job. They told him that he was no longer allowed to communicate with anyone in the Soviet Union. Tamara’s last letter came in 1966. After that, we never heard from her again.
When members of the Revolutionary Guard arrested me in January 1982, they took a few of my books—all Western novels—as evidence of my activities against the Islamic government. My mother was so terrified that after they left she destroyed all the literature in the house, including
Bahboo’s
manuscript and Tamara’s letters. We lived in an apartment with no yard or fireplace, so she couldn’t burnthem, and throwing them into the garbage could attract attention. So she came up with a painfully brilliant idea: she washed the books in our wringer washer, turned them into a paste, and gradually mixed the paste with everyday garbage. However, my father saved Tamara’s last letter, which was in a bluish white envelope with a blue-and-red border and the hammer-and-sickle Soviet logo on its top left corner. All my father had left from his sister was that letter.
A few months after my mother’s death, my father wrote to Tamara’s last known address, explaining that he was looking for his sister who had lived there forty years earlier. Even though he had little hope of hearing back, to his surprise, he received a letter from a different address in Simferopol. The letter was from a woman named Natasha, and she was Tamara’s granddaughter. Tamara’s neighbours had opened my father’s letter and had contacted Natasha to let her know that her great-uncle was searching for his sister and her family. Shocked, Natasha immediately wrote back to my father. Tamara had died six years earlier. She had had only one son, Victor, who had passed away a short time before she did. My father was saddened to hear about Tamara’s death and Victor’s, but he was overjoyed to have found family.
This was a new beginning for my father. He was suddenly much happier and more optimistic. He began spending hours writing to Natasha every week. He learned that she had a sister named Svetlana and three daughters and a son.
When I was growing up, my father’s family had been a mystery to me. We regularly saw my mother’s three sisters, one brother, and their spouses and children, but a thick fog covered my father’s side. Tamara’s story had always intrigued me, and I became even more interested after
Bahboo
told me that I looked very much like her. What else did Tamara and I have in common?
In 2004, my father announced that he was going to Ukraine for a one-month visit. Even though he was in relatively good healthand was quite active, I was worried for him; after all, he was eighty-three years old. However, he insisted that he had to go. He made all the arrangements and bought his tickets. His enthusiasm astonished me, but once I thought about it, I understood it. My father had never been close to Alik and me. He had been a severe, cold figure who had hovered over our lives at a distance. As children, we heard his voice only when he was displeased. After my release from Evin when I desperately needed money to pay thirty-five hundred dollars to the government of Iran for a passport, he refused to lend it to me, even though he had just sold our cottage at the Caspian Sea and had enough money. He said he didn’t think that Andre and I would be able to succeed abroad. I was devastated. I got angry and called my father a selfish man who cared only about money. He knew I could be arrested again for returning to my church and marrying Andre. My life was in danger, yet he refused to help me.
Andre’s father had worked at a furniture factory during the last few years of his life. With the help of the factory owner, he and a few other workers had invested in a piece of land to build a small condominium building. When Andre’s father passed away, this project hadn’t started yet, but Andre made more payments toward it. Shortly after my father refused to lend me money for a
When members of the Revolutionary Guard arrested me in January 1982, they took a few of my books—all Western novels—as evidence of my activities against the Islamic government. My mother was so terrified that after they left she destroyed all the literature in the house, including
Bahboo’s
manuscript and Tamara’s letters. We lived in an apartment with no yard or fireplace, so she couldn’t burnthem, and throwing them into the garbage could attract attention. So she came up with a painfully brilliant idea: she washed the books in our wringer washer, turned them into a paste, and gradually mixed the paste with everyday garbage. However, my father saved Tamara’s last letter, which was in a bluish white envelope with a blue-and-red border and the hammer-and-sickle Soviet logo on its top left corner. All my father had left from his sister was that letter.
A few months after my mother’s death, my father wrote to Tamara’s last known address, explaining that he was looking for his sister who had lived there forty years earlier. Even though he had little hope of hearing back, to his surprise, he received a letter from a different address in Simferopol. The letter was from a woman named Natasha, and she was Tamara’s granddaughter. Tamara’s neighbours had opened my father’s letter and had contacted Natasha to let her know that her great-uncle was searching for his sister and her family. Shocked, Natasha immediately wrote back to my father. Tamara had died six years earlier. She had had only one son, Victor, who had passed away a short time before she did. My father was saddened to hear about Tamara’s death and Victor’s, but he was overjoyed to have found family.
This was a new beginning for my father. He was suddenly much happier and more optimistic. He began spending hours writing to Natasha every week. He learned that she had a sister named Svetlana and three daughters and a son.
When I was growing up, my father’s family had been a mystery to me. We regularly saw my mother’s three sisters, one brother, and their spouses and children, but a thick fog covered my father’s side. Tamara’s story had always intrigued me, and I became even more interested after
Bahboo
told me that I looked very much like her. What else did Tamara and I have in common?
In 2004, my father announced that he was going to Ukraine for a one-month visit. Even though he was in relatively good healthand was quite active, I was worried for him; after all, he was eighty-three years old. However, he insisted that he had to go. He made all the arrangements and bought his tickets. His enthusiasm astonished me, but once I thought about it, I understood it. My father had never been close to Alik and me. He had been a severe, cold figure who had hovered over our lives at a distance. As children, we heard his voice only when he was displeased. After my release from Evin when I desperately needed money to pay thirty-five hundred dollars to the government of Iran for a passport, he refused to lend it to me, even though he had just sold our cottage at the Caspian Sea and had enough money. He said he didn’t think that Andre and I would be able to succeed abroad. I was devastated. I got angry and called my father a selfish man who cared only about money. He knew I could be arrested again for returning to my church and marrying Andre. My life was in danger, yet he refused to help me.
Andre’s father had worked at a furniture factory during the last few years of his life. With the help of the factory owner, he and a few other workers had invested in a piece of land to build a small condominium building. When Andre’s father passed away, this project hadn’t started yet, but Andre made more payments toward it. Shortly after my father refused to lend me money for a
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