Moving to Los Angeles from Northern California was a culture shock to me, much as I imagine it would be for someone from the Midwest. Growing up in Northern California, it was ingrained in us to hate Los Angeles. We were the cool, down-to-earth, lovey-dovey Californians, and Angelenos were the superficial, over-tanned, annoying Californians. They were the hip place everyone in the world had heard of; we were the suburbs. They drove red Ferraris; we drove green Saabs (except for my dad, who, of course, drove the Rolls-Royce, throwing off this entire theory).
My family had moved into a high-rise on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, the Iranian Jeffersons. All of the high-rises on that boulevard were packed with Iranians. One family must have moved into a condo sometime in the 1950s, then word got out and one by one everyone came—cousins, neighbors, aunts, grandparents, roosters. It’s amazing how long a cousin can live out of a suitcase. They come for a week and stay for decades. Whenever you step out of an elevator in a Westwood high-rise your nose is instantly infused with smells of kebabs, saffron, and shambalileh, which are fenugreek leaves. They are an ingredient in a dish called ghormeh sabzi, which is a green broth that we put over white rice and one of the most delicious foods known to mankind. It’s the Iranian equivalent of gravy.
Persian food is generally some of the best food in the world. If you’ve never had it, find your nearest restaurant, order ghormeh sabzi, chicken kebabs, and the burnt rice at the bottom of the pan called tah deeg. (I know it sounds horrible, but it’s delicious.) And always—ALWAYS—check the bill at the end of the meal because they may try to inflate it. A rule of thumb: If the Persian waiter keeps calling you “my friend” during the meal, chances are you’re going to get overcharged. This is true when dealing with Middle Easterners in any transactional situation. As soon as they call you “my friend,” put your wallet away, back out slowly, then run to the most American establishment you can find—a Sbarro, or an all-you-can-eat Chinese food buffet. Remember, they are NOT your friend.
I had this happen to me when I visited Morocco years ago. Having grown up in Marin County, I had forgotten the “my friend” rule when a rug salesman invited me into his store to have an innocent look at his wares.
“My friend, come look at my rugs.”
“Wow, that’s so nice. Sure, I’ll come in.”
After a few minutes, I was checking out the rugs and thinking what a pleasant afternoon it had turned into.
“My friend, which ten rugs would you like to buy today?”
“Ten rugs? I’m sorry, my friend, but I live in a small room in my mother’s condo. The room already has a carpet, so I don’t really have anywhere to put any rugs.”
“No problem, my friend. Tell me—which three rugs you would like to buy?”
“You don’t understand, my friend. I don’t have any space. Not even for one rug.”
“My friend, you buy today for twelve hundred dollars. You sell tomorrow at a great profit in the United States. Just buy, my friend.”
He had doubled up on his “my friends,” which made the whole thing more confusing. How can you resist two “my friends” in one paragraph? I ended up buying three rugs. I had nowhere to put them, but I had convinced myself this stranger was giving me good financial advice because he had repeatedly called me his friend. What do you do with three Moroccan rugs when you’re living in a small bedroom in the corner of your mother’s condo? You try to sell them to your friends and family—that’s what you do! For the next six months, I drove around Los Angeles with a stack of Moroccan rugs in the trunk of my car. Anytime I was at a party, a picnic—any social gathering, really—and there was the slightest opening, I started pushing those rugs.
“My friend,” I would begin, “you look like you need a good rug. Come look in the trunk of my car. Which two would you like to buy today, my friend?”
Unfortunately, being from the old country, most of my relatives never fell for this trick.
“I am not your ferend. I am your modder. And you live in my house, so eh-stop terying to sell me your eh-stupid rugs.”
In the end I just gave the rugs away as gifts and made a whopping zero dollars on my investment. I would’ve done better if I’d invested in Lehman Brothers. “My friend, which three subprime loans would you like to buy?”
Grandpa’s Dirty Mouth
Along with being disingenuous salespeople, another thing you learn about Iranians is that we’re incredibly nosy. I would get into the building’s elevator and immediately the interrogations from the eighty-year-old neighbor women would commence.
“Are you Jobrani’s son?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“How much money does your fadder have?”
“Excuse me?”
“Is he vorth a million? Ten million? Vhat’s your best guess?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll take dat as ten million. Does your modder have fake boobs?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll take dat as a yes. Have you ever had an STD?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’ll take dat as a yes. How many people live in your house?”
