Students asks her if there are camels in her country, and even parents assume that she speaks the same language as everyone else who lives in the Middle East. Kazem takes his family to various “all-American” places, such as Disneyland and Las Vegas, and he’s extremely enthusiastic about American pop culture-to the point where Firoozeh gradually comes to find Disneyland boring.įiroozeh does well in school, but her classmates sometimes regard her as odd because she’s from a faraway country. Firoozeh perfects her own English learning how to translate for her mother. Nazireh is less interested in making friends with other Americans or improving her English, and even today, she doesn’t speak good English. He immerses himself in American culture, studying documents of any kind and watching hours of junky television. Afterwards, Firoozeh quickly learns to speak English well, and very soon she can speak without any trace of an accent.Īlthough Kazem has lived in the United States years ago, when he studied in California and Texas as a Fulbright scholar, he’s largely ignorant of American culture, and his English isn’t great. She and her mother get lost when they try to walk home, but a friendly American family lets them use the phone to call Kazem. On her first day of school, Firoozeh can barely understand what’s going on, since she speaks virtually no English.

One of the first things Firoozeh decides about American society is that it’s kind and generous. Over the next two years, Firoozeh slowly adjusts to her American surroundings. Kazem is an intelligent engineer working for a large Iranian petroleum company, and he needs to be in the United States for his work. When she’s seven years old, Firoozeh, along with her father, Kazem, her mother, Nazireh, and her older brother, Farshid, move from Abadan, Iran to Whittier, California.

Funny in farsi audio book