The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines (25 page)
Read The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines Online
Authors: Shohreh Aghdashloo
Little did we know that the play,
The Sweet Scent of Love
, was going to have a place on the stage for four consecutive years. Thousands of Iranians came to see it in more than six hundred performances, both in L.A. and on tours throughout the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and Europe. Houshang had his first hit, and I made my real debut on the Iranian-American stage.
I was also up to my second role in a TV series. In 1993, I played Malika, the wife of a shopkeeper, on
Martin
, starring Martin Lawrence. I was amazed that before the taping Martin asked the cast to join hands and pray for a good show. It showed a sense of camaraderie that reminded me of Iran.
W
e managed to buy our first house in Woodland Hills, in the Valley right outside of L.A. It was a conventional but beautiful three-bedroom, one-story house, located on a hill in a neighborhood of similar houses built in the 1960s. To me it shouted the American Dream. It was close to three thousand square feet, with a backyard that was almost half an acre. A small swimming pool was located next to an olive tree in the middle of the yard. We built a platform in the back and created an outdoor stage. Though we never actually performed there, we would use it to host two contemporary Iranian painters and their small exhibitions. By the early 1990s, Houshang and I wanted to share our financial success with our fellow Iranian artists by supporting and collecting their works.
Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, an accomplished and sophisticated master of combining calligraphy with the art of painting residing in France, had a unique vision and a spiritual mind. His exquisite calligraphies and abstract studies were colorful and reminiscent of the French masters of the nineteenth century. Zenderoudi was coming to visit his family in the U.S.A., and we asked him if we could throw a private exhibition for him at our house.
Our second guest artist was Reza Yah Yaei, an incredible sculptor and painter who lives in a village on the border of France and Italy. We asked him to exhibit his works at our house as well, and he loved the idea.
By this time, my ex-husband, Aydin, had become a famous painter whose work was collected by Europeans and Americans, selling for tens of thousands of dollars, and auctioned by Bonham’s, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s. His portrait of me is still in my living room. Today we remain in touch sporadically by phone. Pasha and Aydin’s mother had passed away of old age, and he and his second wife now had a daughter, too. Our daughters are only a year apart, yet they have never met. They are both named Tara.
With the success of our play, I received an offer from another Iranian television show,
Jam-E-Jam
, which aired on Sunday afternoons.
Jam-E-Jam
hosted a number of great political debates and interviews with well-known American, Israeli, and former Iranian politicians, as well as countless political analysts and talking heads. It was a great platform for me to discuss more serious matters.
In truth, Amalia and her real estate agency could not afford to support their show any longer. One of us had to put an end to it, so I did. I went to her and asked for her blessing to leave. She was both sad and relieved.
WITH OUR MOVE
to Woodland Hills, Tara was now going to a French-speaking kindergarten and I was working constantly. (Speaking French was a sign of nobility back in Iran. It was a cultural tradition we intended to keep.) The school was called LILA, and if nothing else, knowing a few languages—including Farsi and Spanish from her nanny—could always get Tara a job at the United Nations.
I had to start driving again, but I was frightened. A friend suggested that I get a driving instructor who was familiar with psychology. Believe it or not, I found one who fit the bill. Mr. Ali was a driving instructor who specialized in helping people traumatized by past car accidents.
Mr. Ali picked me up at home and asked me to drive around the neighborhood. I sat nervously behind the wheel and started driving slowly. He asked me to go a little faster, and then began telling me about his first wife, who had divorced him and married an American military officer. We did a couple of loops around the neighborhood and went home.
During our second session Mr. Ali told me about his second wife. After his divorce, he visited Iran and married an Iranian girl and brought her to the United States. But she, too, divorced him after she received her green card. I was getting antsy circling the same streets and waiting at red lights while Mr. Ali told me about his second divorce and depression. I headed toward the entry ramp for highway 101 heading south. Suddenly he looked at me and said, “Oh, now you drive on highways!”
Shortly after Mr. Ali started telling me about his third wife, I passed the DMV’s written exam and driving test. I have no idea if he had a fourth wife. I was just happy to be driving again.
I named my first car in America—a secondhand—after my beloved Sanjar.
JAM-E-JAM
COULD NOT
meet my salary request but offered to supplement the difference with two great spots for Houshang and me to advertise our plays. I had left Iran to get an audience and to do what I could to shed light on the injustices going on in my birth country. This would be a great platform for me to make my contribution to the people of Iran. I could put my degree in international relations to good use, and I gladly accepted
Jam-E-Jam
’s offer.
AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI PASSED
away in 1989, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had been the president of Iran since 1981, was now the supreme leader of Iran. Much like their similar names, Khamenei’s regime was virtually indistinguishable from Khomeini’s.
The Islamic Republic was at its peak in 1992, maintaining religious fascism with the help of its notorious intelligence service, SAVAMA. People disappeared in broad daylight, and their families were considered lucky if they were told where they could find the bodies of their loved ones. Hundreds of young Iranians, men and women alike, were being captured, raped, tortured, and sentenced to death for religious or political beliefs different from those dictated by the regime.
