My dad came to America from Iran in the late 1940’s. He is dead now, so I have no idea how he ended up at Brigham Young University in Utah, but I suspect it had something to do with chasing American blondes. I suspect that the time he spent in Paris resulted in meeting, said American blondes, who were students at Brigham Young. Chasing blondes was his lifelong devotion.
His mother had been part of the Persian dynasty prior to the last one, although our family married into that one too When she was born the Shah gave her the title Lady of the Universe. As a child, she was shot in the face during a hunting trip. Her family prayed that if Allah would let her live, she would marry as Sayed. Sayed are not necessarily rich, but supposedly they are direct descendants of Mohammed. She lived and as promised her parents arranged a marriage to a Syed. My grandmother‘s family were rich landowners and in those days it was very much a serf situation. My dad told me stories that when he was a child, as the only son, several times a year he would be in charge of collecting the “rents.” This consisted of him traveling to our family’s lands near the Caspian sea, where he would sit under a tree on a Persian rug as tenant farmers brought animals and crops. The reason why a boy would be in charge of something so significant instead of the father, had a reason. Like many rich, and spoiled men of his time, my grandfather would lounge around smoking opium. This was a big disincentive to working.
My mother, on the other hand was born in Detroit during the depression. Her mother was an Iowa farm woman who came to Detroit as an adventure, and ended up meeting my grandfather, who was older, more educated and sophisticated than she was. From the stories, I have heard my mother and aunt used to hide the fact that they had nothing much to eat when they went to school. My grandmother would give them each two pieces of bread, but there wasn’t any meat between the slices. There was a good bit of deprivation on the White side of the family, which was the complete opposite of the opulence, the many servants and household staff that was actually passed down from generation to generation. My Persian grandmother’s maid had daughters who took care of my aunts and their daughters took care of my cousins.
My father graduated from Brigham Young with a chemistry degree, and then transferred to go to graduate school in the film department at the University of Southern California. My mother was an undergrad, sorority girl and virgin, who met my playboy father and got pregnant with me after her first sexual experience. My father‘s plan had always been to go back to Iran, and be the head of a studio. He had all the royal connections he needed to realize this plan. But when my mother got pregnant, everything changed. I don’t know if he married her purely out of duty or the realization that he could become an American citizen, but they ended up getting married.
Obviously, my father was the fire part of the equation while my mother was the ice. Being a product of such diametrically opposed opposites, put me in an awkward position. Added to all that was the race factor. My mom could not be more white. We have six family members who fought in the Revolutionary War. In fact, I am a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. When the brown side of my family gets together, they all speak Farsi. My mother never wanted me to learn a second language because she thought it would confuse me. If I had a dollar for every hour I have sat in rooms filled with people speaking, Farsi, without understanding what was being said, I would have a very, very, very fat wallet. I never felt like I was fully in either camp, but rather my own creation. I was much darker skinned as a child, but was very careful to avoid the sun as I became a little older. I understood the value of being able to pass as white.
My understanding about the disparities involved in having dark skin came in the summer of 1960 when my mother, angry at my father, for always going back to Iran, every summer, decided that she and I would take a Greyhound Bus trip around the United States while he was gone. Both of my parents were teachers and had summers off, but not a lot of disposable cash for fancy vacations. My mother and I had a pass that allowed us to get on and off the bus anywhere the bus went. When we got to the south, my mother pointed out the extreme poverty, the colored, only drinking fountains and bathrooms, and the fact that Black people had to sit in the back of the bus. Mind you, this was several years before the Freedom Riders and civil rights movement were on white people’s radar.
There are two things about that trip that I will never forget as long as I live, the first one happened in San Antonio on the Fourth of July. The locusts came! Every surface was covered in these leaping bugs. Every step you took, every surface you saw, everywhere you looked was a sea of black bugs. I was five years old and much closer to the ground than I am now. Imagine your 28-year-old mother, holding your hand, probably flipping out herself and saying. “Belinda, isn’t this fun?” Way to reframe this horror show. But it INSTANTLY drove a wedge, in my mind, that I was NOT like my mother!!!
The second thing I will remember, for the rest of my life was the look on the face of the southern, redneck, café owner, looking down incredulously at this Yankee with the half breed kid, who just asked him how dare he discriminate against fellow Americans by having segregated bathrooms and water fountains. He was so stunned. I don’t remember him even answering my mother. To show solidarity we sat in the back of the bus and drank from the colored drinking fountains. My mother had many black friends who were teachers at her school. They came to our house for cha-cha parties. She even had some gay friends. I didn’t understand at the time the significance of her protestations, but you can see that I get my bleeding heart legitimately.
My dad was never able to be faithful to any of his many, many women. The end came when my mother got a phone call from some woman who said he had another girlfriend. This news was given to me as we sat in my mother’s Ford Falcon in a drive-in restaurant, my mother, crying and reporting the contents of that day’s phone call to me. That was wildly inappropriate information to share with a seven-year-old. You can only imagine all the drama, the fights, the police, even coming to our house once. The lines were definitely drawn between the white and brown sides of my family.
Identity is such a funny thing when you don’t feel fully one or the other, although I must say in temperament and loyalty, other than my maternal grandmother, I feel much closer to the Persian side, than the American side. I always feel torn when asked in forms to identify myself by race. I don’t feel quite white but the forms rarely have an option that seems correct.Why isn’t there a Mixed box to check? Frankly, I don’t even believe there is such a thing as race. It feels like a man-made construct to me in order to create divisions between people where one side of the melanin continuum gets to feel more entitled. May the sun never set and all that.
When I was younger, I was definitely more fire, but the older I get the more I realize I have a lot of ice in me too. It’s a challenge for me to accept that my 23 and Me report that I am 51% European rather than 51% Middle Eastern. I have too many negative associations with white entitlement, etc. to want to be any part of that. I love seeing all these mixed race kids. They are so beautiful. They represent the best of our future. I definitely would rather live in a world where diversity is seen as a good thing, instead of a threat to white supremacy.
Maybe it started with my infatuation with Angela Davis. I felt like I was a creation of myself without being fully in the white or brown family camps. I bought an Afro wig at 15 and used to introduce myself as Angela Davis’ little sister. People actually believed me.
I LOVED the Black Panthers!!!! I hated the war in Vietnam.
After my parent’s divorce my mother very quickly looked up her old USC boyfriend.VERY old money white guy, heir to Sterling Motors, never married, crazy about my mom!!!
Now my world became REALLY ice! They were so obsessed with each other I felt like the 3rd wheel. My dad wasn’t great about taking me to see the Persian family so I felt pretty isolated. My stepfather’s family was so gracious about accepting the bleach blonde divorcee with the half breed kid in tow!
But there were certain behavioral expectations that came along with fitting in. I got kicked under the table if I deviated from any of the gracious living rules. Do NOT dip your finger in water and make the Crystal goblets sing! It was way too oppressive for a free spirit to put up with! Ice, ice baby.
Being my own creation I ran away. A lot. I needed my own tribe and I found them in Berkeley. A communist collective called Red Sun Rising (RSR) was my home from 1971-1973.
I had dropped out of South Pasadena High School in 12th grade because I was spending half of each month with my boyfriend who went to Cal and was part of RSR. My father was on sabbatical for a year and was out of the picture. My mother was just out of law school and didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with me. So I was free!