“Are you with the census?”
“No, I’m just Persian.”
It was strange to live surrounded by so many Iranians. Growing up, most of my friends were white, so I had been the most Iranian kid on the block. In Los Angeles, suddenly I was inferior. The Iranians of LA were so entrenched in their culture that some of them didn’t even speak any English. I spoke Persian, but sometimes I would run into older Iranians who would use a word I didn’t understand. I’ve learned in life that if someone uses a word you don’t comprehend, you just need to nod confidently and agree: “I know exactly what you mean, my friend.”
In the 1990s in Los Angeles, one of the people I dealt with on a daily basis who spoke little English was my grandfather. He came to America in the eighties to live with us in Marin. When the family moved to Los Angeles, we packed him in the truck with the rest of our stuff. For him, it was as if he’d returned to Tehran, since everyone in Westwood spoke Persian and he could just walk around visiting families and spend hours reciting poetry with other old Iranians. He was between eighty and ninety years old. I give a range because we really didn’t know how old he was, nor did he. If you were born in Iran in the early 1900s and moved to America, you tended to lose track of your birth certificate. Not only did we not know how old he was, we didn’t know his birthday. We would just throw him into the mix every once in a while when it was another family member’s birthday. Often, he would end up having four or five birthdays a year, which is how he lived to be 273.
Grandpa was a great source of inspiration to all of us. He was retired but somehow kept himself busy each day. He awoke early and, like an old-timey gentleman, put on his three-piece suit and fedora hat. He would take the local bus to Santa Monica, where he would go shopping at the farmer’s market. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. He had Iranian friends, American friends, even Mexican friends. My sister and I followed him once to see what he did all day, sort of like a ride-along day with grandpa. He would get to the market and greet the Mexican guys selling oranges. They would greet him in Spanish and Grandpa would respond in Persian. Somehow they both knew what the other was saying, a mishmash of greetings that seemed to work. Grandpa would then come home, cook for the entire family, and clean all the dishes at the end of the night. In between all of his work he would read books and listen to the Persian radio. He was as busy as Ryan Seacrest—and 240 years older.
Grandpa also had a potty mouth, and not just any potty mouth. The man was a blasphemy artist. When he got worked up, he could spew such beautiful and ornate profanity, it was like watching Michelangelo paint. Older Persians living in the United States love to listen to Persian radio. For our family it was a great way to keep Grandpa informed of what was going on in the old country, but it also got him angry. He was a big critic of the Iranian regime and sometimes, as he was listening to a debate about the Iranian government and their human rights abuses, he would lose it. One moment, he was this gentle, proper, fedora-wearing poet. The next he would cuss out the regime, spewing crass words and spitting. You’d be in the other room and suddenly hear, “May a cow make love to the dead grandmothers of these Iranian politicians!”
I’d run toward the violence. “Grandpa, are you okay?”
“I’m okay, but this shitty government suppressing the people is not! I hope the entire regime gets molested by a herd of fishhook-cocked goats infested with herpes!”
And the worst part—as a good Persian grandson, I still had to give this man a good-night kiss. On the mouth.
The Community Will Talk
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was in limbo in regards to my career. I had applied to Ph.D. programs in political science at universities around the country and was waiting for the results. At the time, my father was living in Iran and my mother was in L.A. raising my two younger brothers. With my father gone, it was decided that I would be the man of the house. This is something you see in immigrant cultures, where the eldest son is expected to take over the duties of the father if the father is not around. For example, in 1941, the shah of Iran took over the throne when his father was sent into exile. He was only twenty-one. Unlike the United States, where we have a presidential election with numerous backup plans, Iran had a monarchy with a simple “man of the house” plan. Except with the shah it was more “man of the country.” Point being that immigrants expect the eldest son to run the family as soon as the father is out of the picture. If the eldest son leaves as well, then the next son takes over. If the next in line is a daughter, she has to get a sex change or at least dress in a suit. Persians take “man of the house” seriously.
My father moved to Iran in the early nineties for business. Being Iranian, he and my mom never spoke of separating or getting a divorce. I guess they figured that the law would eventually figure out that they really weren’t into each other anymore and automatically issue them an international divorce. This became a big deal years later when my mom, who finally came to her senses, officially filed for divorce in the United States. When my father found out he was livid. He had been away from her for years and admittedly had no romantic feelings, but he still could not believe she would do such a thing.
“How could she divorce me?”
“Dad, you haven’t seen her in eight years.”
