When I was 13, we adopted a beautiful one-and-a-half-year-old black and brown dachshund, already named Lady by the previous owner. The vague suggestion by a colleague of my mother that the breed had won a competition, together with Lady's general excitability, developed into a belief that Lady's parents and grandparents had won major races in Britain. (I had no idea that "competition" could be anything but a race.) The name itself, coupled with what I knew about British aristocracy, mainly from The Prince and the Pauper, gradually blossomed to rather complicated names such as "Her Excellency Lady Manchester of Derbyshire, the First Daughter of Sir Blah of Blah." (I knew the city names from watching English Premiere League football.) I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and recite these with pride, bowing elegantly at the passing dignitaries. (Years later, I overheard an uncle give meaningless big-worded speeches in front of his bathroom mirror. "Capitulation Standardization Exaltation Anesthetization..." he would orate. Apparently, this stuff ran in the family.)
Adults, being more sophisticated, fantasized themselves into distraction by turning inward. My parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles focused on me. I was a first-born son like the Crown Prince Reza and, they said, I looked like him. I was also the first grandchild on all sides, a boy no less. My birthday, the 25th of the Iranian month of Aban, around November, which was in the same month as that of Crown Prince Reza (ninth of Aban) and his father the Shah (fourth of Aban), was celebrated vigorously. "Month of kings," my grandmother would say with pride.
I recall celebratory exclamations by parents and teachers upon my doing anything slightly out of the ordinary. My handwriting would be shown as an example to follow, my interest in books was rewarded with a generous book allowance, and I was paraded in front of guests to read aloud. One afternoon I ran home from school with my report card full of the highest grades. "This is so wonderful," my mother said. "I am so proud of you, sweetheart. I know some day you will win the Nobel Prize."
Some years ago, I mentioned to my mother over the telephone that I had a cold. "You are my son," she exclaimed with great faith. "You cannot get sick." Since then, I rarely tell her when I am sick or injured, or in trouble and need help.
My American girlfriend, Laura, and I often discuss what it would be like to have been raised in the other's circumstance. Born in New York City in the mid-1960s, she is the third of eight from fairly aloof parents. Hers was an upbringing of being lonely in a crowd, almost of neglect, and mine was one of being watched at all times, with impossible expectations destined to go unfulfilled. As a result, I have grown more comfortable with her family, going unnoticed, than with my own. Sitting in a room with my mother, I cover up with long, baggy pants and oversized shirts and coats, and curl up in a far couch, minimizing myself as might a threatened animal from her loving and inspecting eyes. I tell her next to nothing, certainly nothing truthful, about my affairs. When showing travel pictures to her, I edit them heavily, presenting a lot of beautiful scenery, opening only for the most inert questioning.
In Laura's family, I am lost in the scenery.
During the 1980s, when I was a struggling graduate student in California, I constructed a radical version of "all men are created equal": "all persons plus all their belongings are created equal." To clarify, let us consider the case of two persons, Dr. Rich and Mrs. Pauper. Their status, based on the above, can be represented as:
Dr. Rich + Dr. Rich's Possessions = Mrs. Pauper + Mrs. Pauper's Possessions
For simplicity, let us assume that Mrs. Pauper has no possessions. Therefore:
Dr. Rich + Dr. Rich's Possessions = Mrs. Pauper
Further manipulated, this leads to:
Dr. Rich < Mrs. Pauper
In plain English, Dr. Rich is intrinsically worth less, as a human being, than Mrs. Pauper. I wish I could say this formulation was due to an egalitarian streak in me, and perhaps in part it was. But the construct was mostly my way of justifying my aversion to chasing money and success, or rather a reflection of my own expectation of failure, and perhaps also the result of my not-so-latent envy of the very wealthy and the aristocracy. When insecurity struck, as it did often, I would try to convince myself that I was more valuable than a more successful colleague, or that unknown man in the street, looking sharp, perhaps wealthy beyond belief, in a hurry with a place to go. And certainly worth more than the royalty with their billions and palaces and advisers and followers.
I once tried to convince my mother of this theory when we were preparing for a typically gaudy Iranian wedding in Los Angeles. I explained that she, a famed professor respected for her intellect and service, does not need to compete with other women, wealthier women, with their expensive, Parisian designer clothes and their blinding diamond necklaces, that she should leave these lower women to their own affairs. This did not work, but a female relative overheard me, understood my comments for what they meant, and was offended.
Laura and I took a tour of Buckingham Palace during a recent trip to London. This was something I had not done since my original stay in England many years earlier. We stood in line to buy tickets, went through the usual security checks, marveled at the grand courtyard and the staircases and the columns, were led from room to room, and were impressed with the beautiful paintings and the porcelains and the statues, with the thrones and the gold, and with the dazzlingly carved and painted ceilings. Signs explained, in great detail, that the palace and the art are held in trust for the British people, that fees are used for repairs and maintenance, and that these costs are staggering.
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