Hi, welcome back to Conversations. I'm Bill Crystal. Very pleased to be joined today by Roya Hakakin.

First time guest time conversations. I'm very much looking forward to this author of a recent book,

which I highly recommend. A beginner's guide to America for the immigrant and the curious,

author of previous books. I also recommend Journey from the Land of No,

Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, a poet and Persian and Farsi, I believe, though. So I

would recommend that, but I can recommend it anyway, even though I can't obviously read it.

Currently, yeah, at Davenport College, where I teach his writing, he was in 1985, I believe,

as a teenager, almost 20 years old, maybe. So interesting. So let's talk about America

and about immigration, I think, basically two topics, which are very much related, obviously,

and for everyone, really, not just for you. So Roya, welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be with you.

Good. Well, I look forward to this. So let's talk a little bit on America first. I mean, you came

and you've written about this in your books, but I mean, what you have the great advantage of coming

from a very different country and regime, Iran, and then spending some time in Europe and then

coming here. And so you have the kind of fresh view that those who grew up here don't really have.

So what struck you when you came, what struck you that doesn't strike us enough, and then we can

get to how things have changed, perhaps. Well, I arrived in 1985, and it was a different

America than the one that we're living in today. My most immediate reaction, as soon as the

doors at the airport opened was that, my God, I arrived in the land of giants. It wasn't just

cars or people. It was also the landscape that seemed to have stretched limits that I had not known

before. And then I remember when we got in the car and we got on the highway, I thought,

my God, you know, the highway isn't the highways I've ever known before. And then I got

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