Author Lifts the Veil on Her Family in ‘Concealed’

Although we are cautioned not to judge a book by its cover, more than one reader of Esther Amini’s memoir will fall in love, as I did, with cover photograph of a little girl in a pinafore who holds a miniature American flag.

The image is an appropriate introduction to “Concealed: Memoir of a Jewish-Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America” (Greenpoint Press). As the subtitle tells us, and the cover confirms, what one wears is a visible and powerful signifier of identity. At times, clothing can be a tool of oppression, and at other times, a symbol of self-liberation.

Amini introduces us to a place that most Americans have not heard of — the Iranian city of Mashhad, which she describes as the “the holiest Muslim city in Iran” and, fatefully, the ancestral home of her maternal and paternal families. Indeed, she introduces us to words, phrases and foods that are “uniquely Mashhadi” in origin.

Reaching back to her early childhood in Queens, N.Y., in the 1950s, Amini introduces us to her ambitious mother, “born with sword in hand,” and her aloof father, who sometimes “insisted I wasn’t visible when I was.” At that age, she tells us, she was literally trying to disappear, if only to escape her father’s wrath. “I ate little, spoke minimally, breathed soundlessly while my mother worked at becoming ever more visible, expanding to the point of bursting, no matter the consequence.” As it turns out, “Concealed” is the story of how that self-effacing little girl struggled to become the master storyteller whom we encounter in the pages of her book.

Amini was awarded an Emerging Writer Fellowship on the strength of her memoir when it was still a work in progress, and her short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals ranging from Tablet to Lilith to Barnard Magazine. Several of her stories were dramatized by the Jewish Women’s Theatre, first in Los Angeles and then at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, in the memorable theatrical productions called “Saffron and Rosewater.” Now she has emerged in full as the author of the published version of “Concealed.”

All of the women in her family, we are told, practiced the same concealment in Mashhad. They lived as “underground” Jews, “heavily shrouded, properly groomed, Islamicized for outside eyes.” Her father, too, “relied on duplicity to survive,” reciting the Quran in public “while inwardly praying to HaShem.” When the family arranged to emigrate from Mashhad to Manhattan, her mother literally burned her chadors before leaving for America and “speed-sorted through Saks Fifth Avenue’s dress racks,” favoring fire engine red as “her color of choice.”

The narrative shifts back forth between America and Iran as Esther Amini offers an autobiography of a
first-generation American and a biography of her immigrant parents.

Amini herself was born after the family reached the United States, and her childhood served as the point of conflict between the Old World and the New World. Her father, for example, tried to constrain the author’s life. “Cut out friends, cut out books, cut out my tongue; scrape out thought and wonder — whatever grows inside,” she writes. “Leave me hollow, an empty shell to be filled by some random Iranian husband.”

Amini is a gifted writer, as we discover for ourselves in “Concealed,” but we also learn that silence and solitude were tools of survival when she was a young woman in conflict with tradition. “I discovered I didn’t want to put the world into words — that not every sensation had a matching name, not every image or impulse could be explained,” she writes. Indeed, it was her experience as a silent listener in her own home that turned her into a storyteller.

“Caught between Mom’s flamboyant personality and Pop’s strict edicts, I felt my insides rapidly evolving from silent Iranian daughter with no real say in her future to silent daughter with a plan,” she reveals. “I decided I’d listen closely to their tangled tales and find out as much as I could about … why they fled Iran, what risks they took, and how they managed to make a new life in America.” What she heard, and what she has written, amounts to a family chronicle of remarkable candor and intimacy. She even quotes — and translates — the Persian curses that her parents exchanged: “Fathered by a dog” was answered with “May you die!”

The narrative shifts back forth between America and Iran as Amini offers an autobiography of a first-generation American and a biography of her immigrant parents. She has an eye for the telling moment, as when she describes the annual visit to Radio City Music Hall, “watching the Christmas Spectacular and strictly keeping kosher.” When her mother revealed that she was illiterate — “Because I cannot read I feel shot in the head” — Amini vowed to teach her how to read and write. The lessons at the family dining table were accompanied by a plate of Persian pastries and “a tall glass of Bosco chocolate milk.” When presented with an American treat, she would ask her daughter: “Estaire, dees ko-shair?”

The same knowing eye falls on the landscape of Iran. Amini’s mother, “ravishingly beautiful,” was convinced of her direct descent from the biblical Queen Esther and prayed for the birth of a daughter who would carry the beloved name. And so, as the last act before leaving Iran, the whole family made a pilgrimage to the city of Hamadan, the traditional burial site of Queen Esther. “My mother decided she’d throw herself on top of the buried Queen’s tomb, harness Her Majesty’s supernatural power, and aim it at her womb,” writes Amini, who was seen as the fulfillment of that prayer.

Memoir is an especially challenging genre because it calls on the author to reveal what others prefer to conceal. “Readers may wish I wrote more about certain events,” Amini confides, “but I have to weigh that wish against the wishes of those dear to me who would rather I wrote nothing at all.” Yet Amini only honors the people she writes about in her heartfelt, endearing and courageous book.

Jonathan Kirsch, attorney and author, is the book editor of the Jewish Journal.