by at Home;Abroad Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American
This was not the welcome my father had expected from Dr. Mojtahedi. After all, the principal had told my father to look him up next time he was in Tehran. He should have been more specific: “But don’t barge in on our entrance exams.”
We left immediately. My father, pretending not to be red-faced and covered with sweat, assured my brother that he would take care of it the next day. Farshid told my father that he had helped enough and to please never help him again.
Two weeks later, Farshid, along with another group of prospective students, took the school’s entrance exam, in that same room, and was accepted.
There are currently literally tens of thousands of Alborz graduates in successful positions around the world. The school’s principal, Dr. Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi, the gray-haired man who rightfully screamed at us, was a living legend. From a poor background, due to the lack of educational opportunities he did not finish high school until age twenty-two. As principal of Alborz, he was famous for being dedicated, protective, and incorruptible. He admitted students based on ability. Poor students with no connections or wealth studied alongside the sons of the rich and powerful, all of whom had been admitted for their academic abilities.
My brother was so fond of the rigorous culture at Alborz that, the following year, he wanted to stay in Tehran with relatives instead of coming with us to America. My parents, however, decided that he had to come along.
Like Farshid, I, too, experienced a private school in Tehran, albeit one of a different flavor. When we arrived in Tehran, I took an entrance exam for a coed school known for high academic standards. A few days later, my father received a phone call from the head of the school. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jazayeri,” he said. “The test results are in, and your daughter is not gifted.” After he hung up, my father called someone who knew someone who knew someone. The next day, he received another phone call from the head of the school. “Congratulations, Mr. Jazayeri,” he said, “your daughter is gifted.”
Despite the sometimes less-than-admirable admissions policy, I give credit to my Iranian schools for teaching me discipline. I learned that school meant work, not play. I never expected my teachers to make subjects fun. Fun was what I had with my friends, outside the classroom. Of course, the system was far from perfect. With absolute power, some teachers went too far. For example, corporal punishment was allowed. When my father’s assignment in America ended in 1974, we moved to Ahwaz for six months. My teacher there took full advantage of the right to hit us. I thought then, and still think, that she was mentally unwell. The students she targeted were ones who did not do their work; perhaps they had learning disabilities or just needed more help. With the bar set high, it was easy to feel stupid and give up. Those kids would probably have blossomed in Mrs. Sandberg’s classroom.
Judging from the number of successful Iranian immigrants scattered around the world after the revolution, it’s easy to see that Iranian schools used to be quite good. I wish I could incorporate some of their high standards into my children’s schools in America. But they would never work here. Kids would complain that lots of math drills are not fun, which is true. Parents would complain about the amount of homework. Having lots of homework is indeed inconvenient and requires organization and time-management skills, which kids do not have. This means that they must learn those skills, which is also not fun. And maybe that’s the problem. Delayed gratification has fallen out of fashion. Good old Iranian or American qualities such as aiming high and striving despite difficulties have been replaced with everyone receiving a trophy for participating.
But that’s not the only obstacle. In Iran, we celebrated the math geniuses, the ones with neat handwriting, the ones who tried to excel in school, the ones who spent a lot of time on their homework. They received prizes. Their names were in the newspaper. We applauded them and wished our children could be like them.
Here, those kids are called nerds and geeks and dorks. This may be the only country where people make fun of the smart kids. Now that’s stupid. I only hope that the engineer who built the bridge I drive across or the nurse who administers our vaccines or the teacher who teaches my kids was a total nerd.
Thirty-five years after finishing second grade, I still keep in touch with Mrs. Sandberg. That alone qualifies me as a poster child for geeks, dorks, and nerds everywhere. Whenever we talk on the phone, Mrs. Sandberg insists that I call her by her first name, Bonnie. I can’t do that.
What I can do is tell her that I appreciated what she taught me, which was very different from what I learned in my schools in Iran. She showed me that one sensitive educator could make a pivotal difference in a person’s life. She also taught me how to make a planetarium out of a shoebox and track the stars.
May every student have a Dr. Mojtahedi or a Mrs. Sandberg.
June Joon
In 1974, during what must have been an uneventful period in American history, my family and I were featured in the local Whittier newspaper under the caption “Ambassadors Sans Portfolio.” The article was accompanied by a large photo of my parents, my brother Farshid, and me, sitting on our sofa looking at each other in a smiley way that, prior to the presence of the photographer in our living room, had never, ever occurred before. For this special occasion, I had donned my polyester pants and sweater combo from Sears. The outfit was a size fourteen Pretty Plus. There’s nothing green about Greenland and there was nothing pretty about Pretty Plus. I assumed that fourteen Ate-Too-Much-Kentucky-Fried-Chicken would not fit on the tag.
Right next to our photo was a column by a Ms. Shirley Ruth, who doled out decorating advice. On that particular day in history, a Mrs. K. Potter had written her a long, detailed letter pleading for help: “Can you help us decorate our rather large living room? The carpet is a cut pile in a light cream color…my biggest problem is the layout of the room and placement of colors.” Mrs. Potter’s cry for help was answered with an even longer and more detailed letter involving “U-shaped sectionals,” “cream-colored rayon satin tassels,” and “celery green striped fabric with rows of miniature yellow-and-melon-colored flowers with tiny celery green leaves.”
