by Donia Bijan
Iran was slipping away from me too fast, taking the shape of a film rather than a real place where I had once dug holes on its sandy beaches and chased pigeons in my grandfather’s courtyard. When I’d eaten ice cream under the cool shade of his pergola, where sweetbriar and jasmine tangled in a rivalry of scent, when I’d splashed my cousins from his fountain with the turquoise tiles that held a hand’s depth of water, when we’d put on a play of “Rumpelstiltskin” on the stage he had had built for us in his living room, with red velvet curtains and gold tassels, I hadn’t known I wouldn’t be back.
NEAR THE END of my senior year I had figured out how to maintain an interior and an exterior life. I mimicked my peers by day and by night. I took refuge in the room I shared with Neda, keeping it tidy, ironing my jeans, and doing homework. I pushed away thoughts of home, but they raced to catch me. Sometimes in my dreams I’d be on my bed in my old room, or in the hallways of my school, looking for my locker. I would wake up almost happy to have visited these places in my sleep. I discovered Roth, Bellow, and Malamud in a Jewish American literature class taught by a teacher who went by his first name and brought his dog, an aloof Afghan, to our classroom. We sat on sofas and discussed alienation—a topic I could certainly grasp but failed to find the words for until I went to bed and lay awake with furious debates raging in my head, desperate to bring forth ideas with such command as the authors I was reading. My fury found voice in the stories I wrote for my creative writing class, taught by a beloved teacher who pedaled languidly to school with his trouser cuffs pinned up, his right arm weighed down with a bulging leather briefcase that held our handwritten narratives. His warm voice mediated our alternating admiration and criticism of one another’s work. Being susceptible to flattery, I hung on to his praise and his suggestion to submit my work to the student literary magazine. When it came time to fill out college applications, I was suddenly aware that, other than those few entries, my credentials lagged in comparison to those of my classmates. My application lacked tales of debate clubs, yearbook staff, lacrosse teams, chess, choir, track and field.
My parents were filling out applications, too. After a year of living like nomads, waiting to go home, they realized they were never going back to Iran and began applying for visas to America to be near their children. The fact that my mother had relatives in California, and that her brother had earlier married my lovely American aunt, facilitated their decision where to go and also eased the process of acquiring visas. The uncertainty had broken them down, causing them to reel between hope and despair. The only certainty lay in their fate if they returned home: death before a firing squad and three orphaned daughters. The revolution had overturned the very soil where they had laid deep roots, built a life, done good work. They learned that an accomplished past meant nothing to the gentleman behind the desk at the embassy. Their past was no longer relevant, and the winds of change swept them up like the last fall leaves clinging to a branch that has no use for them. They continued to follow the news that drew a grim picture of what had become of their country. The monarchy had collapsed; Khomeini had returned to Iran to become the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. Armed Revolutionary Guards combed the streets, making random arrests and executing anyone with a prior connection to the regime. The news was their only link to a revolution that was not theirs.
In June 1980, with an acceptance to the University of California at Santa Cruz, I reunited with my parents in Fresno, where my mother had extended family. My parents furnished their little apartment with lamps, tables, pots, and pans from yard sales, gradually collecting things to call their own. While my mother sewed curtains, my father rewired lamps and upholstered chairs. They were nesting all over again. Only this time, there was no heirloom silver, crystal, or carpets. There were mugs with the logo of the local bank where they had deposited the meager sum my uncle in Iran had managed to wire them. But we were safe and we were together.
Once the drapes were hung, my parents quickly set about acquiring driver’s licenses and social security cards and studying for the state medical board exams. They spent numerous hours poring over DMV manuals and quizzing each other on road rules. My father was sixty-one. He had been a successful surgeon and obstetrician in Iran, but as hard as he studied the medical textbooks, the nuances of the English language eluded him. My mother, fifty-one, was a registered nurse trained in England and passed the nursing board exams. She soon began working at a local hospital.
