A compelling and intimate exploration of the complexity of a bicultural immigrant experience, To See and See Again traces three generations of an Iranian (and Iranian-American) family undergoing a century of change--from the author's grandfather, a feudal lord with two wives; to her father, a freespirited architect who marries an American pop singer; to Bahrampour herself, who grows up balanced precariously between two cultures and comes of age watching them clash on the nightly news.
To See and See Again A Life in Iran and America
- by Tara Bahrampour (Author)
- August 2000
- First Edition
-
Paperback
$29.95, £25.00 -
Title Details
Rights: Available worldwide
Pages: 357
ISBN: 9780520223547
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 4 b/w photographs
At the dealership, my mother bent toward us and pointed at a dark-haired couple and an older lady being led out to the parking lot. I heard a flash of Farsi, spoken loudly, as if they thought no one could understand. My mother is American, but she can spot Iranians immediately, even at a distance. She said a few days earlier the Department of Motor Vehicles had been packed with them, newly arrived and lining up to get their licenses, none suspecting that this red-haired, freckled woman had also just come out of Iran.
In the parking lot, crisscrossed strings of red, white, and blue triangles flapped uner a cloudless sky. A long-haired man named Sonny led us along the rows of gleaming cars, their silver cursive "Malibu" logos giving them a wild, exotic aura. Sonny stopped to stroke a metallic red hood. "Seats five," he said, and looked at us appreciatively, as if to congratulate us on being a family of exactly five. "Come on, kids" he said. "Get in and show your mom and dad how much space you've got."
Normally, Baba being called "dad" would have made us laugh--it sounded so American. But that day in the car lot we didn't even look at eachother. We were all watching Sonny. He pulled at the handle of the back door, it gave with a rich, oily click, and my brother and sister and I obediently climbed in.
"Well? How does it feel?" Sonny's red face filled the window; his voice boomed, bossy and cheerful, through the glass. Beyond him stood Mama and Baba--and at that moment they looked pale, almost translucent, as if the bright light glinting off the tops of the cars had leached something out of them. They seemed small and far away. So, as the plastic new-car smell wafted seductively around us, we smiled and waved and stretched out our legs in all the space we had.
We said goodbye to my grandparents, coasted down to Sunset Boulevard and merged onto the freeway. Three-year-old Sufi climbed over the front seat to sit on Mama's lap. Ali and I lay head to head on the backseat, our bare feet making shadowy prints on the glass as the power lines outside dipped down and up.
"How long does it take?" Ali called up. We liked to time our trips. the Caspian Sea took four hours, Qom took two, Esfahan took seven. We had driven in all directions from home, and we knew how long it took before the desert sloped up into the mountains in the south and the tunneled-out rocks opened up onto the lush, rainy coastline in the north. On the way home, too, we knew when to look out for the gray sea of smog that hung over Tehran. But here, looking out the window didn't tell us a thing. It was all neat and identical and unfathomable.
"Well?" Ali said. He was nine, still small enough to stand leaning over the front seat. "How many hours?"
"That depends," Mama said, holding up the Triple-A map. "If we stop in San Luis Obispo it's about four hours, but if Santa Barbera looks nice we might stay there. And we want to see Santa Rosa, up near San Francisco." This was strange; we had never taken a trip that didn't have a destination.
Outside the window, huge swoops of roller coaster made us sit up. "Please, please, can we go?" we begged. A few years before, when Mama was making her first record album and we were staying in Hollywood, Baba and I had spent an afternoon riding that roller coaster. Now, for one mute, hopeful moment I watched the back of his head and willed his fingers to tighten around the wheel and swerve us into the exit lane.
"No, we're already late." He said it loudly and deeply--the stern-father voice he rarely used.
Mama turned and gave us a sympathetic smile, her eyes lost behind big round sunglasses. "There'll be other roller coasters," she said.
L.A. disappeared behind us.
Simply by coming to America, it was cleear we had fallen behind. So we drove and drove, always trying to make it to the next town before it got too dark to look around. Whatever I wrote down in my new "Happy Days Diary" always turned out to be wrong. "Tonight we will stay in San Luis Obispo," I wrote--but we ended up in a Howard Johnson's in San Jose. "Tomorrow we are visiting Mama's friend in Berkeley"--but we detoured into San Francisco. So I began to take note of smaller details--the flavors of ice cream we'd had that day, the TV shows we'd watched in the hotels, the Jack-in-the-Box drive-through SuperTacos that we'd eat in the car, cranking down the windows and letting the taste of the salty beans and soggy lettuce mingle with the sweet, dry tree smell seeping down from the hills.
"The news, the news!" Baba clicked the buttons on the motel TV, frowning at the lag time before the picture bloomed over the screen. All at once, Peter Jennings's face appeared and his voice blasted painfully down onto our beds.
"We're not deaf," I said, peeling the tissue off my grilled cheese sandwich, feigning indifference.
"Shhhhh!" Baba answered.
We watched the whole brooadcast turned up high. During the ads, Baba frantically flipped through the other channels, trying to find Tehran, as if any second the revolution might be over and we could go back home, if only we didn't miss the news segment that told us so.
About the Book
About the Author
Tara Bahrampour was the fourth generation of her family to attend the University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, she has written for the
New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, the Village Voice, and Travel and Leisure. She lives in New York City.