Laughing Without an Accent

by Firoozeh Dumas

  I was trying to re-create the same kind of boring childhood I had had, the kind of childhood that had forced me to notice insects, draw flowers and collect Corn Flakes boxes so I could stack them to build houses. I constantly made up games because there was absolutely nothing else to do. I played with buttons, tea sets, and empty Nivea containers; I hung out in the kitchen and watched food being prepared. I absorbed the adult world around me, then replayed it all with my dolls, with myself cast as the grown-up with all the answers. Boredom was my empty canvas.

  Without our television, the Frenchman suffered more than our children. A tent in the living room did not excite him; and neither did the ice-melting contests, complete with clipboards and stopwatches, that worked wonders for the kids. In the evenings, I tried to be fascinating, but it’s hard to compete with Agent Mulder, Xena, and a coterie of women wearing breastplates. I did, however, make the effort to make nicer-than-usual meals and have his favorite bottles of wine. Despite my best efforts, he looked forlorn, like someone with jet lag. I figured with enough food and wine, he’d be fine, eventually.

  For me, the toughest part of living sans television was folding laundry. I always dumped the pile of clean clothes in front of the television set, and folded while watching something—anything really. Without television, I discovered that folding clothes is really, really boring.

  Once I realized that I needed something, anything, while I folded, I remembered that old standby from the days of yore: the radio. I tuned in to National Public Radio and the BBC and immediately gained a few IQ points. Listening to the news on reputable stations did have its drawbacks. There was virtually no coverage of Zsa Zsa Gabor. Having lived in Southern California, I was used to breaking news being defined as Zsa Zsa Gabor and her hairdresser hitting a utility pole while driving in Los Angeles. This bit of news, along with a pastiche of her career, had preempted the news about a bombing in Kenya. But then again, Africa came into existence for the American media only once Angelina Jolie went there.

  Listening to the BBC had other advantages. Americans have a simplistic love affair with British accents, claiming that they make everything sound better. I am here to confirm that this is, in fact, entirely true. No matter how bleak the news may be, when reported with the crisp, erudite British accent of a good-looking, intelligent journalist wearing a Burberry trench coat, it gives one hope. Of course, with radio, one cannot be sure that the reporters are indeed attractive, but they sure do sound like it. And that’s all a woman needs to fold some laundry.

  We hit only one major snag during our TV-free month. My son came home one day quite distraught, having been told by his classmates that he was not allowed to play Power Rangers. The Power Rangers game, as played in his preschool, involved a group of boys who staked their claim each morning by announcing, “I am the blue Power Ranger! I am the red Power Ranger,” then kicking the air and grunting. My son, having never seen the show but wanting desperately to play, had announced, “I am the brown Power Ranger!” which had immediately stopped everyone mid-kick. There is no brown Power Ranger. In the scheme of life, this is a minor faux pas, but I couldn’t convince my son. I even told him that brown was a very logical guess—it’s not like he had guessed “turquoise with a pattern”—but he was inconsolable.

  A quick trip to Target, and he was the proud owner of Power Rangers underwear, depicting the various correct colors worn by the characters, with brown not being one of them. To restore his confidence, I let him in on a secret: “The power is in the underwear.” This led to many days of happy playing at school, until I received a phone call from his teacher, which led to another valuable life lesson: “Don’t show your underwear to everyone.”

  Once our television-free month ended, François admitted that he liked it. “I have so much more time,” he said, rather surprised. I loved not having a TV for many reasons, including feeling countercultural, despite living in the suburbs, wearing comfortable shoes, and driving a station wagon. Amazingly, our children had finally noticed our backyard, which had never beckoned them before. They surprised me with their new-found creativity. My daughter had discovered that junk mail could be cut and glued and made into all sorts of artwork, defined in our household as anything made by our children. We became perhaps the only family in America who looked forward to unsolicited credit card applications. My parents, however, suffered. They were on the receiving end of countless “gifts” made of coupon books and Pottery Barn catalogs.

  My mother solved this by displaying the grandchildren’s artwork in the garage, so she could see the artwork whenever she went in there. My children felt this was extra special since nobody else’s grandparents taped artwork on the washing machine and dryer, especially the side facing the wall.

  With my husband’s blessing, I put an ad in the paper to sell our television set. The first person who came was a Japanese physician, who in very broken English told me that he was conducting research at our local university hospital for two years. He hoped to improve his English by watching television. I told him I would be happy to offer the TV, VCR, and cabinet for twenty dollars, even though I had advertised the set for eighty. “You will be healing people in two languages,” I told him. This led to much confusion, until he took out a large wad of twenty-dollar bills and told me to take what I wanted. I took a twenty, and he was very, very happy, expressing the universal glee of a successful bargain hunt. He also gave me a piece of paper and asked me to suggest some good shows. I wrote “Marcus Welby, M.D.—Find on cable.” He smiled and put the piece of paper in his pocket, along with his wad of cash. I like to think that somewhere in Tokyo there is a bilingual physician with fabulous bedside manner.

