by Sara Saedi
The year was 1974. My dad was a twenty-eight-year-old mechanical engineering student at Louisiana State University. He was probably one of the oldest undergraduates at college, but he joined the military after high school in Iran and didn’t move to Baton Rouge until his early twenties. He also put himself through school, which meant working odd jobs as a waiter and a bus driver to pay his rent and his tuition. Balancing school with work made it impossible for him to finish his studies in four years. He still loves to tell stories from his youth living in America, particularly the moments that English words and phrases got lost in translation. There was the time his boss at the restaurant asked him to “give him a hand,” and my dad, thinking he was being praised for a hard day’s work, responded by excitedly shaking his boss’s hand. During the summer of ’74, he returned to Iran to visit with family and take a break from his grueling schedule.
Back in Tehran, my mom was only nineteen and had spent the last year begging her overbearing father to send her to university in London. Her older brother (my dayee Shahrdad) was already a college student in London, and he’d agreed to let her move in with him. At first, my grandfather was totally against the idea. He worried my mom and her brother would form an unholy alliance and do whatever the hell they wanted with the understanding that neither would report their dalliances to their parents. After a lot of persuading, he finally relented and my mom started making arrangements to move to Europe. But her plans went out the window when my dad walked into her life.
Though they hadn’t met in person, my mom had heard a great deal about Ali Saedi from Baton Rouge. There was only one degree of separation between them. My mom’s older sister and my dad’s younger sister had become close friends after marrying into the same family. They regularly shared photographs of my dad with my mom, subtly pointing out that he was single and that they’d make a great couple. Without the help of the Internet or dating apps, most people back then met their future spouses through family or mutual friends, but months of courtship usually followed before getting engaged. In my parents’ case, they dated for a week, then spent the following week planning their wedding.
Apparently, one reason my grandfather supported the union was that it meant my mom would ditch her plans to move to London. The idea of her getting married and moving to America was a lot easier to digest than that of her moving to Europe as a single girl. Even though some aspects of the country were more liberal in the 1970s, arranged marriages were actually more commonplace than they are in contemporary Iran. Today, in Iran’s urban areas, the great majority of the younger generation tend to meet their significant others on their own. But in smaller cities and villages, arranged marriages are still the norm, particularly introductions initiated by parents.
Most of my aunts also had arranged marriages, but in my mom and dad’s case it was more of a strong suggestion from each set of parents than a dramatic mandatory proposition like when the Capulets tried to force Juliet into marrying Paris.
“Yes,” my mom explained to me over the years, “technically, we had an arranged marriage, but I was never forced to marry your dad. I had a choice.”
This is true. Neither of them was looking for a spouse at the time. If my mom decided that Ali didn’t live up to his photographs or that he was an ogre with halitosis and no discernible sense of humor, she could have politely refused to marry him. Both my parents had a say in the decision, but they swear they were instantly taken with each other. The chemistry was undeniable, and neither of them was prepared to walk away from it. Somehow my dad’s seventies sideburns and bushy ’stache didn’t deter my mom from wanting to reproduce with him. I asked her recently what she liked about him, and she said that aside from the physical attraction, my dad had a warm personality and an infectious sense of humor. My dad was won over by my mom’s zest for adventure and her independent spirit. After a few days of “dating,” she told him that she didn’t want to give up her plans to move to London just for a guy who wanted to get married because his parents thought it was a good idea. She was in no rush to shack up, and only wanted my dad to go through with the marriage if he genuinely thought she was someone he could fall in love with.
And so, fourteen days after my parents first laid eyes on each other, friends and family gathered to celebrate their union. It’s hard for me to imagine why my mom wasn’t in a state of constant anxiety during this period in her life. She was still a teenager who’d never lived apart from her parents. Aside from one kiss with a neighbor, she’d never dated anyone. But her wedding night would end with losing her virginity to a man she’d known for only a couple of weeks. I think it’s fair to say that’s batshit crazy.
August 22, 1974.
My mom admits that nerves were part of the equation but says her doubts and anxieties were allayed by the excitement of starting a life with my dad. There was one slight glitch to happily ever after. Ten days after their wedding, he had to return to school, while my mom waited to get her visa so she could join him in Louisiana. They spent an agonizing two months apart, writing each other letters to stay in touch. Each of those letters is preserved in an album, and one of my biggest regrets is that I’m close to illiterate in Farsi and have never been able to pore through their words to each other.
During their forced time away from each other, my grandfather (Ata Baba, as his children and grandchildren called him) was tasked with getting my mom’s paperwork in order, but he had a demanding job and a slew of other obligations that slowed down her visa. He passed away before I was born, but I’ve always wondered if he was purposely stalling so he could keep his youngest daughter in the same country with him for as long as possible. One day, after my mom grumbled that he needed to make her visa a priority, he looked at her and said, “You’ve been my daughter for nineteen years. You’ve been his wife for one month. Why are you in such a hurry to leave us?”
