Like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly, my father magically transforms into Daddy Warbucks as soon as he sets foot in Iran. This is because, in Iran, my father is a millionaire. During their annual visits, he and my mother stay at the former Sheraton in Tehran, a hotel they could have never afforded without a complete devaluation of Iranian currency. Each year, my relatives in Iran, a country whose people are known for hospitality, beg my parents to stay with them, but my father refuses, explaining that staying in a suite is not something he can afford anywhere else. The relatives come and visit him, and he treats them all to lavish restaurant meals, leaving huge tips for all the employees.

Once my father accepted that his monthly pension from thirty-three years of employment with the National Iranian Oil Company would buy him only a few restaurant meals in America, he decided to turn it around and do something good with the money in Iran. Every year, he withdraws the pension and donates it to the needy. He has paid for surgeries, numerous medical treatments, eyeglasses, and medicine. About ten years ago, he met three children who had lost both parents and were living with their elderly grandparents. Every year, he supplies them with clothes, books, and toys. Before his last trip, he asked me if I could give him my laptop for the son. “I’m using it to write a book,” I told him. “Give it to me when you’re done,” my father replied.

Last year, he bought desperately needed car parts for a man who makes his living as a driver and who without his car would have had no job. The year before, he paid for extensive repairs to a home inhabited by a family of nine. Luckily for them, my father did not have his Time-Life series with him.

Every year, my father returns to America with a suitcase full of pistachios and a head full of stories. He describes the luxuries of staying in a suite and ordering room service and making sure that the cleaning lady receives the biggest tip of her career. He tells me how odd it is for him to be treated with such fanfare in his own country and how everyone considers him to be such a big shot, all because of a pension that means almost nothing here.

After his last trip, I asked him if it was hard to return to America, where he is far from wealthy. “But, Firoozeh,” he said, “I’m a rich man in America, too. I just don’t have a lot of money.”

Abadan, Iran, 1957. From left: my aunt Sedigeh; my mother, pregnant with Farshid; my father; Mr. Modaress; and my father’s late uncle, Hassan.

Afterword

Afterword:

Kazem and Nazireh Jazayeri

Since the publication of Funny in Farsi, I am asked one question more than any other: “How did your family react to the book?”