"A Great Artist Can Come from Anywhere"

How the promise of Ratatouille saved me from crime and fueled decades of transformation and the pursuit of an enlightened, cosmopolitan soul

The attic where I grew up was always unbearably hot, and the walls and ceilings bore a web of large cracks where insects lived. Food was precious and scarce. We double-wrapped our provisions in plastic bags to protect them from the roaches, though the trapped humidity would sometimes cause them to spoil.

Not a single bit of food could be thrown away. My mother would spread our spoiled rice and fruit on a metal sheet under the sun and ask me to stand guard to ensure roaches didn’t lay eggs on it.

We were among the wealthier families in our neighborhood. Our house had a rusty metal door reinforced with multiple locks, whereas many houses in our slum had only hollow wooden doors. Windows were small and barred with metal railings to prevent theft. Thieves and storekeepers alike carried machetes. Some families left their doors open overnight, perhaps signaling they had nothing worth stealing. Only a few roads were paved; cars had to carefully dodge large cracks in the asphalt. Most of the neighborhood was covered in sand, with houses made of clay. The intense sun washed everything in a pale yellow.

Our home was the attic of my grandfather’s house. My grandfather, Abdullah, was the patriarch. Born into serfdom and abandoned as a child, he was ferociously lashed throughout his life, especially whenever he failed to produce enough fodder for his village’s lord. Forced to quit school and start working at the age of six, he only learned to read much later in life.

He was emancipated in the late 1960s. He left his village and married a nine-year-old girl, my grandmother. She became pregnant with my father at the age of twelve.

Enlightenment was yet to reach them. They raised my father the way all serfs were raised: backward, cruel, superstitious, demanding absolute authority for elders, and inflicting severe physical punishment for the smallest infractions.

Just as it was done to Abdullah, and as Abdullah did to his wife and children, my father would come home every day and find a reason to beat my mother and me, shouting dark profanities. My mom hid all the sharp knives because, in his fury, my father would sometimes look for them, threatening to sever my head from my body. He would hit my mom as I hid under my bed, covering my ears with my hands to block her cries, repeating to myself, “I wish he dies, I wish he dies.”

My school was scarcely a better environment. Intense physical fights broke out for no reason, and the principal beat offenders in front of everyone to maintain order. One day, the principal picked me up by the neck because I didn’t answer his call. I remember waking up in the hospital afterward. Most of my classmates could not read by the time they graduated elementary school, and some became involved with drugs at a young age.

Growing up in such an environment, I became deeply resentful and destructive. Feeling helpless to defend myself, I began to exact revenge against society by stealing. I was angry at the world. I would pierce my father’s clothes as retribution. I became stealthy, stealing hidden bills from my father’s wallet and taking my classmates’ favorite pencils. I would sneak small snacks from grocery stores, grab handfuls of nuts from bazaar vendors, and swallow them quickly, choking.

Pictures of me at around 9 years old. I only have a single picture with a smile.

Getting caught resulted in severe beatings, which only fueled my desire to steal more. Eventually, my revenge escalated into vandalism. I started breaking windows and scratching cars with sharp rocks for no reason other than the thrill of it. Like many others in my dysfunctional slum, I was walking the path of a criminal.

That was the world I came from. It was a violent, dirty, and impoverished place. We placed live leeches on our backs and smoked donkey dung to cure sickness. It was grim. Even as a kid, I knew I was unhappy, but I knew of no world outside our neighborhood.

The doors to a different universe opened when my grandfather smuggled a tiny TV from Saudi Arabia. We asked the local bazaar bootlegger for the latest foreign movie. It had a funny name: Ratatouille.

To say that movie changed the trajectory of my life is an understatement. I am here, instead of in a prison, as a direct result of that film.

Doors to a Different Universe

Initially, I was simply mesmerized by the beautiful music and graphics. But as I watched it again and again, a powerful story emerged. I felt a deep admiration for the main character, and it became clear that this movie had a message specifically for me.

It followed a rat named Remy who, like me, did not have a good relationship with his family or society. He lived in a similar level of poverty, surviving as a thief in an attic. He left his village, found himself in Paris, and—despite being entirely unwelcome and against all odds—started working at a high-profile restaurant to become the best chef in the city.

That movie gave me hope for deliverance from my wretchedness. I wanted to live like Remy, to follow his path, to escape this slum and my society, and achieve something glorious.

How was he different? Several things stood out to me. To begin with, whereas his family ate trash and was boorish, Remy was thoughtful and graceful. He washed himself, walked on two paws, and controlled what he ate. Unlike his family, he also read books. In one scene, his brother Emile discovers him reading a cookbook:

Emile: “Wait—you... read?” Remy: “Well, not... excessively.” Emile: “Oh, man. Does dad know?” Remy: “You could fill a book—a LOT of books—with things dad doesn’t know. And they have. Which is why I read.”

He was not afraid of taking risks. He admired Chef Gusteau and loved cooking intensely; he recovered from setbacks, was innovative, and never feared breaking tradition. His family crawled, stole, and huddled in tight spaces—they merely survived by taking. He walked upright, cooked, and lived independently—he didn’t just survive; he created.

Django (Dad): “We’re not birds, we’re rats. We don’t leave nests, we make them bigger.” Remy: “Maybe I’m a different kind of rat... Rats! All we do is take, Dad. I’m tired of taking. I want to make things! I want to add something to this world.”