My grandfather had an imposing presence, but he was a devoted father and was well respected by his peers. Among his children, he was known for being hotheaded and unpredictable, but equal parts loving. Had my mom known what the future held, I think she would have soaked up those last days with her own family and wouldn’t have been in such a rush to leave home. Four years later, her dad would unexpectedly die of a heart attack at the age of fifty-six, leaving behind his wife, five children, and eight grandchildren.
Eventually, my mom received a visa, and she and my dad finally got their own version of a romantic comedy of errors. My mom’s journey across the globe started when she flew from Tehran to London to spend a couple of days with her brother. She would next get on a flight to Atlanta and meet my dad at the airport so they could fly to Baton Rouge together. Since my mom couldn’t speak much English, she didn’t want to make any airport connections by herself, so my dad planned to fly to Atlanta to pick her up. But when my uncle took her to Heathrow to catch her flight to Atlanta, the airport employees informed her that the original flight time had been moved up a couple hours and that she’d missed the plane. This meant she was about to experience her worst nightmare:
Heathrow JFK Atlanta.
My mom had heard JFK was massive, and she was terrified to navigate the airport’s terminals on her own. Not only did she barely speak the language, but she’d also never spent much time outside of Iran. My dayee Shahrdad got my mom on the plane in Heathrow, begged the flight attendants to look after her, and sent her on her way. Without cell phones or email, there was no way for Shahrdad to reach my dad to tell him about the flight change. Meanwhile, my dad landed at the Atlanta airport eager to reconnect with his wife, only to be told that the flight from Heathrow had gotten in two hours earlier and there was no Shohreh Saedi on the plane. He had no idea what was going on. Was it cold feet? Had she been kidnapped? Was she trapped in the wrong terminal, worried that her new husband had abandoned her? For the next few hours, he frantically searched the airport, trying to find my mom. When her flight from
JFK finally landed in Atlanta, my mom did the same thing…wondering how on earth she’d ever find my dad. Eventually, she spotted him walking toward her, tears of panic streaming down his face. And thus began their love story. They would live in Louisiana for the next two years; when my dad graduated from college, they returned to Iran, where they remained until their escape in 1982. My dad spent most of that last year at LSU skipping classes so he could be with my mom, who wondered why getting a degree didn’t actually require attending lectures.
—
Growing up, I was proud of and intimidated by my parents’ relationship. I loved that they were the type of couple who could make each other laugh with one look or inside joke, and that they craved each other’s company enough to go on date nights that included dinner and dancing. To the rest of our extended family, they became the symbol of a happy marriage. Like every couple, they had their ups and downs, but we kids were rarely made aware of the struggles (mostly caused by strained finances and our rocky immigration status). When sixteen-year-old me, who’d suffered from chronic bouts of unrequited love, looked at them, all I could wonder was, Will I ever be this happy? And that’s precisely why I was left emotionally discombobulated when I found out that my parents had secretly gotten divorced.
My dad’s graduation from LSU in 1976.
“Is love just a sham?” was my first reaction, and then my parents quickly explained that they’d been advised by a legal consultant to get a divorce so that my mom, sister, and I could apply to get a green card through my grandmother. We had already filed for permanent residency through my uncle, but once my grandmother became a green card holder, we decided to see if another application would be a speedier option. But there was one catch. As it turned out, you can apply to get a green card through a parent (who’s a permanent resident and not an American citizen) only if you’re single. Thus, if my mom wanted to apply for residency through her mom, then my dad had to technically be out of the picture.
“No problem,” my parents thought. “We’ll just get a divorce. Marriage is just a piece of paper!”
The divorce took place in 1992, just a couple years shy of their twentieth wedding anniversary. Their commitment meant a great deal to them, but they were desperate for us to become legal residents, and if getting divorced meant alleviating our #IllegalImmigrantProblems, then so be it. But ending a marriage in California would take at least a year, and we didn’t have that kind of time. So my baba and maman made the four-hour drive to Reno, Nevada, to secure a quickie divorce.
Once they arrived in Reno, their first plan of attack was to…stop at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. Maybe it was kismet, but they spotted an elderly Iranian man dining with his son and decided to rope them into their kooky divorce plan. That’s one of the bonuses of moving to a foreign country. Fellow immigrants from your homeland are more than willing to pay it forward and pitch in to make sure the INS doesn’t detain you. They explained their predicament to the man and his son, who agreed to serve as witnesses to their divorce.
Iranians kind of have no shame. We’re instantly bonded by our histories and our willingness to ask strangers for ridiculous favors. Luckily, the old man, Nasser, had no moral qualms about their divorce of convenience and agreed to help. Nasser and his son followed my parents to the county clerk’s office, but once they got there, my dad realized he’d left his wallet at the restaurant. By then, poor Nasser thought he’d been roped into an intricate con. Eventually, my dad returned with his wallet, and the divorce went off without any more hitches. Thanks in great part to the lax divorce laws in Nevada, my parents were officially single again.