JAM-E-JAM
ASKED ME
to open the show with a five-to-seven-minute monologue. I was free to choose the topic of the week.
Mr. Bebian, the executive producer, was a man of substance. He was Jewish and although he had to leave Iran with his family out of fear of being persecuted, he still loved Iran, even though he had not been fortunate enough to pursue a higher education there. His biggest wish was to see the country free, and he did his best to enlighten and educate Iranian viewers through
Jam-E-Jam
’s sociopolitical and entertaining Sunday shows.
Bebian said that although he was not going to censor me or ask me to cover a certain topic if I did not want to, there was one thing he wanted me to remember when writing my monologues: “Even though our show is a local one, and only gets aired in L.A., its copies travel far away. In fact, it will go as far as remote villages in Iran. It will be taken there on the back of donkeys carrying rice, beans, onions, and other illegal tapes of Farsi-speaking shows produced outside Iran. Just remember what a vast and versatile audience you have.”
Iranian TV shows produced in L.A. were hot on the black market. After all, Iranian-American films and shows were powerful evidence of successful Iranians living in a democratic society.
There was no official relationship between the two countries at the time, nor is there today. Ayatollah Khomeini had once made it clear that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a package that does not include the U.S.A. And it seemed like America had washed her hands of Iran after the hostage crisis, where fifty-two Americans were held captive for 444 days, from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981.
MY FIRST TALK
on
Jam-E-Jam
covered Fereydoun Farokhzad, who was an Iranian actor, singer, poet, TV and radio host, and an opposition political figure.
He had been involved in producing an opposition radio program and was chased by Islamic Republic assassins in Germany prior to his tragic death. Allegedly he had been advised to stop criticizing the regime on his popular, politically driven radio show. He was told that he could return to Iran if he stopped performing his shows. He could see his mother, whom he loved, and also receive a handsome amount of money. Fereydoun was subsequently slaughtered in his apartment in Bonn, at the age of fifty-three. Three men were rumored to have been tracking him. He was stabbed all over his body, and his throat was slashed. The assassins were never found.
My viewers were overwhelmed by my first segment. I went on to write
Jam-E-Jam
’s Sunday opening talks for twelve years. I spoke about the torture chambers in Evin, and the rape of political prisoners (regardless of their age) as much as I talked about road rage, gang rape, pedophiles, and identity theft in the U.S.A.
I would again be harassed by thugs, who sent faxes to
Jam-E-Jam
, calling me names and threatening me. I found the copy shop from which the faxes had been sent and learned that they had a surveillance camera. The shop owner said he needed police permission to show me the video. I was so angry I went to the police station in Burbank and filed a complaint.
I was dead tired when I got back to
Jam-E-Jam
that afternoon. Bebian was bewildered at what I had done. He had called in his lawyer to talk to me.
The lawyer asked, “Why do you bother getting involved with these thugs and cowards? They’re all bark and no bite. Suppose you find them and put them on trial? Do you really want your name and your picture next to these bastards? On the front page?
“It is good that you have filed a complaint, but I would not pursue it if I were you unless we receive another threat. Do you still want to follow up with the case or drop it?”
I chose to drop it and move on.
O
ur next play,
Our Father’s Heritage
, written and directed by Houshang, was more on the somber side and ran successfully for two years in Los Angeles and toured throughout the U.S.A., Europe, Australia, and Canada. But it was easily the most troublesome we put onstage.
Our play premiered to a sold-out crowd in Vancouver at Centennial Hall, a well-known professional theater with a nice-size stage, a great Canadian crew, and a capacity of six hundred seats. The show started on time at eight o’clock, and I wasn’t due onstage until about fifteen minutes into the performance. I was sitting in the dressing room, facing the mirror, when a German shepherd that looked very much like Pasha came into the room. I turned around and saw he was followed by a couple of Canadian policemen. I was speechless.
The police had received a bomb threat and had to stop the play and evacuate the theater. I asked them to let me relay the news to the audience, and they kindly let me. I’ll never forget the look on Houshang’s face that night. He can be quite particular about stage directions, sometimes to the point of obsession. I was onstage five minutes early.
I smiled at Houshang and the other actors, walked to the center of the stage, and calmly told the audience we had received a bomb threat and needed everyone to leave the building as quickly as possible.
I still feel like crying every time I remember how gracefully our Iranian audience left the theater, knowing their lives were in danger. They did not run, did not push and shove each other. They did not even try to get ahead of one another. They just walked out and waited for two hours in the adjacent parking lot for the police to thoroughly search the building.
Unfortunately the theater had to close before midnight and we could not resume the play after the police were done with their work. We asked the audience to turn in their tickets and get their money back, but nobody wanted to. They said they would hold on to them for another night. Sadly, we were heading to Toronto the following day, but our sponsor promised that he would book another date and bring us back soon.