In August we celebrated my eighteenth birthday. My mother made my favorite Persian dish, adas polo, with plump raisins, dates, lentils, and chicken tucked into cinnamonscented rice. I had been known to eat an entire pot all by myself, so she had made an extra pot just for me and another one for our guests. Slowly we had been stocking our pantry with turmeric, cumin, saffron, cinnamon, allspice, dried fruit, lentils, fava beans, and basmati rice. In Iran, I had climbed onto the kitchen counter to look at my mother’s cooking spices, opening them one by one, taking in their prickly scent. Now, it reassured me to see them lined up again like stepping-stones across a vast ocean. Rose petals and orange rind dried on our windowsills. Feta cheese and shelled walnuts with piles of fresh mint, tarragon, and basil accompanied our meals again. Without making a fuss, my mother helped me shed those teenage pounds, curbing my desire for the slick, processed food that had seduced me. We swam fifty laps in the afternoons when she came home from work, stroking parallel on our sides so we could chat. If we lost count, she’d laugh and make us start all over. We went on long walks together. We ate real food. And each time one of us came across the familiar, we gasped: Oh, look! Look! They have persimmons here, incredulous that people left them to rot on their trees, where they hung like fall ornaments. If we could reach a few that hung over a fence, we brought them home for my father, who loved to eat them chilled for dessert, scooping out the ripe flesh like parfait.
My mother made quick friends with the greengrocers and butchers in the supermarkets. They were always happy to see her, to slice into a cantaloupe for her to taste, teach her the names of different cuts of meat, or make suggestions for the Fourth of July. She loved reading the recipes in the food section of the Fresno Bee, where she learned what America was eating. She attempted these recipes cautiously, not certain what the final result ought to taste like, but nevertheless trying those for oatmeal raisin cookies, noodle casseroles, and bread stuffing.
Our home smelled familiar again, of cardamom and mint, jasmine and rose water. California’s bountiful Central Valley provided us with plenty of the ingredients, from figs to pomegranates, dates, grape leaves, oranges, and almonds, to cook Persian food. Best of all, we had someone to share it with. My aunt and uncle were newly arrived from Iran with stories of their own about what they had left behind.
The night of my birthday party I had reached for ice and spotted the Jamoca almond fudge ice cream cake from Baskin-Robbins in the freezer. And over by the window sat a big square box wrapped in blue and yellow paisley paper. My cousin Roya and I had gone for a swim in the apartment complex pool. How we giggled when some gangly boys asked for our phone numbers. We imagined our fathers’ faces when they answered the phone and heard a male voice on the other end asking to speak to their daughter. Obviously these boys had never encountered the wrath of an Iranian father. My father had a surgeon’s massive hands. I had seen them pick up a boy by his ears and throw him out of the house like a kitten—just another clueless kid who had been enchanted by my sister and thought he could sit next to her on the sofa and sip his 7-Up, maybe even reach for her hand, only to be airborne a minute later. When it came to suitable young men for his daughters, it was a losing battle; no prince, no doctor, no engineer or lawyer, could find a way into his good graces. How in God’s name was I ever going to go on a date?
After we showered and joined the family, my father made us virgin Bloody Marys, and again, with the word virgin, we collapsed into giggles. They urged me to open my present. Despite my uneasiness about my parents’ buying me a gi
ft with their limited resources, I couldn’t wait to tear away the paisley paper. My brave, beautiful mother had bought me a turntable with her first paycheck.
She sat on the edge of the couch, beaming. She said I needed it for college. How did she know? My cousin gave me the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls LP. That summer we had danced wildly to “Shattered” every time it came on the radio. Behind closed doors, we would jump, thrust, punch the air with our fists, and sing the lyrics at the top of our voices. I studied the album cover—those funny wigs—and it was all I could do not to rush to my room and play the album over and over again until I knew every word to every song. If the summer of 1980 had a sound track, it would be Some Girls for the two young women on the brink of an American journey, and Ted Koppel’s Nightline for the folks who hadn’t asked for the journey but were nevertheless thrust into its turmoil.
A few weeks later, in my college dorm room, I unpacked my precious turntable and leaned my single album next to it. On the windowsill, I put a snapshot of my birthday party: two young girls with our dark chocolate tans, broad smiles, and eager eyes, the first generation of Iranian Americans, sitting between my parents, my father’s brooding eyes next to my mother’s fragile optimism.
