When Firoozeh lived in Abadan, there was a seemingly endless supply of oil coming from the area. The British were the first ones negotiate an agreement with the Iranian government to drill for oil. The terms of the deal were not the most favorable for Iran, and so in the 1950s the oil was naturalized. In order to combat this, foreign countries boycotted Iranian oil, desperately hurting the country's economy.
By the time Firoozeh was born in 1965, things had turned around, and Iran was profiting from its oil. Abadan was a city planned by the British, which meant it looked very different from most other Iranian cities. This also led to some foreign food remaining in the area, even after the British left. When Kazem returned to Iran, he still had an appetite for the foods he enjoyed as a student in America, such as ham.
Firoozeh always accompanied her father to the stores where he would buy ham, but she did not realize why the rest of her family avoided it until she began studying Islam in the first grade. She was extremely upset when she found out ham was a forbidden food, but her father quelled her worry by telling her that it is more important to be good than to avoid certain foods. Whether you are good or bad is all that god cares about.
Notes: Ham is a food that is banned by many religions due to being viewed as 'unclean'.
In this chapter Dumas tells about how her father was able to get a Fulbright grant. He thought he did not stand a chance, since the grants usually went to the sons of rich families, but he took the exam nonetheless and passed. He was accepted to Texas A&M through the grant, but the letter did not reach him until a month after it was supposed to, meaning he was a week late for the date he was supposed to arrive in America.
He did not have a passport, so he headed to Tehran in order to obtain one, but since his death certificate was missing, he was unable to get one easily. He ended up staying in Tehran for 25 days in an effort to get the passport. By the time he was able to get to Texas, he had missed thirty-five days of his forty day orientation.
Once school began, Kazem did not do much other than study. He did not speak English, and he missed most of the orientation, so it was difficult to make friends. He decided to ask the Fulbright office for a transfer to a livelier campus since he was lonely, but rather than grant his request, they assigned him an American host who was supposed to show him around. After that, the next person who showed him around was a professor who invited him to Princeton for Easter to meet a professor there. That professor was Albert Einstein, confirming Kazem's belief that anything was possible in America.
Notes: Kazem's Fulbright grant is essential to Firoozeh's life, for if he had not studied in America, it is possible the family never would have moved there. In this chapter she shows her appreciation for the hard work her father put in to get the grant.
In Persian there are many more words to describe relatives than there are in English. People who are simply cousins in English get more specific, and descriptive, words in Persian.
While living in Iran, Firoozeh would visit her Aunt Sedigeh and Uncle Abdullah every week. Firoozeh especially enjoyed smelling the flowers in her aunt's garden and looking through her uncle's books. They now live in Southern California and have four grown sons, all of whom Kazem views with as much pride as he does his own children. Aunt Sedigeh is Kazem's sister, and he frequently tells a story of how all the family's chickens were dying and no one knew why. She discovered a tumor in the throat of one of the dead chicks and proceeded to remove the tumors from the rest of the chicks. Because Firoozeh's smart aunt was denied a college education due to Iranian culture at the time, Kazem was determined that Firoozeh would go to a university.
Her oldest uncle, Muhammed, was the first doctor in the family. When he moved to America at the age of 58, his Iranian license did not allow him to practice in America, so he had to spend a year as an intern. After much hard work he was able to set up a practice in Southern California and create a lifestyle similar to the luxurious one he had in Iran, making the family proud by becoming a doctor twice.
Notes: Dumas had mentioned her family throughout the book, but this is the first time when she actually goes into how important her extended family is. It is interesting to go back and look over the mentions of her other aunts and uncles after reading chapter 15.
Celis, Christine. "TheBestNotes on Funny in Farsi".
TheBestNotes.com.
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