The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines (6 page)

My friend the designer Farzaneh Malek asked me to accompany her and two others to the palace to model for the queen. When we arrived it was just the queen, Farah Diba, her dame of honor, and her mother. After the modeling was finished, the queen asked us to stay for dinner. We ate rice with cherries and saffron-flavored chicken. It was served very informally, and we were all at ease. I guess that is why most Iranians called her “the people’s queen.” She was very humble and kind.

The king suddenly entered the room with his entourage. He looked dashing in his slick suit and wore a confident smile at all times. When the tea was served, he invited us to join him on the balcony. It was a calm and serene night. The lights of the city were racing with the light shining from the stars. We stood in a line facing the glorious view of Tehran, and the king said to us, “We’ve come this far to modernize Iran. Look at what you see. I won’t stop until it’s complete.” Then he turned his head, looked into our eyes, and said, “I am so proud of us.” Despite what Grandfather and the professor had said about his dictatorial regime, I admired this man who loved our country so much.

I guess the best way to convey my feelings for him at the time is that fascism has its own charisma. The concept is beautifully portrayed in the movie
Lust, Caution
, directed by Ang Lee and based on a short story by the Chinese writer Eileen Chang. Set mostly in the early 1940s in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, a university drama student involved in an assassination plot of a Fascist collaborator falls in love with the collaborator.

There were also tea dancing clubs, where we paid a dollar and a half for a cup of tea and a piece of cake and danced to the latest popular music, including James Brown, Tom Jones, the Beatles, Janis Joplin, and Shirley Bassey and her song “I Who Have Nothing.” We danced from 4:00 to 7:00
P.M.
on Thursdays only, the last day of the work week in Iran. We could not get too close to each other when we tangoed, because the monitors would intervene and ask us to leave.

Last but not least were Thursday’s premieres of the latest European and American films. Iran’s Radio City Theatre started the trend, and other theaters soon followed. Every Thursday night, hundreds of young faces turned out. Tickets were purchased during the week, and they were sold out by the actual day. You couldn’t even buy them on the black market, which shows you how popular these premieres were.

Young people with hungry minds would socialize and spend hours discussing the movies afterward in the nearby sidewalk cafés.

I WAS ALMOST
nineteen years old when I met my first serious suitor. It was right after I graduated from high school. I was at a friend’s house and the host had told me that a gentleman named Aydin Aghdashloo was coming. Aydin had just returned from England. He was thirty-one, soft-spoken, and handsome, with white porcelain skin, light brown hair, and bluish—or maybe greenish—eyes. (I could never tell their true color.) He was half Russian and half Turkish-Iranian.

When introduced by the host, Aydin politely sat next to me and started asking all sorts of questions regarding my school, my parents, and my life in Iran. I was fascinated by his knowledge and his command of Farsi, the rich, melodic, and ancient Persian language.

When dinner was ready to be served, I waited for the host’s seating assignment.

Finally, she uttered the words: “Why don’t you sit next to Aydin? It seems like you have a lot in common.”

A FEW WEEKS
later Aydin called at our home. My mother came to my room, eyes wide. She said that Aydin had asked her permission to take me to an early dinner. She was delighted to have talked with him, and I guess she was even more delighted that someone had enough class to ask a girl’s parents for their consent.

Three days later he appeared at our door in a light brown Yves Saint Laurent cotton suit, holding two white orchids beautifully set into a small green vase. He kissed my mother’s hand and stepped inside our house. He was very European.

The notoriously hot summer days in Tehran had arrived, and the café restaurants on Pahlavi Boulevard, such as Chattanooga and Sorrento, were my favorites. I adored Chattanooga for its huge half-moon-shaped seating area facing the boulevard, and Sorrento for its jukebox that for one toman (ten cents) played my favorite song, “If You Go Away,” sung by Shirley Bassey.

We went to Chattanooga. I wanted to become Aydin’s friend and get him to consider marrying one of my cousins who was looking for a husband—ideally a very handsome one.