My Mother’s Bread Stuffing
It is not surprising that Thanksgiving was my mother’s favorite American holiday. She carefully observed the preparations her friends and neighbors made, collecting recipes, and over the years created her own traditional feast.
Stuffing for a 12-to 15-pound turkey or 2 5-pound chickens
1 large yellow onion
5 stalks celery
3 carrots
7 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 to 3 cloves garlic, slivered
1 to 2 whole cloves
1 teaspoon allspice
Zest of 2 oranges
1½ cups dried apricots, slivered
1½ cups dried cranberries
6 ounces chicken livers
2 loaves slightly stale peasant bread, preferably not sourdough
½ cup toasted pine nuts
½ cup coarsely chopped sage
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 cups chicken stock
Kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Dice the onion, celery, and carrot uniformly. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in a skillet and sauté the vegetables with the garlic until soft and translucent. Add the cloves and allspice, half the orange peel, and the apricots and cranberries, stir together, and cook 3 or 4 more minutes on low heat. Remove and cool in a wide bowl.
3. Separate the lobes of the chicken livers, trim the veins, and dice into ½-inch cubes. Season with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon each of the oil and butter and sauté the chicken livers until firm, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat, allow to cool, and add to the vegetable-fruit mixture.
4. Cut the bread into bite-size chunks, discarding the top and bottom crust. Toss with the cooked liver and the vegetable-fruit mixture. Fold in the toasted pine nuts and ¼ cup chopped sage.
5. Drizzle with vinegar and chicken stock. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt or vinegar if the stuffing tastes bland, and enough chicken stock to keep it moist.
6. To stuff the cavity of a turkey or other fowl, season the cavity with salt and fresh-ground pepper and gently scoop the mixture to stuff the bird. You will have some left over to bake separately. Pile the remaining stuffing into a buttered baking dish and gently pat down for an even surface. Dot the top with the remaining butter, cover the stuffing with foil, and bake 1 hour.
7. For a 15-pound stuffed turkey, season the outside generously with salt and fresh-ground pepper, the juice of 2 oranges, and the remaining olive oil. Tuck the remaining orange peel and chopped sage between the breast and the skin. Place on the middle rack of the oven and roast for 4 hours, basting frequently and covering with foil once the bird is a rich golden brown. Remove from the oven. Cover loosely with foil and allow to rest 30 minutes before carving.
Note: The chicken livers and pine nuts are optional. Any preferred dried fruit may also be added or substituted.
Persimmon Parfait
Our first autumn in California was marked by the discovery of familiar fruits like figs and persimmons. It was remarkable to see branches on our neighborhood trees bowing with the weight of these bright orange ornaments, and no one to pick them. Perhaps our neighbors had once bitten into an unripe persimmon and vowed never to go near one again. So if we could reach any that leaned over a fence, we picked them. You have to be patient with persimmons—they’re ready when they’re ready, and that’s that. When my mother asked a neighbor why she didn’t pick her fruit, she exclaimed, Why, Amy, I wouldn’t know what to do with them! So my mother took it upon herself to help harvest persimmons, and soon, quick-bread and cookie recipes flourished. But my father still preferred to eat them straight up.
When my sister-in-law came for Thanks-giving one year, we gave her some persimmons to take home to Maryland. She called a few days later to find out when they would be ripe. We told her the best way to know is to ask her husband to hold a persimmon in one hand and her breast in the other. When the two feel the same, the persimmon is ripe.
Serves 6 to 8
4 very ripe Hachiya persimmons
¾ cup sugar
3 egg whites
½ cup sour cream
½ cup cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups heavy cream
1 cup crumbled gingersnaps
1. Place 6 glass ice cream bowls or one large 9-inch bowl in the freezer to chill.
2. With the tip of a paring knife, gently remove the persimmon cores, then peel the skin away to scoop the flesh out. Place in a food processor and pulse until the fruit is pureed. Transfer to a bowl and chill.
3. Place ½ cup of the sugar in a small saucepan with 3 tablespoons of water to dissolve over medium heat. While the sugar simmers, whisk the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer until they form soft peaks. If you’re using a candy thermometer, cook the sugar to 230°F. Otherwise, to test the syrup, you can dip in a knife, and if it forms a ball on the tip, it’s ready. With the mixer running, gently drizzle in the syrup and continue beating until the egg whites are stiff and glossy. Transfer to a bowl and chill.