Start of a Miraculous Transformation

I still clearly remember the last day of my old life. I was eleven years old. It was a hot summer noon. I had found a sharp shard of glass on the ground, placed it in front of the tire of our neighborhood grocer’s car, propped it up with a stone, and waited, hidden in a corner, to watch him drive.

He locked the door to his store, likely heading home to eat lunch with his family. He got into his car, drove forward, and a loud hiss echoed through the street. He got out, looked at his flat tire, and fell to his knees, his hands on his head in grief. My classmate, who had conspired with me, laughed with glee, high-fived me, and ran back home. We were hiding behind the garbage pile where we had found that piece of glass.

I went home and stared into the mirror, terrified, for a long time. My hands and clothes were just as dirty as my friend’s. I felt a shudder of disgust. The day before, we had stolen a candy box from that man’s store. Now, we had destroyed his car.

An enormous emotion overtook me. The music of the movie played in my head. Do ri da, do ri da da, do ri da, da da.

I fancied myself to be Remy, but wasn’t I his exact opposite? Wasn’t I dirty? Wasn’t I one of the thieves? Wasn’t I acting exactly like a rat?

The dam broke, and I started crying. I promised myself then and there that I would never be a dirty rat again. From that moment on, instead of going out with my vandal friends, I went to the local library and read books. I voluntarily washed my hands, took showers, and kept my belongings and clothes clean. I never stole or vandalized anything again, even when I was sad, even after I was beaten.

That day, I promised myself to live like Remy. Which meant that I would move to Paris one day. I decided to learn English to prepare for the world abroad. My mother, who worked as a travel agent, had obtained government permission to bring the internet into our house. I used it to learn everything about the outside world. Pictures of abroad were not a mere fancy anymore. I had decided that I would get there no matter what.

What humans were in the eyes of Remy, Westerners—particularly Americans—were in my eyes. They were living like giants compared to us: cooperation instead of beating, celebration instead of wailing, food instead of hunger, independence instead of tradition. They were creating technologies, discovering knowledge, and enjoying life—not wishing for death to come every day.

My family and peers also admired and envied Westerners. I don’t know why none of them were as serious about moving there as I was. Perhaps, just like Remy’s family, they never thought they could be one of them. I, on the other hand, believed in the promise of Ratatouille.

As my parents were putting live leeches on their backs and smoking donkey dung to cure their flu, I was reading about the latest mRNA research. As my parents read chants and prayers they didn’t understand, I sang to forbidden American music for spiritual fuel.

To me, the West was never a geographic location; it was a moral destination. I believed that by adopting their values—reason, hygiene, individual agency, and the “Ratatouille” ethos of creation over consumption—I was effectively changing my lineage. I wasn’t an Iranian Muslim slum boy anymore; I was a Westerner who simply hadn’t arrived home yet. I saw the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge not as foreign landmarks, but as the pillars of my true heritage.

The Shadow of the Trap

Skinner: “You may think you are a chef, but you are still... only a rat.”

In the film, this is the moment of maximum peril. The cage drops, and the fantasy of the “friendly fine-dining kitchen” vanishes. For years, I dismissed my mother’s warnings as the cynicism of a woman broken by a broken system. She had seen the world through the cold lens of a travel agent; she knew that immigration laws were more than a legal tool to bring safety and order—they were specialized machinery designed to keep “rats” in their place.

I thought I was moving to Paris to be Remy. I didn’t realize that in the eyes of the law, I was the pest.

When I finally escaped our house, I discovered a different kind of cruelty. It wasn’t the hot-blooded, screaming violence of my father, but the cold, bureaucratic violence of the law. It was a “foreigner-hatred” more efficient than any I had seen in the slums of Iran. It took the form of a law that made it illegal for me to work, essentially condemning me to the very thievery I had spent my youth trying to unlearn.

To survive the “Enlightened” world, I had to descend back into the shadows. I found myself doing things Remy’s family would have recognized: begging strangers for bread, entrusting my life to human traffickers, and eventually, selling the only thing I owned—my body—just to see the next sunrise. I realized then that the West welcomes the wealthy “chef,” but it has a thousand ways to starve the “ambitious rat” who arrives with nothing but a dream. If I had a lot of money, they would’ve welcomed me to spend it. But what about an upstart whose grandfather was a serf?

Is the Promise Broken?

So, was the promise of Ratatouille a lie?

I have looked into the mirror again, much like I did when I was eleven years old. This time, the dirt wasn’t from a garbage pile; it was the exhaustion of a man who traveled across oceans only to find the same cage waiting for him.

But I still hear the same sacred music. Do ri da, do ri da da.

The movie’s true lesson wasn’t that the world is kind. It was that “a great artist can come from anywhere.” The struggle I face now is the final act of the film. The Skinners of the world—ICE, and the racist zealots behind it—are trying to put me back in the trap.

The promise of the West is currently held hostage by a confident evil that prefers the laziness of race and ancestor pride to the hard work of building a cosmopolitan civilization. But I also see the others: the people who are contributing to our civilization but are not yet active in its politics—people who have not yet found the courage to stand against the tide of hatred. It is for those people whom I want to speak. Whether the promise of Ratatouille is true or false is no longer a question for the filmmakers. It is a question they have to answer.

I am still walking upright. I am still refusing to be a “dirty rat,” because I am a human just like you. The kitchen is closed to me for now, but I’ve made it in and I won’t stop until the doors are open again.