So, You Think You Know Your Mom?

How well do you know your mother at age 25? At age 16? How about age 12?

I already knew about my mother’s other boyfriend, the one whose attentions ran a close race with my dad..

The surprises were the trips and camps she did during her college summers.

Imagine the surprise of author Jazmin Darznik when a picture of her mother fell into her hands, with mom dressed in an Iranian bridal outfit, standing beside a man who wasn’t Daddy.

This launched Darznik’s memoir, The Good Daughter.

Darznik’s mother Lili grew up in an Iran caught between the veil and the pencil skirt, between schoolbooks and superstitions.

In her world, the family celebrated the birth of sons and consoled parents over the birth of daughters. They threw a gift-laden party for her brother to mark his circumcision; the gifts included special pantaloons sewn to ease his recovery.

In her world, marriages were arranged. At age 12, she was told one day to not linger after school, but hurry home to help serve afternoon tea to some important guests. These guests inspected her manners, her hair, even her teeth and feet. Then they agreed to the marriage.

In her world, marriage meant occupying a few attic rooms in the sprawling family compound. Don’t we all want to start married life cheek-by-jowl with the in-laws? Ha! They gave her her own stove in the basement, not that she had any idea how to use it. Thank goodness for the servants, who also cooked down there. They passed along a few hints and, before long, she could manage a pot of rice or a stew.

All those eagle-eyed aunts and grandmothers never seemed to “see” the bruises or the loose teeth she suffered from her husband’s fist.

And pretty soon, she had a baby.

In her world, a fourteen-year-old wife and mother with bruises didn’t have many places to turn for help. Should she trust her husband’s relatives? How about her mother, cast off by her polygamous father and now living in squalor? Or how about that father, now enjoying life with his beautiful new woman?

Despite the grim realities of Lili’s life, I read eagerly. I rooted for her. I wished I possessed her resourcefulness.

In her world, all the aunts and grandmothers gathered around you, loved you, fed you chickpea cookies and tea. They brought their needlework to your childbirth and sewed while they waited for nature to do its thing.

They even showed up at your honeymoon, waiting outside the bridal suite for the groom to produce a white hanky stained with “evidence” of your virginity.

This sounds like a tale from the era of Ben Hur. But it all happened in the ‘60s.

For all her troubles, Lili possessed the gift of dreams, whose warnings she heeded. Around 1978 or so, she had a particularly distressing dream. If you were old enough then to follow the news, you might guess what she was warned to do.

If not, well, read on.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop.

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You might wonder how you can get a cookie from chickpeas, and why anybody would like it. But you can see from these reviews that some people couldn’t help themselves and ate the whole batch.

This recipe inspires me to visit my favorite exotic ingredients grocer. I’d like to hunt down the Persian food shelves and see the chickpea flour and the rose water for myself.

Not that I’ll buy it. I’m not, as it turns out, that adventurous of an eater.

Nope, I just need a good shot of chocolate to get through the afternoon. And treats as plain as these Super Fudgy Chocolate Cookies deliver a pretty good jolt.