by Sara Saedi
I can’t provide factual evidence as to why weddings became such an integral part of the Iranian culture. In modern-day Iran, men and women aren’t technically allowed to celebrate in the same room together, but many are willing to break the law to cut a rug. The Iranian culture doesn’t have any ceremonies that recognize rites of passage like quinceañeras or bar mitzvahs (unless of course you are a Persian Jew, which we aren’t), so weddings became our only opportunity to get dolled up, attend a big party, and dance to Iranian hits with the occasional Gipsy Kings tune thrown onto the playlist. Unlike most American weddings I’ve attended, Iranian weddings call for formal clothing—it’s a cardinal sin to show up wearing a summer dress or something perfectly appropriate for a Sunday church service. We take wedding attire as seriously as Anna Wintour takes the Met Gala. We are strictly black-tie. In fact, the only reason an Iranian wedding would be “black tie optional” is to make our American friends feel more at home. And then we secretly roll our eyes behind their backs when they wear a short, floral frock.
“Hmmm…,” our interior monologues say. “Guess she couldn’t step it up and splurge for a BCBG evening gown.”
It’s true. We think our weddings are better than your weddings. If there’s one thing our immigrant class would like to contribute to this country, it’s fancier dresses and more dancing at your receptions. You’re welcome, America.
Our traditional wedding ceremonies are nothing like the standard Western nuptials. For starters, the bride and groom are required to sit during the ceremony, usually facing away from the guests and toward what’s called the sofreh aghd, or the traditional wedding altar. During the ceremony, many of the married female guests are invited to the altar to hold up a lace sheet over the couple and take turns grinding giant sugar cubes atop the sheet. This is supposed to symbolize a sweet life for the newlyweds. It’s feminine and beautiful, but there’s also some hurt feelings among the married women who aren’t invited to partake in the tradition because, well, their unions suck and no one wants the bad juju. Traditionally, the groom says baleh (yes) right away when asked if he takes the bride to be his wife. But the bride keeps the guests in suspense by not answering the question until the third time it’s been posed. Once she finally says baleh, the entire room erupts in cheers.
This particular portion of the wedding ceremony turns gender roles in the Iranian culture on their head. To me, the tradition suggests that it’s the woman in the relationship who needs to make her mind up about the man. He’s eager to commit, and she’s too busy contemplating what she really wants out of life. It’s a brief moment of female empowerment, which unfortunately isn’t always ingrained in other arenas of our culture. To see more traditional gender roles play out, just go to a dinner party at a Persian person’s house and watch as the women wash dishes after dinner and the men dick around and play backgammon.
On Sunday, Iran and US played against each other in the World Cup. Iran played awesome and won 2–1. It was so cool. My whole family was so happy. We all went to an Iranian café with flags and loud music. Later that day, we all went to Los Gatos and danced and sang. I’ve never felt so proud or so Iranian for that matter. There was so much comfort there. It made me wish I had more Iranian friends.
—Diary entry: July 1, 1998
“Are you having a party, and if you are, why am I not invited?” Izzy asked me over the phone.
“I’m not having a party,” I responded.
“Liar. It sounds like you have fifty people over.”
“Oh, it’s just two of my aunts,” I replied. “They stopped by to see my mom.”
“Why is it so loud? Are they fighting or something?”
“No. We’re Persian. It’s just the way we talk.”
Whenever my friends called our house, they could barely make out my voice on the other end of the receiver and always assumed an impromptu gathering of a dozen or so relatives caused the background noise. What they eventually learned was that “quiet Iranian” is an oxymoron. I’ve never met one. We don’t whisper or use inside voices. What’s the point of saying anything if no one can hear you? Our opinions must be expressed at top volume in order for people to listen. You know when all the cohosts on a talk show speak at the same time and you don’t understand what anyone is actually saying? The industry term for this is “cross talk.” Well, that’s what it was like to be around my mom’s side of the family.
I couldn’t tell you what it was like to be around my dad’s side of the family. With the exception of Mamani, the Saedi contingent lived in Iran for the entirety of my teen years, so I only knew them through stories, letters and photographs we’d receive in the mail, and telephone conversations shouted at the top of our lungs to hear each other’s voices through the shoddy long-distance connection. I never expressed it to my parents, but I dreaded the calls to Iran. I could always tell when my mom and dad were on an overseas call from the way they had to yell names into the receiver repeatedly until they heard someone else’s voice on the other end of the line:
“FAFAR. FAFAR. FAFAR.” My dad would bellow his younger sister’s name over and over again.
“Ugh,” I would vent to my sister. “They’re calling Iran. Again.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to my relatives; it was that I didn’t know what to say. When my parents handed me the phone, I would stretch the cord (yes, phones had cords) as far as it would go for privacy. My Farsi wasn’t what it used to be, and I was ashamed of my now-thick American accent. I couldn’t hide the fact that I was no longer like them. I wanted to have meaningful conversations with my grandma and aunts that captured my sassy humor and penchant for sarcasm, but I couldn’t communicate much beyond the usual Farsi phrases:
“Delam yek zareh shodeh.” (Literal translation: “My heart has turned into a tiny speck,” which is just a fancy way to say “I really miss you.”)