  Twelve years later, the only people who have yet to adjust to our TV-free home are my parents. My father still likes to ask us if we have gotten rid of any other modern conveniences. “You still have indoor plumbing?” he regularly asks. This joke was funny ten years ago, but my father repeats it every time he visits.

  The only time we regret not having a TV is on Oscar night. We have solved this by inviting ourselves to other people’s houses, under the guise of “Let’s have an Oscar party!” followed by “At your house!” It works every time.

  The single biggest advantage during the past years has been what my children have not seen, namely thousands and thousands of commercials. Unlike with me, who spent half of my time in America whining for the next Barbie or Weeble accessory, my children’s wants are their own, and have nothing to do with marketing firms planting ideas in their heads. I never needed a Pet Rock, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my father for making him buy me one, along with the accessory that turned it into a necklace, and then promising not to tell my mother, which I did.

  Whenever my children are asked to make a list of gifts for their birthdays or other occasions, they come up with a maximum of three items. One year, I told my son that if he learned to go across the monkey bars, I would buy him any toy he wanted. He came home from school the next day brimming with excitement. One of his classmates had suggested an enormous toy store but my son couldn’t remember the name. He thought real hard. “It’s called We Are Toys,” he finally said. “You mean, Toys‘R’Us,” I corrected him. “You’ve heard of it?” he said, completely surprised.

  “I think so,” I told him.

  He thought I was really cool. This is a good thing, since not having a TV is not generally considered cool, at least not according to some people who think watching The Price Is Right is the highlight of each day.

  And to that aforementioned individual, yes, we still have indoor plumbing.

  In the Closet

  My cousin Mehrdad and his family recently drove up for a visit. They live near my parents and are among the few remaining people who consider car trips with children “vacations,” extolling the opportunity to bond and make lasting memories. My family is grateful for Mehrdad’s embrace of simpler times. Coupled with his generous character and ownership of a van, he is our fa
vorite de facto long-distance mover. For a few mortadella sandwiches and a six-pack of Sprite, my mother regularly stuffs any remaining air pockets of Mehrdad’s van with treasures from her closets, ostensibly for “Firoozeh and Fransva.”

  Before Mehrdad’s arrival last week, my mother called me three times a day for two weeks to go over the inventory of goods she planned to send, in her signature stream-of-consciousness style. “I’m sending the vase I bought for Nasrin’s shower. I ended up giving her a spice rack. Your aunt Jaleh also gave her a vase. Thank goodness I gave her a spice rack. Do you need any saffron?” In my younger days, I used to listen to the items, their provenance, and all the unrelated tangents and then tell her that I wasn’t interested. This resulted in her sending me all the goods “in case I changed my mind.” As I’ve gotten older and accepted that I will never win any argument with my mother, I listen and meekly agree with everything she says. Our relationship has never been so good.

  Mehrdad arrived at our house carrying a huge duffel bag and two powder-blue Samsonite suitcases, circa 1968. I waited until he and his family left before I started excavating the bags. I wasn’t sure that Mehrdad would have appreciated the exact nature of some the treasures he had hauled, such as the ten-pound bag of basmati rice. My mother had explained to me earlier that the rice was the result of a “Buy five ten-pound bags of basmati rice and receive a free rice cooker!” special at the Iranian supermarket. Never mind that my father had strained his back carrying fifty pounds of rice to the car and then from the car to the house. “With all the recent wedding showers, an extra rice cooker in the closet just made sense,” my mother explained, “but I don’t need the rice, so I gave two bags to Mahtab, one to Aunt Sedigeh, and one to you. I kept one for us, for guests, of course. We don’t eat white rice anymore.” This declaration was punctuated by my father’s voice in the background: “I hate brown rice.”

  “It’s good for you,” my mother reminded him.

  “I’d rather just not eat,” my father continued.

  I reminded them that this was a long-distance call and they could argue for free later.

  My mother then explained that she would be sending me a “few things that Fransva might like.” This is my mother’s way of saying that she is sending stuff I don’t want, but using the Frenchman as an excuse.

  Before my mother’s knees started bothering her, she and my dad went on a few trips, courtesy of my brother Farshid. Everywhere they went, they managed to buy the kind of souvenirs that beg the question “Who would buy this?”—from Singapore, a bouquet of plastic orchids; from Japan, a clown with the word “Tokyo” on its distended belly; from London, an umbrella with the phrase “Fresh as a Daisy” written all around the edge. This umbrella, with its catchy phrase conjuring images of feminine hygiene products, was made of clear plastic, except for the giant yellow daisies emblazoned across the top.

  Each of these items was displayed with such enthusiasm that I had to suppress the nagging urge to throw them away. I secretly hoped that if we kept them long enough, they would someday inexplicably come into fashion, like headbands, or else become the kind of stuff that becomes desirable over time, like Bob’s Big Boy paraphernalia. Sadly, the market for plastic clowns from Tokyo is still dormant.

