Our front yard in Abadan was filled with roses, jasmine, and narcissus. Next to the flower beds stood a large covered swing. Every evening, when the stifling heat lifted, we would sit outside on the swing, sipping cherry drinks or Pepsi and eating salted sunflower seeds. Our evenings were often punctuated with the sound of our neighbor’s shrill voice: “Jeemee! Jeemee!” Her husband’s name was not Jimmy, but Javad, but our neighbor had seen a few too many American movies and had decided to anglicize her husband’s name, adding a bit of exoticism to our neck of the woods. Not to be outdone, we acquired a stray dog and named it Jimmy. And this is how, on any given evening, one could hear not one but two families calling for their respective Jeemees.

When we first came to America, not only did we have to adjust to paying for everything (“The plumber charges for just looking at the problem?”), we had to pay with American currency. In 1972, one dollar was worth seven toumans, or seventy rials. This meant that a package of Oscar Mayer bologna cost not two dollars but fourteen toumans. Tomatoes were not fifty cents per pound, but three and a half toumans. Nothing could be purchased without an automatic conversion to Iranian currency, followed by the requisite “Ooh, that’s a lot.”

Little did we know that what seemed expensive when we first came to America would appear to be a downright bargain after the Iranian Revolution. Political upheaval is rarely good for the economy; in 1979, the value of Iranian currency took a nose-dive. One dollar eventually was worth eight hundred toumans or eight thousand rials. The two-dollar package of Oscar Mayer bologna now cost sixteen hundred toumans, the price of a small Persian rug before the revolution. Even Iranians who used to spend money freely now had to think twice before all purchases.

My father has always been a thrifty man, but our financial problems after the revolution thrust him onto a new plane of existence, a universe with the motto “I’ll fix it myself.” A white lab coat and stethoscope do not a doctor make, and a dozen trips to the Sears hardware department do not a handyman make. But, short of drilling for oil or hunting squirrel, my father came to believe that he could take care of all his family’s needs. His engineering background, combined with his Time-Life Home Repair and Improvement (a fourteen-volume set), convinced him that he could address any leak, drip, rattle, or clog. Any objection or doubt we expressed led him to recount the story of how he had built a radio when he was a teenager. When challenged with the point that installing tile is perhaps different from building a radio, he would always reply, “Not really.”