4. In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together the sour cream, cream cheese, remaining sugar, and vanilla until smooth, slowly adding the heavy cream in a steady stream until soft peaks form.
5. Fold half the egg-white mixture into the persimmon puree with ¼ of the whipped cream. Fold the remaining whipped cream and egg-white mixture together.
6. In the chilled bowls, put a spoonful of plain parfait mixture, sprinkle a layer of gingersnaps, then add a dollop of persimmon mixture. Continue alternating plain and persimmon, sprinkling gingersnaps between each layer. Tap each glass gently on the counter to release the air pockets and settle the layers. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 3 hours in small bowls, or 6 hours if using a large bowl.
7. If you wish to unmold the parfait made in a large bowl, uncover and immerse in hot water for a few seconds, then invert onto a chilled plate. Otherwise, remove the bowls from the freezer 20 minutes before serving, sprinkle the tops with the remaining gingersnaps, and serve.
Note: The parfait can be made a day or two in advance. When you wish to serve it, allow a few extra minutes to temper the frozen cream.
Chapter 4
THE GREYHOUND BUS station in Santa Cruz was quiet on Friday afternoons. After my last class I would take the campus shuttle into town and walk to the station. Waiting with the few other passengers for the bus that would take me home for the weekend, I looked forward to that two-hour drive on Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz Mountains. From my window seat I gazed at lush mountains the likes of which I had never seen, taking in the dramatic wildness of the California landscape.
Back at the dorm, my friends were planning parties, pooling their money for beer and rum. They watched me, bewildered, as I left every Friday afternoon. I’d say good-bye to my roommate, who liked to roll a perfect joint on her lap, taking her time sealing the paper with cat licks, looking flushed before roaming into a reverie, her thoughts cartwheeling from her parents to her boyfriend to Catholic school. I’d say good-bye to Frank, a bright boy who found me as exotic as I found him—a bleached-blond, tall, and lanky native. He told me stories about San Diego, where he’d grown up, its surf culture, the meanest burritos, his mother tending to her marijuana plants like prize orchids, and the little brothers he missed so much. I’d say good-bye to the boys in the quad kicking Hacky Sacks and to the lingering scent of clove cigarettes, and the last thing I heard was Bob Marley drifting through the open windows of the dorm’s fourth floor.
I couldn’t have planned a better initiation into California culture. This campus with its panoramic ocean views, its thick redwood groves and wildflower meadows, was as untamed and quirky as its student body. It was slow, organic, sustainable, vegan, long before those words became our everyday vernacular. They made their own granola and ate their vegetables unpeeled and raw. They introduced me to trail mix and marveled that Persians ate a similar mixture of dried fruits and nuts, minus the shaved coconut, carob, and banana chips.
Down the hall lived a music major with kitchen privileges, who went down to the wharf once a week for fish heads and tails. She came back to make big, messy pots of fish chowder. I liked to watch her make this crazy soup, throwing in whole, unpeeled turnips, carrots, and potatoes, clawing the skin off onions with long fingernails and tossing them in, ripping handfuls of celery tops, bursting ripe tomatoes in her fists, and all the while quietly singing melancholy Joni Mitchell melodies, even though the occasion called for Wagner. I stared wide-eyed at the fish heads bobbing to the surface, which stared back at me with milky eyes. She hardly waited for a boil before dipping a mug to feed herself, then turned to me with a Cheshire grin to offer some. “No.” I said. “Thank you, but I already ate dinner.” I was lying, of course. I had declined the food plan to save my parents the extra expense, but I did have a job in the school cafeteria making sandwiches at lunch, and I was allowed to make one for myself on my break. I learned to tuck enough ingredients between two slices of bread to sustain me for the rest of the day. But really, I couldn’t accept the wild soup because I had grown up in a hospital where soup was made with washed, trimmed, and cubed vegetables, and the fish heads were strained from the broth before serving. Much later, when I learned to make bouillabaisse, I remembered my college friend—her appetite and her enthusiasm—and I regretted not having accepted a bowl of her soup.