I would like to let the record show that Ali and Shohreh probably had the most amicable divorce in the history of divorces. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin had nothing on them. They didn’t tell us kids about the divorce till after it happened, and when they finally mentioned it, they claimed it was a small price to pay if it ended our immigration struggles. It would hopefully mean we’d get green cards in the next couple of years, my parents would remarry each other, and my dad would become a permanent resident as well. I didn’t take much comfort in their explanation. My immigrant child guilt complex was boiling over. It infuriated me that two people who loved each other as much as they did had to split up in the eyes of the law, just so they could remain in the United States. Even though they were willing to try anything, I’d personally reached peak frustration levels at our country’s complex and seemingly arbitrary immigration laws. I wanted to get on the first flight to Washington, DC, and storm the Capitol. But I didn’t, because any form of criminal activity would get me deported. I knew our options were slim, but it felt like my mom and dad’s love story was tainted. How could I continue to brag about their two-week courtship when I secretly knew they were no longer married?
As it turned out, the divorce was all for naught. For reasons beyond our control, we never ended up getting a green card through my grandmother. And in 1997, when it looked like our adjustment of status (through the application sponsored by my uncle) was nearing consideration, our new lawyer nearly lost his mind when he learned my parents had gotten divorced several years earlier.
“You have to get remarried right away!” he told them. “If you don’t, it will take even longer for Ali to get his green card.”
They promptly took his advice, drove to city hall in San Jose, and “renewed their vows,” with my uncle as their witness. So they knew each other for fourteen days before their first marriage, and twenty-three years before their second marriage. Even after they remarried, we knew there was still an uphill battle ahead to becoming American citizens. But for now, that didn’t matter. We were all relieved the divorced years were behind us.
Today, when I grip my US passport and walk through airport security to travel overseas, knowing I’ll be allowed to return, I always remind myself that this privilege came at a high cost. When I walk into a voting booth, I tell myself that this right came amid many sacrifices. My parents thought of the divorce as trading one piece of paper for another, and I try to compartmentalize it in the same way. But then I consider that nineteen-year-old girl waiting desperately for her visa to come through in Tehran so that she could start a life with her husband in America, and I feel myself getting angry again on her behalf. It’ll never sit well that years later she had to end her happy, hard-earned marriage just to give her children a better life.
* * *
* One of my favorite Persian dishes, consisting of rice with saffron, chicken, and barberries.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION #5
Why do Iranians always argue over the bill?
Persians have a famous ritual called taarof. It’s so specific to our culture that there’s no translation for it in English. The act of taarof is hard to explain, but here’s an example. Two Iranians go out to dinner. The check comes. They both insist on paying the bill. They fight about it. They may try to pull the billfold out of each other’s hands. They definitely cause a scene. It seems as though they’re both desperate to treat the other to dinner, but mostly this is just their way of being polite. You must taarof. Another example: You’re a guest in someone’s house. They ask you if you’d like anything to eat. You politely decline. They keep asking. You keep politely declining. And then you finally relent, because you were actually hungry the whole time, but it seemed more polite not to make them go to the kitchen and bring you food.
If you ever want to see an Iranian’s eyes bug out of their head, all you have to do is instantly accept their offer of treating you to dinner without argument. It’s not that we don’t expect to pay for dinner. It’s that we expect you to put up a fight.
When I’m in school, I feel like the world is passing me by. I wonder what Brad Pitt is doing at this very second. I want to be famous. I just know I’m gonna be old, and I’m going to be thinking that all the things I’ve ever wanted to do or accomplish, I haven’t
done. My life is over. And I really miss my grandma.
—Diary entry: February 23, 1995
It’s true. I really am. I suppose I’d prefer to be a product of incest than the alternative (not existing), but it’s admittedly kind of weird. The incest is on my mom’s side of the family, thanks to my grandmother, Mansoureh “Maman Soury”* Naficy. She had quite the tumultuous love life. My younger years and boy problems pale in comparison to what she dealt with. Her love affairs were far more steamy and complicated. If she had kept a journal, here’s what a typical entry would have looked like:
Sometime in the 1940s
Something totally crazy and unexpected happened. I fell in love with my husband’s nephew! And he’s in love with me, too. What do I do now?!
While most of my youth was spent pining away for Evan Parker, Maman Soury spent her younger days at the center of what may have been Iran’s most scandalous love triangle, but there was a decent amount of turmoil in her life before Hurricane Extramarital Affair turned her world upside down. My grandmother became an orphan at the tender age of seven. Her mom died when she was four, and her dad passed away three years later. The responsibility of raising her fell to her older brothers, and her father’s other wives. That’s right. My great-grandfather was a full-fledged polygamist. The man was totally shady. He was an accomplished doctor who would treat patients in exchange for marrying their young and pretty daughters, some as young as thirteen or fourteen years old. This was a (sick) cultural norm.
