During that same year, I was asked to speak about my homeland to a seventh-grade class at my school. The girl who had asked me was a neighbor who needed some extra credit in social studies. I showed up complete with my books in Persian, a doll depicting a villager weaving a Persian rug, several Persian miniatures, and some stuffed grape leaves, courtesy of my mother. I stood in front of the class and said, “Hello, my name is Firoozeh and I’m from Iran.” Before I could say anything else, the teacher stood up and said, “Laura, you said she’s from Peru!” If my life were a Hollywood musical, this would have been the beginning of the big dance number.

You say tomato,
I say tomahto.
You say Persia,
I say Peru.
Let’s call the whole thing off.

So home I went with my Persian miniatures, my doll depicting a villager weaving a Persian rug, and my books. At least my mother didn’t have to cook dinner that night, since the thirty grape leaves were enough for all of us.

During our stay in Newport Beach, the Iranian Revolution took place and a group of Americans were taken hostage in the American embassy in Tehran. Overnight, Iranians living in America became, to say the least, very unpopular. For some reason, many Americans began to think that all Iranians, despite outward appearances to the contrary, could at any given moment get angry and take prisoners. People always asked us what we thought of the hostage situation. “It’s awful,” we always said. This reply was generally met with surprise. We were asked our opinion on the hostages so often that I started reminding people that they weren’t in our garage. My mother solved the problem by claiming to be from Russia or “Torekey.” Sometimes I’d just say, “Have you noticed how all the recent serial killers have been Americans? I won’t hold it against you.”