Music: The New Pornographers – Sing Me Spanish Techno (Soho Sessions)
1:03 pm Pacific Time
March 22 2008
Khanoom and her husband — who passed years before — are buried sideways, so that they can face the Shrine of Massoumeh in Qom for all of eternity.
This is the holiest of Iranian cities, the base of Iranian Shi’ite clergy and theology. Men walk the streets in dark robes and white turbans and glare out from behind their bearded and sunglassed face. There are more women who wear the all-black chador, and not a multi-colored fashionable hijab. Oh, and my father told me that at the shrine that neckties were forbidden. Toto, we’re not in Tehran anymore.
Her funeral, the first one that I’ve ever attended, wasn’t what I expected. There was no eulogy, no casket, no testimonials. The cemetary wasn’t even outside, as I imagined it would be. It was enclosed in a walled-off courtyard, where each headstone created a stone floor to walk on. Khanoom’s gravestone was off in an auxiliary room, where there were some chairs set up for us.
We sat in two rows of chairs, with a small glass table between us, adjacent to the flower-laden gravestone while a man read some passages from the Qur’an and sung some prayers in Arabic and Persian. I only caught a few words, like “Maadar” (Mother), and a reference to Hossein of Karbala.
As I sat there, not understanding much of the proceedings, I contemplated the fact that with the passing of Khanoom here in Iran, that our family was becoming less and less Persian with each generation. Sure, I stil have some very extended family in Iran, but of my grandmother’s siblings, three of the total five have lived outside Iran for decades. Further, that generation’s children (like myself) have been largely born and raised abroad. Even now, my cousin Amir, who grew up in Iran, got his PhD from Caltech and now works at Bechtel in Maryland. There’s basically no reason for him to return — I bet that he stays once he gets his Green Card, and eventually becomes a full-fledged American. I’m sure that my other young relatives would jump at the change to emigrate to the US.
Zarijoun’s children, including my father and his two brothers and two sisters all live outside Iran. Many haven’t been back much — my father was last here eight years ago — that was his third trip in over 20 years. My father has lived in Santa Monica for nearly three decades, and speaks perfect American English. He took me to baseball games as a child, watches Lakers games with my brother, and today, we can all laugh at The Daily Show. In short, we’ve assimilated.
How is it that my over 100-years-old great-grandmother’s last wish was to be buried alongside her husband and face a centuries-old Islamic shrine, while her youngest descendants like me certainly won’t request to be buried anywhere close to a mosque in any country.
We’re all secular liberals now. Most of us didn’t grow up speaking Persian. A handful of us have married non-Persians. So then, what does it mean when our Persian-ness is reduced to carrying names like Cyrus who loosely celebrate Noruz, and maintain an instinctual taste for creamy pistachio ice cream and salty yogurt drinks?
Is this what it means to truly be American: latching onto a few remaining cultural touchstones, and abandoning the rest? Surely even those will likely dissappear in the next three generations.
