But despite their geographical dispersion, the city’s Iranian Americans have maintained a strong cultural identity. They live all over Seattle and throughout its suburbs to the east, and they work in all its major industries: technology, aviation, and yes, coffee. And yet nearly every Iranian person that I spoke with in Seattle seemed to think there’s something special holding their community together.

Ali Ghambari, the owner of the Cherry Street Coffee House chain, certainly does. The day I met him at one of his newer locations, he enthused to me about his downtown cafe’s look. “The whole thing is designed Persian,” he said. “It’s sexy Persian. You’ll love it. Oh, big time. You’ll love it.” The chain’s to-go cups feature the shop’s logo—a drawing of a cherry ringed with the name of his store—on one side; on the other, the store’s name is written in Persian, in Ghambari’s own hand. The top and bottom are hemmed by a motif he found near his father’s grave site in Iran. “It looks like people who have got the fire in their belly,” he says. “It looks like love.”

Ghambari has lived in Seattle since 1979, the year that the Islamic Revolution scattered Iranians across the globe. He married an American woman, and worked his way from a job as a dishwasher at a Godfather’s Pizza—“Hey, I was classy, man”—to a gig as a barista at a local coffee shop, eventually buying out the owner and setting up his Cherry Street chain.

(Kaveh Waddell)

He preaches a doctrine of unity and cultural pride with a Persian lilt and a cheeky grin. His unabashedly grandiose philosophy emerges in a stream of consciousness, every third sentence worthy of being quoted in a swoopy script over an Instagrammed sunset.

Ghambari’s extracurricular crusade is to organize and promote Seattle’s Iranian American community—with an emphasis on fusing Iranian and American into something new. To that end, he’s organized an annual Iranian festival for the past 10 years. The festival is held in a converted armory; last year’s affair included traditional music and dance, storytelling and lectures, stand-up comedy, art booths, and cooking demonstrations.

“A tree cannot stand without the roots,” Ghambari told me, leaning forward across the table. “And I cannot be excited as a proud American if I’m not proud of where I came from.”

If you ask folks who are involved in the Iranian community in Seattle, many will tell you that Ghambari is its fulcrum. They marvel at his energy and earnestness, his propensity for inspirational speech-making, and his dance moves. (“We saw him at sizdebedar”—one of a series of Iranian New Year celebrations—“and we were like, ‘Oh my god, get your phones out,’” a leader of the Persian student group at the University of Washington told me.)

Iranians have flocked to Seattle since the 1950s, largely drawn by Boeing and the University of Washington. Both organizations remain magnets for Iranian immigrants today, but the 1979 Islamic Revolution accelerated the pace of Iranian emigration—and altered its character. Immediately after the revolution, many secular, wealthy, educated families left Iran, fearful of the repercussions of being associated with the upper class, or worse, with the deposed shah. Most recently, a more diverse mix of Iranians has arrived in Seattle, for education or for jobs in the city’s exploding technology sector. And a significant number have arrived as refugees, many of whom are practicing Christians or Jews who gained religious asylum. Add to the mix a herd of younger Iranian Americans, many of whom have never been to their parents’ homeland, and the result is a complex jumble.