“Jotoon khaley kholly.” (Literal translation: “Your place is very empty,” which is just a fancy way to say “I really miss you.”)
“Be omideh deedar.” (Literal translation: “I hope to see you soon.” We said this even though it had been years since we last saw each other, and we knew there were no visits on the horizon.)
On those phone calls, my limited vocabulary probably made me sound just like a teenage Siri. I’m sure my family in Iran wondered why I followed the same predictable script for every conversation. It wasn’t until adulthood that several family members would become regular fixtures in my life, some of them finally moving to the States and others traveling here more frequently. My cousin Mehdi, who still lives in Tehran with his wife and kids, made his first trip to America in 2015. So when we said “Be omideh deedar” on those phone calls, we had to keep the hope alive for decades before we saw each other. While the Muslim ban was tied up in the courts, Mehdi was denied a visa to visit us, and also his parents, who now reside in California.
But while I was forced into isolation from my dad’s family back in the day, I still had more relatives living in the Bay Area than most of my American friends. My mom’s entire side of the family (the Sanjideh contingent) moved to America after the revolution, and the majority of them followed my dayee Mehrdad to the Bay Area. Each family’s escape plan from Iran would have amounted to disastrous consequences if it didn’t go as planned. All of our departures from the country were dangerous, abrupt, and mostly illegal. There was no time to carefully sift through our prized possessions or to label neatly packed boxes. There were no raucous and lively farewell parties or cakes that read “America or Bust.” We had no choice but to give the Middle East an Irish good-bye. But at least the Saedis got to take an airplane out of the country. One of my aunts had to hide in the back of a truck with her husband and two young children until they were driven miles to the Iran-Pakistan border. They made the rest of the trip on foot in the dead of night, hiking through mountains and rough terrain, terrified that they would be caught and thrown in jail. They were just like the von Trapp family, except they did
n’t wear clothes made from curtains or sing catchy songs about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. They made it to Pakistan and eventually moved to Portugal, where they lived until they were able to come to America.
In Iran, the Sanjidehs were an upper-middle-class family. They were raised on a grand scale, living in a lavish home with maids and servants catering to their every whim. But they left their wealth behind when they moved to America, settling instead for tiny apartments and whatever jobs they could get. It was a riches-to-rags kind of story, but everyone found different paths to getting permanent residency in America. I had an aunt who went as far as divorcing her husband and briefly marrying an American family friend so that she could get a green card. But that option didn’t sit well with my parents. Eventually, we became the only members of the Sanjideh clan who lived in the country illegally, as we patiently waited for updates on the adjustment-of-status applications we’d filed through my uncle and grandma.
In the beginning, family was the only thing we had in California. Most of us didn’t speak the language (my mom says I learned English from watching television), and we had trouble adjusting to new customs. One day, I came home from kindergarten confused by the fact that none of my new friends wanted me to smother them with kisses. It’s customary for Iranians to greet each other with a kiss on both cheeks, but American six-year-olds thought no one had taught me about “personal space.” My mom gently told me that Americans preferred to greet each other with a simple “hello” or a friendly wave and handshake. To this day, any public displays of affection make me flinch. I also had more family than I was even aware of. When my kindergarten teachers informed me that my cousin had just joined our class, I blankly stared at the little boy they introduced me to.
“He’s not my cousin,” I said.
I’d never seen him before in my life. It turned out that he was my cousin’s cousin, and my parents hadn’t bothered to tell me he’d enrolled in my kindergarten class.
The eighties weren’t the most ideal time to be a Persian in America. With the hostage crisis still fresh in the country’s minds, we were public enemy number one. The news footage of Iranians protesting in the streets, burning the American flag, and screaming “DEATH TO AMERICA” didn’t really do much to bolster our image. And then came the Iran-Contra scandal, which was the vanilla ice cream on the poop pie. But my parents tried to teach us to ignore any negative perceptions of our homeland. We knew the media didn’t define our culture. What the news didn’t show was that we were a passionate people who loved art and music and poetry. A people who came up with any excuse to throw a party and danced with their hips and shoulders in full swing. And who, above all, put family before anything.
“We’re all we have,” my parents would remind us. “Our family is the most important thing in life. Never forget that.”
I mistakenly thought it was that way for everyone. I assumed my friends also came with a tribe of outspoken aunts, uncles, and cousins they saw on a regular basis. But when my friends would tell me they had cousins they’d never met—cousins who lived within an hour’s drive—I couldn’t help thinking: What is wrong with these cold and detached people? I didn’t understand the concept of a “family reunion.” Our family was always together. There was no reason to reunite. We were regular fixtures at each other’s birthday parties, graduations, and weddings. We were the people who not only lived next door to one aunt but down the block from another. If we could have pooled our resources and bought a compound, we would have happily lived on the same plot of land. We’d been displaced by a war and a revolution, but at least we were displaced together.
