandmother's

birth, once upon a time, Persia and many versions before that, but now known as Iran. And her

story gives us an understanding of what it is to arrive, not only from Iran, but from around the world to

modern America. We begin the storytelling with a day that Roya chronicles in her book in an

ethnic food store somewhere in New York, and she's shopping, and she observes a couple from Iran who are newly arrived.

I think six weeks and four days is the detail that emerges.

And they're puzzling over a piece of meat in the frozen meat counter because they can't read the label.

And Roya goes up to them to offer her help.

Roya, congratulations, and a very

good evening to you, and thank you for this. This young couple, you're observing, you go to help

them, and you immediately fall into their language, your language from Iran. They seem apparently

grateful. You note that the wife is clutching her handbag. Why? What does

this tell you? Good evening to you, Roy. Good evening, John. I'm delighted to be back on your show and

in conversation with you. So this is exactly, as you described, it's a new couple who have just arrived and they feel

so insecure in this new country that they don't believe that they can trust to leave any of their

valuables at home. So the wife keeps carrying the passports with her in her handbag.

And so she constantly clutches it.

They carry all the cash that they've brought with them in the same handbag with them wherever they go.

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