They are so dark. Something good must have happened, they say. I must have forgotten about the good parts. Life in a Jewish ghetto in a small Iranian town is inconceivable to young American minds. Dark nights, absolute silence, waiting anxiously for my father to come home dominated my earliest memories. Before dusk, Baba sent home an apprentice to pick up a snack of flat bread, soft cheeses, walnuts, and a pot of tea for him and his brother Morad to eat at their shop. In the Iranian tradition, dinners were always served between nine and ten. The women, my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts, sat by a basket filled with torn socks, mending and patching them, as they waited for the men. On winter nights, the water boiled on top of a samovar, little potatoes roasted under the hot ashes in a manghal, a fish stew simmered slowly on top of a space heater in the common room. Only when my father and uncle arrived would my grandmother add the last ingredient, a beaten egg, for our late-night dinner.