The journalist assigned to interview us was a woman by the name of June, which means “dear” in Persian. Dear June started with the usual questions about how long we had been there and what we thought of America. My father, droning in the monotone that he always saved for Americans, told her about his Fulbright Scholarship, his grant from the Ford Foundation, and the oil industry. He then delivered his “Iran is not an Arab country” speech, followed by his “Shah’s plans to industrialize Iran” speech, and topped it with his soliloquy on the future of agriculture.
I was always embarrassed when my father talked about the Shah. I knew that Americans just weren’t interested in the guy, but my father seemed to think that all Americans were on the edge of their seats, wondering what modernization plans lay ahead for Iran. But a conversation in English with my father was a one-way street, with the listener wondering how many more miles till the next rest stop. My father’s ignorance of body language did not help. To him, a glazed look, slumped posture, and open jaw were the American way of saying, “Go on, you fascinating foreigner!”
In Iran, the Shah’s picture was on the front page of textbooks, in offices, in banks, and in schools, keeping him fore-most in people’s thoughts. No wall space had been overlooked for this decorating opportunity, although I’m sure that even Ms. Shirley Ruth would have found the “leader’s face” theme a bit redundant and could have suggested something with a little more color, perhaps with tassels. And of course, all the photos were very serious. Although a smiling photo would have added much more to the ambiance of any bank, school, or government office, it would have taken away a certain dictatorial edge, and that would have been a real decorating faux pas.
Sitting next to my father on our brown, beige, and tangerine striped sofa, I was enduring the itchiness of my outfit, waiting for my chance to speak to the reporter. I had already chosen my topic.
Then June asked my mother her feelings on America. My mom delivered an incomprehensible collection of words that were written as “I haven’t been homesick once since we came here and we feel the schools are marvelous.” I understood June’s predicament. To have directly quoted my mother’s “So very good pee-pel so good at Veet-e-yerr” would not have worked. But anyone who had ever spoken to my mother would have known that the sentence attributed to her in the paper could not have happened. Her use of verbs, a trisyllabic adjective, a sentence that could be understood by an English-speaking person—all were dead giveaways that June had, let’s just say, used her imagination. But this was okay, because June had a job to do and bills to pay.
I was still waiting for my turn to speak. I had decided to enlighten June on the difference in the level of expectation in Iranian and American schools. I was going to tell her that in Iran we had to stand up when a teacher entered the room, and how much homework we had and how no one ever dared speak back to the teacher and that even though I liked my teachers in America, I had actually learned a lot more in Iran.
As I sat with a smile plastered on my face, I thought about how much more interesting my comments were going to be than those of the rest of my family and I wondered what size came after fourteen Pretty Plus, since the waistband on my pants was definitely getting tight. Suddenly, June turned to my father and said, “And now a few questions about your daughter. How do you pronounce her name?”
I don’t know what school of pseudojournalism June had bought her diploma from, but if I understood correctly, she was going to be asking my father about me, not me about me. My father, happy and willing to steal the limelight from his own kin, told June how I hadn’t spoken any English when I first arrived and how my mother had accompanied me to school for the first three days and then had been told by me to stay home. This, of course, was wrong. My mother had accompanied me for only one day before I asked her to stay home. I didn’t want to contradict my father in front of June, plus I assumed I would eventually have a chance to speak a few words myself—but no. June then closed her writing tablet, thanked us, and moved out of the way so the photographer could take a few snapshots. I had been nothing more than a photo opportunity.
When the article was published, my parents were quite pleased with the photo, although years later my father did declare his three-inch sideburns rather dated and unattractive. What irked me, besides not having been interviewed, was the last sentence. My parents had told June that my brothers would both be staying in America while the three of us were preparing to return to Iran, and that we hoped to be able to return to America someday. June wrote, “Until the day for making a decision arrives, it seems safe to assume the U.S. will have two unofficial members of the diplomatic corps serving in the Middle East.” Two members, according to June—so who was she leaving out? Was I not an unofficial member of the diplomatic corps serving in the Middle East? Was I, who had not only learned English fluently but had also eaten Frosted Flakes, Chips Ahoy! cookies, and Hamburger Helper on a daily basis; watched enough TV to have earned the nickname “TV Guide,” and become an overweight, sedentary, polyester-clad American not good enough for the diplomatic corps?
Dear June, perhaps you would like to have an interview with me now, but I’m sorry. I’m busy.
His and Hers
There are only a few things in life that cause sheer jubilation in my father, and clearance sales are one of them. When I was sixteen, my father came home one day and breathlessly announced that the nearby engineering corporation was selling all its old furniture. “Nothing over seventy-nine dollars!” he kept repeating, trying to put a lid on his excitement.