  During this most recent closet cleaning, my mother sent us the cheese plate she had bought from Holland. “Cheese plate from Holland” sounds innocuous, but so does a brown recluse spider. The cheese plate was a slab of wood with a faux tile glued on. The tile depicted a Dutch couple, their arms around each other in a stiff embrace that led one to think that either the artist did not know how to draw bent arms or else the Dutch are not touchy-feely. Behind the couple are two windmills, a creek, and two rowboats. Both the man and the woman are wearing matching clogs. I could have made peace with all this were it not for the word “Holland” written in large letters on the bottom. It’s not like someone could have mistaken the scene for “Cairo,” but nonetheless, the manufacturer probably thought that the kind of person who buys this sort of souvenir might forget which country the windmills, clogs, and stiff embrace represented.

  My mother also returned several gifts I had given her over the years. This may sound callous, but gift-giving in my family is a flexible concept with many loopholes. This is partly because in the Iranian culture, people are always exchanging gifts. Aside from the usual birthdays and graduations, we also believe that pretty much anytime we go to someone’s house, we must enter with a gift. Those of us who immigrated to the United States have also adopted the American idea of baby and wedding showers, which include gifts, and wedding anniversaries, which mean more gifts. The idea of celebrating marriage anniversaries was completely foreign to my family, since most marriages were arranged and did not come with the requisite romantic story of how we met and where we went on our first date and the first time we kissed. It just initially seemed odd to celebrate the day that “our families decided we should marry even though I had never met you and, frankly, it’s not working out so well.” But showing that immigrant ability to adapt, we’ve embraced that one, too, even if there are no Hallmark cards that speak to arranged marriages: “Roses are red, violets are blue, on the day we got married, I couldn’t stand you.”

  All this gift giving is fine and dandy if your last name is Rockefeller, but for most people on a fixed budget, this aspect of our culture leads to another: the fine art of regifting. This means that whenever certain relatives receive an unwanted gift, they just save it for someone else. Some people are more nuanced at this than others. I learned early on that most gifts that came in Neiman Marcus boxes were not from Neiman Marcus; they were usually from that other Neiman Marcus, Marshalls. One must also be careful to remove the original gift card, a faux pas that, like catching your husband in bed with another woman, defies any explanation.

  It the case of my mother, she was passing the gifts to me, the original giver. She did, however, let me know that I was free to pass them along. I now have to decide which of my friends is worthy of the “As seen on TV” garnishing set that I gave my mother sometime before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This gift, which comes in a box adorned with a picture of a watermelon turned into a Viking ship, represents the kind of spontaneous project any mother could embrace between picking up the kids at school, making dinner, and getting sixty minutes of aerobic exercise. Frankly, I don’t think any of my friends is worthy.

  I also received some souvenirs from my wedding. My wedding dress, however, was not among them. “There was no more room in Mehrdad’s van,” my mother said, “unless he removed the seats.” My mother did, however, send my wedding headdress, a three-part beaded contraption that, at the time, had seemed chic and fashion-forward. This was, however, the eighties, a decade that introduced us to pouffy sleeves and gold lamé, both of which were in abundant display at my wedding. The beaded headdress is now referred to in my house as part of the “Oksana Baiul Wedding Collection.”

  Along with the headdress, I also received thirty beaded flower party favors, which were supposed to have been handed out during the Persian portion of my wedding, in 1989. My mother admitted that, at the time, she could not part with them. The candied almonds have partially disintegrated, and the beaded flowers are yellowed and droopy. They are now in my closet.

  My mother also sent the last remaining photo albums with pictures from Iran. Over the years, she and my father used to look at these photos and talk about going back and visiting friends and family. This year they took what they said is their last trip to Iran. It is simply too exhausting for them, both physically and emotionally. It pains them to see Iran in its present condition, with its skyrocketing inflation and a younger generation with no future. My parents have not taken a single picture during any of their trips back. They prefer looking at photos of the past. It is the Iran they want to remember, the Iran that held so much promise.

  When my mother gave me the last of the photo albums, she said she was giving them to me so I could write about them. I tol
d her I would. I also told her that I would write about the ten-pound bag of rice. “What is there to write about a ten-pound bag of rice?” she wanted to know. “Plenty,” I assured her.

  I do not know what else remains in my mother’s closets. Every time I receive a shipment, I am convinced it is the last one. “Is there anything left?” I ask her. “I’m almost done,” she says every time. I am now convinced that she holds on to things for the same reason we hold on tight during roller-coaster rides; we think we have to. Perhaps with every shipment to my house, she’s letting go a little bit. And perhaps she sees that even when she lets go and unexpected things happen, like a revolution that displaces her forever, she still does not fall off.

  My closets, however, are getting very full.

  Seeing Red

  In high school, one of my closest friends was Susan. Aside from being very, very funny, Susan deserves credit for teaching me everything I know about the Jewish culture. Even though I already knew the nuts and bolts of Judaism, it was at Susan’s house where I first tasted a latke, and realized that any religion where fried potatoes is part of the tradition is good. I also learned when and how to say “oy,” and grasped the concept of “chutzpah,” a guiding force to this day.