I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. I've never been to Iran, I don't speak the language, and, probably most important of all, my Iranian father left home when I was nine months old. That's the extent of my connection to Iran.

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.

I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque.

Beirut is where I was born and raised.

I was born in Fayette County, over in Lexington, Kentucky, but I was raised most of my life in Paintsville.

I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.