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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN August 22, 2004 Issue 
Funny in Farsi, A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas Villard 2002 
The Immigrant Experience It was a long time before I finally picked up "Funny in Farsi" by Firoozeh Dumas and that, only because it was the only book in the proximity of my bed during one of my long moments of insomnia. I had resisted reading yet another immigrant story because, frankly, I am weary of them. Besides, don't I have my own immigrant story? With the exception of the fact that my parents, taking their cue from the White Russians flocking to Paris after the Russian Revolution, insisted on referring to our family as political émigrés, all immigrant experiences are about the same thing - overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers on the road to becoming American. I already knew that "Funny in Farsi" was the immigrant story of an Iranian family. But just a few pages into the book and I was laughing out loud. Not only was it hilarious, but it also brought to mind vividly, as if only yesterday, so may of my own immigrant experiences. Firoozeh Dumas, born in Abadan, Iran, came to the United States with her family in 1972 when she was seven years old. It was to be a temporary move. Her father, an engineer for the National Iranian Oil Co., had been given a two-year assignment in the U.S., presumably because he had attended graduate school in America and thus, was assumed to speak fluent English and have a degree of familiarity with American culture. They settled in Whittier, California. The father had spoken about America "with the eloquence and wonder normally reserved for a first love." Thus, the family had high expectations of this country full of "clean bathrooms and very, very kind people." But apparently the father's English left much to be desired. The family's journey into Americanization is strewn with quirky moments, at times painful, but in retrospect, harmlessly comical. Little Firoozeh cringes in shame when it is decided that her mother should attend school with her for a few weeks. My heart went out to her when she and her mother lose their way home that first day of school. I too started school just three days after arriving in America. On the first day of school, the school bus dropped me off on a street only a block away from my house. The problem was - which way to turn, right or left? Every thing looked the same. The manicured lawns and the architecture of the homes were entirely different from the way residential areas looked in my hometown in Bulgaria. Firoozeh and her mother are helped by a kind mother and daughter who pop out of their home, full of curiosity about the two strangers circling the neighborhood. Firoozeh's mother never masters English. But she becomes expert at stringing together words and eliminating the verbs entirely, giving her speech a certain exotic charm. Firoozeh, on the other hand learns English quickly (she had already attended an exclusive English language kindergarten in Iran) and becomes her mother's personal translator. This still does not save them from ridiculous situations such as searching frantically in a store for a cleaner called "elbow grease." The author catches many nuances that are experienced universally by all immigrants in America. The friendliness of Americans. The willingness to help. The constant smiling. And the incredible ignorance of geography. How many times does she have to explain where Iran is? How many times does she have to define it with "you know, it's the country from where Persian cats come?" Well, try and explain Bulgaria to the kids with whom I went to school when we first came to the U.S. It made absolutely no difference to them whether we (my sister and I) said we were from Bulgaria or from Ruritania (the fictitious kingdom in the book "The Prisoner of Zenda") or Academia or Upper Volta for that matter. Inevitably everyone asked "and where is that." Which gave us an opportunity to ridicule their ignorance even more by saying something outlandish like "of course, above Lower Volta" or "you don't know where Academia is, it is below Ruritania." But the moment the Iran crisis starts, Firoozeh and her family begin to be treated as criminals. She learns French so well, that she wins first price in an Alliance Francaise contest that sends her to Paris for two months. But learning French so fluently just from the classroom is suspect not only to the Alliance Francaise but also to the French police who interrogate her, a seventeen-year-old girl, upon her arrival in Paris. Eventually Firoozeh goes to U.C., Berkeley where she meets her husband, a Frenchman. The story of their courtship and marriage is also fraught with disagreements and compromises to appease their families and blend the two different cultures and religions. This tender story told with wit, charm and good-natured humor would find its way into everybody's heart. And the laughter would lighten everybody's daily load. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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