I grew up among nineteen first cousins, and they each played a pivotal role in my childhood and teen years. Most of them had several years on me, and I could never shake the feeling that they were privy to family secrets and scandals that I was too young and innocent to know about. To me, they were more than cousins. They were an extended family of siblings, and I was the resident little sister. Some of them corrupted me with nicotine, drugs, and alcohol. Others taught me about sex and the importance of masturbation. One even made my wildest dreams come true by introducing me to the love of my life. (More on that later. Hint: he’s a movie star.)
We were a motley crew of immigrant kids with vastly different personalities (think the cast of The Breakfast Club), but with one common thread keeping us permanently entwined. None of our friends knew what it was like to be raised by Iranian immigrants. None of our friends knew what it was like to be an immigrant. No one else understood the intricacies of our family and what our parents had to overcome just so we could live in America. The struggle was real, and it bonded us forever.
If there’s one person in our family who deserves the credit for the close-knit relationships between us cousins, it’s Dayee Mehrdad, otherwise known as the true patriarch of our massive brood. Mehrdad Sanjideh is a short man with a charming and sophisticated personality. He keeps strange hours and prefers to eat his dinner late at night with a gin martini, so he brings his own Tupperware to parties.
Dayee Mehrdad and his trusty Tupperware.
There’s nothing he loves more than being in the center of a dance circle. He dated models and actresses and romanced his stunning American wife after standing behind her in line to use the phone at Heathrow Airport. At the time, my aunt Geneva was trying to find a hotel in London, because the friends she’d planned to visit were suddenly unreachable. My notoriously impatient uncle told her that if she let him use the phone, he’d find her a hotel. He spent the weekend wooing her, and they were married just a few days later. He eventually moved his family from Tehran to Saratoga, California, in the seventies, and we moved in with them when we arrived in America. Shortly thereafter, he started a successful appraisal company with my dayee Shahrdad, and over the years, they employed nearly every member of our large family. Our relatives regularly went to him for advice on their businesses, rocky marriages, or dysfunctional relationships with their children. If our family had a mantra, it would be “What Would Mehrdad Do?”
Well, Mehrdad woke up one day and decided that he wanted his nieces and nephews to grow up as close to each other as he was with his cousins in Iran. And it became his life’s purpose to make that happen. From the time I was seven years old, he planned elaborate gatherings for us at least once a year. We referred to ourselves as the BAD Club, and each letter in the acronym represented our relationship with him. The B stood for “baba,” the A stood for “amoo,” and the D stood for “dayee.” Our cousins club started with day trips to places like Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, the Egyptian museum in downtown San Jose, or (no joke) the racetrack at Golden Gate Fields. But eventually, one single afternoon together didn’t feel like enough time and the tradition evolved into weekend sleepovers at my uncle’s house. We’d spend the days swimming, barbecuing, and brainstorming sketch ideas we would later put on video for posterity. The videos always started the same way: with each of us entering the room one by one, waving at the camera and introducing ourselves. We were like our own Persian variety show. One sketch included a party sequence where we imitated our parents, but our masterpiece was the Persian Jerry Springer Show. Naturally, my uncle would play the Persian Jerry Springer, and the rest of us took turns playing talk show guests and the rowdy audience members who shouted “Es-springer!” (the Persian-accent pronunciation of Springer) on repeat. The video ended with Persian Jerry Espringer giving his final thought from a toilet seat. Once we grew older and drifted off to different cities, the notion of a “family reunion” no longer seemed ridiculous. So my uncle started a bank account to help fund our gatherings and pay for air travel for those of us who no longer lived near the Bay Area. Most recently, he treated all his nieces and nephews, and their spouses, to a three-day cruise to Mexico.
Aside from my uncle, there were four other people who bonded my cousins and me together. Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were the members of a little-known Swedi
sh band from the 1970s called ABBA. Here’s the thing. When you’re raised by immigrants, they don’t introduce you to American pop culture. As kids, we usually listened to Iranian musicians. My sister and I would always groan that we much preferred to dance around the house to Madonna or Michael Jackson, but my parents were too busy rocking out to Persian singers like Googoosh or Ebi. There was only one English-singing pop group that played on our family boom box, and that was ABBA. Not everyone fully understands the true power of ABBA, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an Iranian who doesn’t love their entire catalog of music. To us, they were right up there with the Beatles. They had songs we could dance to at family parties, and ballads that could send you into a black hole of sadness. Their lyrics were about love, heartbreak, guys named Fernando, and places called Waterloo.
Even though ABBA was famous years before I was born, I listened to them religiously as a teen. I didn’t exactly advertise this to any members of the opposite sex. Certainly not Evan Parker, who only listened to respectable classic rock bands. But I turned my American girlfriends onto ABBA, and they became totally obsessed. Izzy and I were the queens of falling in love with guys who didn’t love us back, and nothing else quite captured our heartbreak the way songs like “The Winner Takes It All” or “One of Us” did. If our cousins club was one of our most tried-and-true traditions, then ABBA was a close second. “Dancing Queen” plays at every family wedding, and my female cousins and I push our way onto the dance floor to link arms and sway in a circle together. Sadly, ABBA doesn’t tour anymore—they even turned down a billion-dollar offer for a concert. Both couples divorced in the eighties and the end of their marriages marked the breakup of the band. But their music lives on, thanks in great part to Iranians everywhere.