The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines (20 page)

I was at the flower shop, thinking of how to solve such a delicate matter, when the Iranian designer Pari Malek called. I had met Malek at a fashion show years before the revolution but never had the pleasure of working with her. Her voice took me back to years earlier when I was just sixteen.

Malek told me she had read the recent news in
Javanan
magazine that I was getting married in California and was wondering if it was true. I told her that it was. She asked me if we were going to have a party, and I said, “We may.” She then asked to dress me for the wedding, and I gladly accepted.

I called Club 44, a charming disco restaurant in Glendale. It was the nest for newly immigrated Iranians who feasted on the club’s Persian cuisine and danced to popular Iranian songs. Iranians from all backgrounds came to celebrate their freedom, to listen to nostalgic songs, and to watch their favorite singers performing live with the club’s band on the weekends.

The club was owned by two Armenian-Iranian brothers. They were more than happy to let us use the place for free. I could not believe it. I insisted on paying, but they said that throwing our wedding party there would be a great advertisement for the club. They also offered the band for free and only asked us to pay for the food and labor, charging twelve dollars per person. Their generosity was amazing.

We made a list of our family and friends, which had 120 names on it. The wedding was on.

I called Shahla, my friend from Iran, who was now living in San Francisco, and gave her the news. She was very happy and told me that she wanted to do something for us. She said she would take care of the fruits and desserts, including the wedding cake. Houshang’s best man, Farhad, provided us with a large number of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. The club removed its own liquor from the bar and replaced it with ours.

Houshang and I woke up at five o’clock in the morning on the day of our wedding to purchase fresh flowers at the market and take them to my flower shop, where Misha and Kian would start designing the bride’s bouquet and the centerpieces. Our ride to the party was a gift from Masha, another friend of Houshang’s, who was working with a limousine company at the time.

I was happy but also felt sad. I wished my parents were with me. In fact, I choked up with sorrow when the small ceremony, conducted by a marriage registrar, began. I held my tears back and tried my best not to cry, or to make the guests sad.

Mr. Shahbaz, the marriage registrar, first recited some of Hafez’s great poetry to us. He then talked at length about the responsibilities of marriage and finally asked us the imperative, universal question.

“Do you, Houshang, take Shohreh as your beloved wife, in sickness and in health . . .”

Almost two hundred people showed up at our wedding, even though we had invited far fewer. But friends who had found out about it decided to surprise us, including some prominent Iranian singers who honored us with wedding songs.

We had a blast. Houshang’s mom was the happiest one of all. The sweet lady sat next to the dancing area all night, watching the crowd dance to Persian songs. She liked me and genuinely believed that I was a great match for her son.

I danced all night. Our friend Kouros filmed the wedding. In Iran, my mother had purchased a bootlegged tape of our wedding, shot by a guest, and called me after watching it. She said I should have let others dance more, meaning I should not have danced so much. I said, “But it was my night, Mom.”

The party went on until 3:00
A.M.
Our guests were having such a good time they almost refused to leave. The last singer of the night asked the guests jokingly to leave us alone and let us go home as husband and wife.

Masha took us home, with our tired legs stretched out in the limo.

We got home at five in the morning. We had not had a chance to rest for almost twenty-four hours. It took me a few minutes to get out of Malek’s beaded wedding dress and its long train. I hung it properly in its cover, ready to be returned to the designer later. I spent another couple of minutes pulling out all the clips in my hair. My hair and makeup were a gift from another friend of mine, Ahmed, who owned a hair salon in Beverly Hills. I felt like Cinderella, after the stroke of twelve had already passed.

The carriage had turned into a pumpkin. The horses were turned to mice. The long elaborate gown was gone, and I was now in my pajamas. But I was married to my Prince Charming.

27

The Political Divide

W
hile we were getting married in L.A., Akbar Rafsanjani was about to become the president of Iran, while the Ayatollah Khomeini was elevated to the country‘s supreme leader. Rafsanjani was a hard-liner who believed in the same principles as the Ayatollah. He is still considered the wealthiest man in the country, worth over a billion dollars. He had started as an owner of pistachio plantations, but when he came to power he expanded his empire significantly with Iranian oil. The youth of Iran felt betrayed. A revolution that was meant to bring freedom brought only fear and religious tyranny.
Hijabs
had become mandatory for women from the age of nine and up.

HOUSHANG AND I
had to postpone our national tour with
Café Nostalgia
when we were offered roles together in the feature film
Guests of Hotel Astoria
, produced by a studio company in Holland
.
I loved the plot: a dozen unjustly persecuted Iranians are smuggled by bus to Istanbul. They are marooned there, living in the run-down Hotel Astoria, all awaiting visas or political asylum from the U.S. and European embassies.

Guests of Hotel Astoria
exposed the plight of thousands of Iranians who were emigrating abroad, using Istanbul as their first entry gate into the free world. If they were rejected by their designated embassies, they were trapped.

The producer’s financial offer was not exactly what I had in mind, but the message of the film was worthy. It shed light on the injustices in Iran under the Islamic Republic and accurately portrayed the devastating situation of the destitute illegal Iranian immigrants in Turkey.

