Couple from different cultures find love is a common ground

Couple from different cultures find love is a common ground

Women who are sports fans in Iran have limited options as to what sports they can see live — they’re banned from attending soccer games, for example, since the fans can get unruly.

Laleh Emileh was always a major basketball fan — “since birth,” she says — and attended many live basketball games in her native Tehran.

Says Laleh now: “When my manager asked me to come, my first thought was ‘Why me?’ I heard he was from Jordan, and I thought, ‘He’s going to hate me for being from Iran.’ ”

[...] she chose the Jordanian-owned Dish n Dash in Sunnyvale for the group.

Yet the conversation flowed so easily — especially when they learned that they shared a love of comedian Jeff Dunham’s “Achmed the Dead Terrorist” ventriloquist act — so much so that the others at the table were left out of the conversation.

Sam asked why Laleh wasn’t wearing a hijab; Laleh got defensive, saying Iran’s post-revolution government does not represent her, or most Iranians for that matter.

“Most Americans put us all in the same category as Middle Easterners,” Laleh says, but between us, we are so different.

[...] Sam asked Laleh to join him for a movie he was seeing with his team later that afternoon.

“The last thing we did was watch the movie,” she says.

When Sam got home that night, he called his brother-in-law, saying: I believe I came to California to get married.

Laleh slowly started leaving things in Sam’s apartment.

The couple had a big church wedding Dec. 26 at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in San Jose, with a reception at the Silicon Valley Capital Club.

The reception included a zaffa, a musical processional with drums and a belly dancer, as per Jordanian custom, and baklava.

For their honeymoon, the couple took their immediate family members in an RV to Las Vegas and Disneyland.

Guests flew in from around the world, although some, including Laleh’s father, couldn’t get visas to travel because of the timing of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

[...] when I saw my mom holding hands with his dad at the wedding, I was shocked at how these two people are walking together in San Jose.