Funny In Farsi

Dumas describes her experience of the San Francisco earthquake of 1989; she relocated to the area just after her wedding. When the quake strikes, she is preparing to take a shower. As she begins to evacuate the building, she crosses paths with an older woman of Eastern European descent. The woman is notably terrified and does not seem to acknowledge what Firoozeh is saying, which is an urgent suggestion that they should leave the building. She is able to find a single phone that is not disconnected, and she calls her parents. They do not initially understand the significance of the event and only later realize how life-threatening the situation was for their daughter. (This devastating natural disaster killed at least 60 people, destroyed infrastructure throughout the Bay Area of California, and caused at least $5 billion in damage.)

Dumas recalls a certain librarian she encountered while studying at Berkeley who had a very large nose. Dumas uses this memory as a jumping-off point for a discussion of the role of a woman’s nose in Iran not as a “breathing device” but as “her destiny” (161). At 18, she considers plastic surgery for her own nose and goes with her father to a plastic surgeon.