The film was to be shot in Los Angeles, LaGuardia Airport in New York, Amsterdam Airport, and finally in Istanbul and its airport. Filming began in early 1988. I was torn between my love for acting and my duty to my business partner, Misha. Our flower shop had taken a turn for the worse and was not doing well at all. Houshang and I had spent a substantial portion of our savings from our theatrical income to try to save the shop, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

I went to the Pot Lady and told Misha the hard truth. I explained to her that I had opened the shop for a little income while I pursued my acting career. I had now come to the point where I could no longer keep up with the shop’s demands and its financial shortages. I told her I would be more than happy to give her my half and sign the shop entirely over to her. She accepted my offer, though I left the Pot Lady feeling horrible. But my love for acting was in my soul.

IT WAS DURING
this time that I started developing a strange physical ailment. I had a series of attacks, where my heart fluttered out of control and left me feeling like I had been terribly beaten. I was no longer able to focus on my work and could not stand being in a crowd. I had no idea why this was happening to me.

Nevertheless, I had to appear at a luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel, given by the Society of Iranian Women in L.A. I was mortified as I looked at the audience and delivered my speech, my heart pounding. I managed to get through it, rushing to the bathroom to have my attack there afterward.

My old friend Jaleh had come back to America and was now living in L.A. We ran into each other at the luncheon after having lost contact for years. Jaleh joined me in the bathroom and asked me what was wrong. I told her, and she took me home. She found me a psychiatrist the day after and pleaded for an urgent appointment.

Due to his hectic daily schedule, the doctor saw me at nine o’clock the following evening. He asked me how it had all started. I told him that I was having lunch with the producer of my film in his backyard, discussing the characters in the film. I was admiring the producer’s dog, a four-year-old German shepherd who looked like my dog, Pasha, back in Iran. Then, all of a sudden, my heart started to pound faster and faster, my palms were wet with sweat, and I thought I was going to die.

After I explained my story, the doctor asked, “What in your opinion made you overcome your fear?”

“Vivien Leigh,” I said. “I was suddenly reminded of Scarlett O’Hara’s fearlessness, courage, and perseverance.”

The doctor asked me to tell him about my childhood and my family. It took me less than an hour to sum it up. He then told me that I was suffering from panic attacks. He said panic attacks are rooted in a deep feeling of insecurity, derived from a variety of reasons, but mostly from one’s competitive and hectic lifestyle in big cities with heavy traffic.

He said I was unconsciously afraid of not being able to achieve my goals and pursue my dream. He said such attacks pull one back, like in a time tunnel, and make you compare the safe, sound, and tranquil moments of your past with the upheaval in your current life. Thinking of that time of serenity, the comparison forces you to feel frightened of the present.

He said the German shepherd had triggered it, a rush of sweet and bitter memories of the past. It took me back to the days I was happily living in my birth country, proud to witness Iran’s progress. He said that I missed my father and the serenity of life under his protection. Apparently I had mentioned my father’s name more than twenty times in less than an hour.

The doctor said I was the only one who could help me, by being rational and understanding, and that I should always remember that millions of people were suffering from the same illness in America.

“First, look for the trigger when the attack happens. Find out what similar objects or words draw you to the peaceful moment of your past. Second, always carry a small brown paper bag and exhale into it when the attack starts. Third, and most importantly, keep reminding yourself that you will not die. This is mental, not physical,” said the doctor.

He said he would put me on a tranquilizer, but he expected me to get off of the pills as soon as I felt better and to try to manage my life without them.

“Think of your friends Vivien and Scarlett, together. You can do it.”

I was given some tranquilizers to calm me down, but the pills made me feel like a tired elephant, wanting to sleep all the time.

I had to leave early for the first day of blocking the film, and I was suffering from severe fatigue. Poor Houshang was extremely worried for me, and I could see how scared he was. None of us knew anything about this mental disease, and we were afraid of it.

Krishnamurti, the great Indian philosopher, believed that the worst and truest fear is the fear of the unknown. I could not agree with him more, having experienced the fear of the unknown during the early stages of my panic attacks. I could not sleep at night. A part of me wanted to give up, retire from acting, choose a much simpler life, and live in a small town. I no longer dreamed of living on an estate like Tara.

Part of me knew Houshang would have gone along with it, wanting only for me to get well. But another part was telling me that I should not submit to these new ideas, that I should show some courage. I had come a long way in what I believed to be my passion in life. I had almost made it now, and there was no way I was turning back.

I went to rehearsal and dealt with the attacks one day at a time, following the doctor’s instructions. I was constantly talking to myself, reminding myself that the illness in my head was illusory. I thought I ought to be able to overcome it, knowing the cause. I managed to finish my work with just a few interruptions. I had not yet fully recovered, but I was committed to making a film that portrayed people like me in a far worse situation.
Who was I to complain?

Houshang and I went to New York and joined the rest of the cast, whose scenes took place there, including Ashur, the avant-garde director I used to work with at the workshop in Iran. He was now living in New York.

We were all happy to see one another again and to be able to work together on such a meaningful project. We went right to a modest Italian restaurant in the city and talked all night. It was our first gathering after eight years apart. The owner of the restaurant found out that we were a couple of artists from Iran and sent us a bottle of wine. He let us talk loudly while discussing politics long into the night. None of us could believe what was happening back home.

The end of the Iran-Iraq war had a huge impact on the people of my homeland, who had not seen the face of war for generations. Ordinary citizens were scattered, scared, and exhausted. The nonconformists had created a life underground that not only allowed them to escape the Iraqi bombs but also to avoid the regime’s brutal law enforcers, called SAVAMA—the new and more brutal version of SAVAK. Because of SAVAMA, Evin Prison had to expand its area for “political prisoners.”