My mind was so occupied by my parents’ wish that I become a doctor that I refused to see the possibility of getting engaged. I was also thinking that I should be in England studying acting (I had an aunt who lived there), but I was afraid of losing my family over it. I kept focused on my cousin’s case, and Aydin kept talking about the clash of romanticism, idealism, and pragmatism. Aydin believed all humans are equal and ought to be treated equally. I could not have agreed with him more.

When I asked him why he left Europe and chose to live in Iran instead, he said his real passion was to paint and that he enjoyed working for an Iranian advertising company as a graphic designer and an illustrator.

“I get inspired by people, nature, the atmosphere and rich colors in the fruits, carpets, and rugs of this country. My inspiration comes from the colors of the pomegranates, grapes, vegetables, the thousands of different shades of green, brown, and gold in the autumn, and of course the emerald green of the Caspian Sea. I cannot live anywhere else,” he said. “Nor will I ever.”

OUR SECOND DATE
was a week later at one of the most “in” places in Tehran. The Labyrinth was a nice, cool hangout divided by cozy booths, which formed a semilabyrinth. It was a favorite spot of young people during the hot summer days. The walls were painted blue and white, which caused them to sparkle under the hidden dim yellow lights above.

For our second date, Aydin wore a creamy white cotton suit like Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s
Death in Venice
. We talked for an hour or two, covering all subjects. He was observing me, watching me carefully from every angle, and asked many questions.

He wanted to know if I was dating anyone, and I told him I’d promised my father I would study in Germany now that I had graduated. Aydin told me that I would be far better off living in Iran than anywhere else.

We switched to talking about our interests, and I was stunned by his knowledge of films. He admired the Italian masters like Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Vittorio De Sica. He was in awe of John Huston and also loved watching French film noir.

I was listening, absorbing every word like a sponge. The more he described and analyzed the films that I had seen but missed their hidden meanings, the more I realized how naive and illiterate I had been.

Aydin asked me to meet him at the Iran-America Society the next week and watch
The Seventh Seal
at the Ingmar Bergman retrospective. The Iran-America Society was a cultural center that promoted Western art and literature, mostly American. Its large concrete building consisted of a big theater, used for stage and screen presentations, a painting gallery, an exhibition room, a café, and a few lecture rooms.

I had taken a cab and was feeling anxious, putting my makeup on in the taxi because my father was against it. “Again you dip your head in a bucket of flour,” he would say. “You don’t need it. Youth is beautiful.”

The Seventh Seal
was beyond my comprehension, and Aydin did his best to crack its codes for me with examples from the Bible.

The following week I decided to challenge him by giving him a cultural shock in his own country. I took him to one of my favorite discos, Chandelier, off of Pahlavi Boulevard. It was lavishly decorated with a touch of Tudor style, combining red velvets with thick wooden furniture and a dozen antique chandeliers.

We sat in a corner so we would be able to talk. Neither of us drank alcoholic beverages. I started talking about my cousin Homa as soon as I got my virgin margarita and told him that she would be a perfect match for him. He smiled and changed the subject.

At the end of the night, while taking me home in a cab, he hastily mentioned that he was not interested in meeting my cousin. He said he was seriously interested in me. I could see the taxi driver’s face in the mirror and his big grin at Aydin proposing marriage right there in the cab.

He added that he was aware of the age difference between us but was not alarmed. He thought I was more mature than my age. He asked me to think about his proposal.

I was speechless. I knew he was interested in me but foolishly thought that I could convince him to marry my cousin. Then again, maybe I knew deep down that this moment would arrive.

The following week I was lost, torn between an unknown future in Germany and a life with a man whom I would never get tired of speaking to or run out of subjects to talk about.

He was ready to get married, but I on the other hand did not intend for things to move so quickly. Germany was calling. A friend of my father’s had done a search in Munich and found a nice Iranian family to take care of me. But I was not ready for this journey yet either. Acting was the love of my life and all I wanted to do was to study it. I could hardly stand still next to an ill person, let alone tend to one. Nevertheless, acting was out of the question. My mother had made it clear that I should not think or talk about acting while living under my parents’ roof. Acting, especially acting in films, was not well thought of at the time, and proper families would not allow their daughters to pursue it.