“Dat’s true, but I vas vorking on a poem for her. Dese tings take time.”
“You were living with another woman in another country.”
“Don’t change deh subject. Your modder is very unge-rateful.”
“People in deh community,” he said, “vill talk.” Which was the main reason for his anger.
I’ve never figured out who these people are, but I do know that Iranians live in fear of being judged by other Iranians. Anytime your parents don’t want you to do something, they automatically pull the “community card.”
“Don’t be a comedian, deh community vill talk.”
“Don’t date be-lack people, deh community vill talk.”
“Don’t be gay, deh community vill talk.”
“And vhatever you do, don’t be a gay, be-lack comedian. Deh community vill be very confused.”
When you’re a kid and your parents guilt you with talk of the community, it really makes you upset. Like you’re letting down 2,500 years of Persians and their history. The weight of the whole Persian Empire rests on your shoulders when the community speaks. You walk down the streets in Westwood and you think everyone is aware that you’ve chosen to become a comedian. To Iranians, the only occupation worse than a comedian is terrorist. You can swear they’re shaking their heads in disgust. “Did you hear about Jobrani’s son? He became a comedian. Yes, a kelown. A circus kelown. Dis vill ruin deh reputation of Persians all over deh vorld. Ve had an empire. Now ve have a kelown!”
With my father the poet in exile in Iran, and my grandfather the poet cursing at the radio at night, I was now the man of the house and faced with a major dilemma. I received a letter from New York University offering me a scholarship to earn my Ph.D. NYU would pay for all my education and give me a stipend as well. It wasn’t the top university for political science, but it was a very good school. The advantage of going to NYU over UCLA, which I had also gotten into and was a better school, was that my education costs would be covered. You’d think that your parent would be happy to hear such good news. When I told my mother she began to cry.
“Vhy you go to New York? Your fadder leave me and now you leave.”
“I thought you didn’t like him?”
“Dat’s not deh point. You are man of deh house. You must eh-stay.”
“I’m only twenty-one.”
“Deh shah ran a country at your age.”
“His father was a dictator.”
“And yours vasn’t?”
“Leave Dad out of it.”
Leaning in for the kill, she whispered, “People in deh community vill talk!”
Man of the House
The guilt worked. In the back of my head was this tiny voice reminding me that what I really wanted to do was comedy. Had I gone to New York, I would’ve been far away from home and might have had the guts to give it a try. But my mom pulled her Jedi community trick and I gave in. I decided to attend UCLA and live at home to be the man of the house. When you accept such a weighty role, you soon realize that the reality doesn’t live up to the title. Whereas the shah got to run a country with ministers and generals and armies, and possible access to all the unmarried women in the land, I got to help my mother read her mail, drive my brothers to school, and help Grandpa with the English pronunciation of his cursing. I was more of a chauffeur/butler/profanity coach, a.k.a. a utility player.
Once in a while I got other man of the house duties, when my mom would make me sit my brothers down and talk to them. My father’s departure left a void of male energy in the house, so my two younger brothers had run a bit rampant, putting my mom through hell in the process. Now, as the man, I had to fix the problem and get the boys back on track. Being an older brother and trying to act like a father did not go smoothly. Especially since my younger brothers had grown up in America, on the American hormone-infested diet of Big Macs, Whoppers, and Twinkies, which made them bigger than me. It isn’t only the fries that get super sized—it’s also the immigrants. I would sit them down and do my best, giving them fatherly advice, but it never sunk in, mostly because the “when I was your age” speech isn’t as effective when you were their age only five years earlier. Real fathers told their sons about fighting in Vietnam or World War II. My war stories were much more passive.
“You should be grateful,” I’d holler at my indifferent brothers. “When I was your age we had the Falklands War. It lasted seventy-four days and I wasn’t even there. Then, of course, the invasion of Grenada. That lasted at least two weeks and I had to watch it on Nightline with Ted Koppel and his big hair. Every. Single. Night.”
Screw the Ph.D.
I wasn’t scaring anyone straight. Man of the house by night, Ph.D. student by day, I had delusions of grandeur. I had studied abroad in Italy my junior year as an undergrad and met a professor who inspired me toward academia. His name was Vincenzo Pace, but he went by Enzo. He had a goatee and would wear professorial blazers with elbow patches to class. He also had a gold pocket watch that he would pull out every day and look at as the last few ticks counted down to the beginning of class. Then he would flip the watch closed, put it back in his pocket, and very dramatically hold his hands in the sky in a pensive way, calling out the subject of the day in Italian.
