In Vancouver, I find the far-flung edge of the Persian empire by way of the Sea Bus, the aging ferry that crosses from downtown to the North Shore, where thousands of Iranians have settled over the better part of a decade.

As I arrive at the terminal, I am greeted by the pale, freckled faces of girls who may be the offspring of the Scottish stock that came here in the 1940s and 1950s to work on the docks. Soon a tall, dark man with a neat moustache and goatee pulls up in an unassuming red Toyota. As we drive past BC Transit buses and up the road toward the mountains, it’s easy to forget that I’m sitting next to one of the most famous Persian musicians in the world.

“I feel at home here. It’s just like being in Iran,” says Hossein Behroozinia, renowned player of the barbat, or Persian lute, smiling as he drives past shops and restaurants with Farsi signage en route to his house in North Vancouver.

“But the roads are a bit safer,” I point out, remembering Tehran’s terrible traffic.

“Yes, you are right,” says Behroozinia, suddenly more sombre as he tells me of his sisters recent death in a hit-and-run accident in the Iranian capital. “She was on her way to a rehearsal for the Tehran Symphony Orchestra,” he recounts. “She was a very talented singer.”

In these days of heated rhetoric by unpopular presidents in Tehran and Washington, DC, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra is perhaps not the first thing about Iran that springs to mind. But it’s quite a good one by all accounts, and surprisingly features men and women side by side, performing a mixed Western and Persian classical repertoire. While women’s voices are still considered demonic by the regime because they entice men to lustful thoughts Behroozinia explains that this only pertains to solo acts, and that groups of three or more women are now permitted to sing in public.

Deadly traffic, however, is the least of the problems endured by musicians in Iran. According to Behroozinia, the Byzantine process involved in merely staging a concert is a “bureaucratic nightmare,” with every lyric of every song submitted to the police and the Ershad (the Ministry of Islamic Guidance), and copious amounts of cash demanded for licences and permits.

Add to that a failing economy, sanctions, pervasive censorship, and rampant crime, and it’s easy to see why a place like Vancouver has such strong appeal to the growing community of Persian classical musicians. Mohammad Reza Shajarian, considered the best Persian classical singer in the world, has a home here; and musicians like Amir Koushkani, who has performed with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as well as his own Persian jazz fusion group, Safa, are making forays into Western musical idioms. While Los Angeles is still the centre of Persian pop music, Vancouver is slowly becoming a centre of classical Persian music, where terms like tar, daf, and setar are entering the local musical vernacular.

“When I first came here, in 1992,” explains Behroozinia as we arrive at his well-appointed home, with its rolling green lawns and mountain views, “I thought it was paradise.” Rather than feeling the sense of exile so common among immigrants, he finds Vancouver’s peace and quiet inspiring.