A Far Corner of the Revolution

Back in 1979, when I was three years old, I couldn’t believe my luck: my father had magical powers. Not the gimmicky kind like card tricks either; his magic came in handy. Whatever I lost, he could find by tying a kerchief around a stick and reciting the incantation, “Aji vaji allaw-taraji.” Once, when I’d somehow dropped the Annie doll I used to carry with me everywhere, he disappeared into the vast DC night and returned with her peeking out of his pocket. Her left arm was still broken, her choppy haircut just the way I’d styled it.

I was a cautious and skeptical kid, never believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. But any doubts I might have had about my father’s powers were quieted by three simple words: he’s from Iran. That was also where he’d learned how to fix, make, or put to good use just about everything: appliances, tomato plants, x-acto knives, water colors. I thought Iran must be a place for geniuses. My mechanic-gardener-painter-magician was also a professor who had chosen me for his protégé. I’d sit with the paints, brushes, and paper he’d give me and explore the colors of my imagination. He’d collect my creations, slip them inside plastic covers and clip them together into booklets as if he were compiling an archive of my life’s work. Then I woke up one spring morning and my father had vanished. I didn’t know that he’d gone away hoping never to return, hoping that we would follow him instead.

My mother and father tell the story the same way. A few weeks after he left, the kitchen phone rang in our red brick house in Washington, DC, she answered, and his voice came tumbling out.

“It’s incredible here. Everyone’s out in the streets. You want to see democracy? This is it.” My father had gone home to join the Iranian revolution. After spending almost twenty years working with anti-Shah student networks in exile, he returned to witness the popular uprising that had forced the Shah to flee. My Jewish American mother listened as he described the mass demonstrations, the all night poetry readings, the Bertolt Brecht retrospective, the women’s marches. He was so excited he couldn’t put it all into English words; she’d have to come and see for herself. “Pack some bags,” he told her. “Bring the girls over on the next flight.”

My mother didn’t need time to think about this. “What are you, crazy?” she said. He’d left her alone with two small children and she wanted to know when he was coming home. Her roots were in the Jewish community of a New Jersey suburb, about as different a place as you could find from the rural desert village where my father grew up. Now she was a corporate lawyer who’d already stepped way beyond the borders of what her life was supposed to look like by marrying him in the first place. This was not her revolution, and we stayed home.

While he was gone, we did things my mother’s way. We shopped at department stores and watched TV. He wasn’t there to say we were being brainwashed by capitalism or to enforce his rules against running, jumping, and loud noises. With nothing to impede me, I drew on the full range of my budding talents to entertain my six-month-old sister. I did slapstick routines, pretending to walk into walls and knock myself down, until she was close to drowning in giggles. I danced and sang and organized my dolls to perform for her. I lay down on the living room carpet and lifted her off the ground, holding her hands in mine with my feet pressed against her belly, so that she soared past couches and doorways. We shrieked and laughed and nobody asked if I was looking for trouble. But nobody swung me up on their shoulders and carried me around the neighborhood or...