“Allora . . . Maometto.” Which meant, “So . . . Mohammad.”
This was a sociology of religion class. We would discuss the prophet Mohammad or Jesus or Moses and their philosophies. Something about the way he carried himself, how he spoke about these deep ideologies, made me believe that being a professor was exactly the vocation for which I’d been searching. On the one hand, it would make my mom happy because it would be an honorable profession that the community would look upon favorably. On the other hand, it would place me at a university where I could discuss ideas and debate with like-minded people, a modern-day prophet of sorts. Plus, I would be surrounded by young coeds the rest of my life. What prophet doesn’t want that? It was all coming together splendidly—until I started studying for the actual Ph.D.
One thing you never hear about in the prophet business—it takes a shitload of studying to get a handle on all those complicated philosophies and theories. I remember getting into my Ph.D. classes at UCLA and discussing what our purpose was in the practical world as academics. The professor kept telling us that our goal in life would be to publish or perish. So basically we had to keep writing books on our theories and go around the world defending ourselves. If we were lucky enough to come up with a theory that a politician actually liked, then we might get to apply our ideas to the real world. In essence, we were living in a theoretical world, but every month when I got my tuition bill it didn’t feel theoretical at all. Eight thousand dollars a year so that I could live in a theoretical world? At least they gave us student identification cards which got us two-dollar discounts at the movie theaters in Westwood. I figured if I saw four thousand films I would break even. In theory I had come up with a solution that was brilliant. In reality, I was an idiot.
I wasn’t happy, either as the man of the house or a prophet in training. Something was missing. Eventually I dropped out of UCLA and began working at an advertising agency. I had to do something in an office just to get my mother off my back. I figured if she saw me going to work in a tie every morning, she would think I was doing something useful.
“You are not a lawyer, but at least you look like von!”
The first day on the job, the others in the agency told me to lose the tie. “We’re much more laid-back here, so just dress casually.”
When I told my mom, she almost rescinded my man of the house duties. “Casual? Vhat the hell does dat mean? It is an office. People vear ties in an office. You tell dose Americans dere is notting casual about vork. You are supposed to be uncomfortable at vork, from vhat you do to vhat you vear. I swear if it vere not for dis regime I vould move you back to Iran and make you vear a tie.”
“Mom, they’ve banned ties in Iran.”
“Den you vear a turban. Anyting to make you uncomfortable!”
A few months earlier I had seen Roberto Benigni receive the Grand Prix award for Life Is Beautiful at the Cannes Film Festival. I had become a fan of Benigni from my year in Italy. Seeing him win the award and rush the stage to kiss all the judges as well as Martin Scorsese’s feet (who was the president of the festival—Scorsese, not his feet) inspired me. I remember thinking, I want to be THAT excited about what I do in my life.
One day I was dubbing a video copy of a play I had performed in and there was an older man who worked at the agency who saw bits of my play. He was a producer at the ad agency, named Joe Rein. Joe had always been complimentary to people and was one of those gems you meet in life. Watching me dub the play, Joe asked me if I had ever thought of pursuing acting professionally. I told him it had crossed my mind and that I was hoping to save money and pursue it when I turned thirty.
He took me into his office. “Look,” he said, “I’m in my sixties. When I was in my twenties there were some things I really wanted to do. I kept putting them off and never got to them. So if you really want to do it, then do it.”
It was the light bulb moment I had been waiting for. I realized that you live once and you cannot live the life your parents expect of you. All those years of struggling with my Persian identity and the obligations I had to my parents and the community had finally been revealed as futile. From that moment, I decided to prioritize acting and stand-up. Now there was only one last obstacle. In hindsight, a rather monstrous one. I had to tell my mother.
“Deh acting crap again?”
“Not just acting. Acting AND comedy.”
“So da man of da house vants to tell jokes?”
“It’s my passion, Mom.”
“Your passion should be to make your modder happy.”
“We’re not in the old country. In America you’re supposed to pursue your dreams.”
“Okay, den I vould like to pursue my dereams, too. My deream is dat you go to law eh-school, get your degree, get a good job, and buy your mother a car. Preferably a top-of-the-line black 401(k) Mercedes, vith leather seats. Or ve can vait till next year and you get me a 402(k). Something to make the community talk.”
Los Angeles had gone to her head.