My mother said, “This is not Switzerland, young lady—this is Iran. Your father would never agree to it.” Mother genuinely believed that the Swiss were the most civilized people in the world. But to my parents, there was no life beyond their roof in Iran except higher education.

The fact was that Aydin was a perfect suitor for a girl my age, offering a progressive life in a traditional country. But would he be able to understand my love for acting?

I phoned him a few days later and asked him to meet me at Chattanooga again. This time I did not waste time. “Aydin, if we get married, will you let me follow my dream and become an actor?” I asked.

He was surprised by what he was hearing. Looking at me in astonishment, he said, “I am afraid it would be totally wrong of me to go through with the marriage with you for the wrong reason. Do you want to marry me or to become an actress?”

I said both. I told him that I needed to make sure that I would be able to follow my dreams or I would never be fully happy.

“Shohreh,” he said, “I do not see why you should not follow your dream and pursue acting.” I could not believe my ears.

“Do you really mean it? Will you really let me become an actor?”

“Yes. You have my word.”

My father was shocked when I told him that I had decided to marry Aydin. (I gave him half of the news, skipping the acting part.) All he managed to say was, “Alas, I did my best for you to become a doctor and you chose to be a housewife.”

TWO MONTHS LATER,
in June 1971, we were married. One hundred and fifty guests gathered in an exotic fruit orchard. The wedding was catered by Moby Dick restaurant, named after Melville’s classic novel. They served a five-course dinner. The guests sat at tables around the rose garden, entertained by musicians playing Persian wedding songs.

My wedding gown was bought from a private seller working out of her home. It was simple yet rich with its embroideries and pinkish hue. It came with a matching tiara.

My aunt insisted that I go to her hairdresser and make the color of my hair a shade lighter, which I did. But the hairdresser could not make my hair lighter without it becoming reddish in color. So the end result was orange blond. I did not have time to argue, nor to cry. I was already late for the first part of the wedding, called the
aghd.
This is the traditional wedding ceremony, which has to take place before sunset at the bride’s house in the presence of a cleric and the elders of the family.

As bride and groom, we sat on short-legged stools covered with soft red-velvet cushions, facing the colorful embroidered silk-chiffon tablecloth that lay over the carpet. There was a pair of matching crystal candelabras on each side of a leaning seventeenth-century mirror my aunt had given us, surrounded by matching dishes filled with sweets. Flatbreads in silver trays were decorated with flowers, nuts, and tiny pearls—all symbols of prosperity, wealth, and health—and placed in front of the mirror to create the reflective image of eternal love.

My mother had designed the whole theme, and she was very happy with the result. She loved the fact that I was no longer talking about acting. My father did everything in his power to turn the night into a memorable one for me.

Aydin looked stunning in his Piero de Monzi dark brown velvet suit and impressed all the members of my family, especially the female ones, who kept telling me how lucky I was to have found him. My cousin Homa jokingly said, “I thought you had him in mind for me?”

“I did my best,” I said. “But it was not meant to be.” We both laughed.

Everyone danced under the stars all night until dawn.

The next day, I moved all of my belongings to the small apartment that Aydin had rented for us. He used to live with his mother and thought it would be best for us to be on our own and have some privacy. But I knew that somehow I would bring his mom to live with us soon. She was an elegant lady, with a fairly dramatic background. She came from a distinguished Turkish family and had married Aydin’s father, a Russian, who in the early 1900s had crossed the Aras River along the border with Turkey to live in Iran, like so many expats who’d fled the Russian Revolution.

The couple had a great life in Iran near the Caspian Sea, socializing mostly with aristocratic Russian immigrants. But at age ten, fate took Aydin‘s father away from him, when he suddenly passed away. Since his father’s family were all in the Soviet Union, Aydin and his mother moved to Tehran to be closer to her relatives.