The following Saturday, my father and I woke up bright and early. Armed with the checkbook, we set out for the bargain hunt. We decided to take both cars. At the time, my father drove a Buick LeSabre, a fancy French word meaning “OPEC thanks you.” Our behemoth was, as described by the dealer, a “two-toned mulberry.” Farshid referred to it as “Dad’s purple car,” a term that greatly disturbed my father, which in turn guaranteed its constant repetition by the aforementioned brother. The dealer had knocked off a few hundred dollars to try to get the ugly-mobile off his hands, and even though my mother had said, “Kazem, it’s really ugly,” the car was now ours. It wasn’t just the color. Its roof was not only a deeper shade of the mulberry/purple/magenta theme, but was made of leatherette, giving our car the vehicular equivalent of a cheap toupee. The good thing about our car, as my father repeatedly reminded us, was that it was very easy to spot in a parking lot. This could have been just as easily achieved by sticking a toilet plunger on the roof of any car.
For our foray into bargaindom, I was to drive the silver Chevette, a car with a history that could fill several tomes. We had purchased the Chevette the year before, when my mother finally decided to learn to drive. She used to drive in Abadan, a town where, during commuting hours, she may have had to share the road with up to five cars. She had never driven in Tehran and had adamantly refused even to try to drive in America. Of course, driving in America is totally different from driving in Iran since, here, traffic rules have to be somewhat obeyed. In Iran, stop signs and red lights are merely decorative. In fact, stopping at a stop sign would probably cause a rear-end collision.
When my mother obtained her California driver’s license, she announced that she would not drive at night, on freeways, or on any road with too many cars, a term not clearly defined by her but understood by the rest of us as “You’re still going to have to drive me places.” Due to my mother’s limited automobile needs, my father decided to buy her a Chevette, a car that in automobile evolution stands proudly one rung above the golf cart. He purchased the bare-bones model, the one that came with a steering wheel, four tires, seats, a rearview mirror, and an AM radio. This was fine for my mother, but for me, someone whose friends were receiving convertibles for their Sweet Sixteen birthdays, the Chevette was no social coup. Worse yet, the only radio station that came in clearly specialized in easy-listening tunes, in particular the vast repertoire of Perry Como, a singing legend whom I now much appreciate. But back in the eighties, I would have preferred to be singing “Hungry Like the Wolf” with Duran Duran.
The musical limitations of the Chevette were minor compared with its other problem—acceleration. This was a vehicle that went from zero to fifty-five in nine and a half minutes. Merging on the freeway was an ulcer in the making. As I pressed on the accelerator, sweating and praying, other drivers made rude gestures, honked, or mouthed four-letter words as they passed me. Not even Mr. Como’s gentle voice reminding me of “Bali Ha’i” could help me. “It’s not a Corvette!” I wanted to scream. If I had a hammer, I could’ve given Mr. Como a whole other verse. A decade later, “road rage” was born in Southern California and added to the American lexicon. I was a pioneer in that movement.
Not only did my mother and I learn to drive using the Chevette, so did two dozen visiting relatives from Iran. Anytime anyone remotely related to me needed to learn how to drive, they borrowed the Chevette. Aside from the fact that no one else was willing to lend student drivers a car, we owned the cheapest car, the one with presumably the most inexpensive replacement parts, should the need arise. Miraculously, the need never arose. Not only did everyone in my family pass his driver’s test, but the accident-free Chevette served us well for ten years. My father eventually replaced it out of vanity, claiming that it stood out in a bad way among all the Mercedes in the neighborhood.
My father and I arrived at the furniture sale and were greeted by a sea of desks, cabinets, chairs, and bookcases covering the entire parking lot. With our hearts pounding, we selected a huge desk (seventy-nine dollars), a chair (thirty-nine dollars), and a file cabi
net (nineteen dollars). Then brilliance struck. My father said, “These desks are so cheap. Let’s buy two.”
“Great idea!” I chimed in, proving that cerebral limitations are often genetic.
By then, all the other seventy-nine-dollar desks were gone, so we settled for a slightly smaller fifty-nine-dollar model. We paid, and that’s when our dilemma crystallized. We were expected to transport our two desks, two chairs, and a file cabinet ourselves. We looked around and noticed the other customers hoisting their purchases onto their trucks and U-Hauls. My father opened the trunk of the LeSabre and announced, “I think it’ll work.” Even though the trunk was the size of an eight-person Jacuzzi, the seventy-nine-dollar desk was the size of a sixteen-person Jacuzzi. My father began trying to lift the desk into the car when two benevolent souls came to his aid. “I don’t think this is gonna fit,” one of them surmised. “It’ll fit,” my father said. “Just help me lift it in here.” The two men helped lift the desk and placed it on its side in the trunk. It stuck out like an iceberg. The men offered to help my father tie it down. Of course my father had not brought any rope. “I’ll just drive slowly,” he said. Then, like preparing a Thanksgiving turkey, my father stuffed the chairs and the file cabinet inside the car and moved on to the Chevette. He opened the hatchback and shoved in the other desk, which didn’t fit, either, but my father didn’t seem to notice. “Just drive slowly,” he said.
If life came with background music, the Jaws theme would have started then.