My Father

Baba passed away last August. The flight to Europe was the first time in a long time that I had nothing do for hours – the weight of his void hit me. I’ll always wonder if he knew that I knew of all the things he did for me. I want to think that somehow he’s aware that I am doing something that makes me happy.

Late in the Fall of 2004, the night before I found out that I would go to Spain, I had quite a surreal dream; I was ironing some clothes when I heard a door knock. I opened the door and there was my father dressed in a dark blue shirt and dark blue pants. He stood at the door in what seemed to be a flood of white light. He had white wings on his back and gave me the biggest hug that I ever got from him in real life. He then told me to shave my beard. That’s when I woke up. Whether it was just my random thoughts or some kind of connection to his spirit, it was an awesome encounter.

I found out a few days later that my sister, Susan, also had a dream where our father embraced her tightly.

Susan and her husband, Ben, put together a slide show for his memorial service. I wrote the following for the funeral, which I’ve edited slightly for content and style since then.

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Hesameddin Ahmadi Nameghi, but some of you know him as Sam.

And if you knew him more than five minutes, he would tell you the whole story behind his name.

On behalf of the Ahmadi, Khazei, Hansen, Ghadami, Bastani, Maani and Vijjeh families, I would like to thank you for being here.

Today [August 15, 2004] we mark the first day of the rest of the journey of a soul that came into being in 1926. A journey of a boy born in the village of Namagh, in the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, that would end his earthly life in the city of College Station in the heart of Texas. A life of a boy who grew up playing only with a two-headed pencil but would live to see the wonders of the internet. A story of a man who constantly adapted and left his mark on the hearts of those who came to know him.

The youngest of seven children, Hesam Ahmadi was heir to the legacy of his great maternal grandfather, Mulla Ahmad-i-Hisari, known to Baha’i history as Jinab-i-Muallim, a teacher of Mulla Husayn-i-Bushrui, and among the early believers of the Herald-Prophet, the Bab. My father was proud to be a Baha’i and used every chance to tell people about the richness of the Faith of Baha’u’llah – by word and by deed.

His mother was Bibi Dorri and his father Shokrollah Bayk, the elder of the village. Both Baha’is, their family suffered from religious persecution. Soon after my father was born, his mother was shot and was unable to breast-feed him. Some years later, his older brother, Ziauddin, was killed because of his Faith – my father became the godfather of his nephews Mehbrab and the as yet unborn Sohrab.

My father spent his early years in Namagh. Later, his father sent him to Kashmar, then Torbat Heidariyeh and finally to Mashhad to complete his primary and secondary education. Every town spoke a different dialect of Persian and my father always reminisced about how, from an early age to recent years, he had to adjust to new surroundings and new languages.

From Mashhad my father moved to the capital and entered the University of Teheran, where he earned his Masters Degree in Civil Engineering. His first job was with Point Four, an American/Iranian consortium created under the Marshall Plan for the development of the country after the Second World War. He moved to Tabriz, a city in northwest Iran, and worked on public building projects. Here, he learned Turkish – he always wanted to make friends with the local people of where he lived and be able to talk to them in their own language.

He came to the United States in the early 1950’s on a six-month government program to tour engineering projects and always wanted to return someday.

In Iran he settled in Teheran. He began a career as an appraiser in the Rahni Bank of Iran and rose to the head the division in the 1970’s. Throughout his life, he served in many capacities in the Baha’i community, including as a teacher of children and youth – an honor he cherished and practiced in College Station as well. The Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Teheran appointed him to serve on one of twelve committees that was responsible for specific administrative tasks of the Baha’i community in the city.

In 1961 he married Golrokh Khazei and they had two children, Susan and Saman. I will always cherish the stories that he would create for us as children; the never ending adventures of Jiki, Piki and Liki – three brothers with different tastes, one who loved everything big, one who loved everything small and one living happily in the middle – a life lesson for us all. Susan married Ben Hansen in 1981 and they have four children, Miranda, Saffa, Niku and Kent.

In 1977, my parents decided to immigrate to the United States. In November of 1978, during the beginning of the turmoil that would lead to the Iranian revolution, we left Iran and moved to Houston, where my cousin Hormoz Bastani lived. My father stayed with us for a short time and returned to Iran to finalize his retirement and attend to their finances. During the early days of the revolution, he was offered the position of Chief Executive of his bank due to his reputation as an honest and fair man – throughout his life he took Baha’u’llah’s worlds of “justice” being “the best-beloved of all things in [God’s] sight” to heart. However, my father knew that individuals would exploit the religion of Islam for their selfish desires and that the tide would turn to fundamentalism. He secured his retirement and qualified for his pension, although the government of Iran never honored her promise.

During the early 1980’s, the persecution of Baha’is by the government of Iran turned from bad to worse. The government had begun arresting members of the National and Local Spiritual Assemblies. Some of my fathers’s relatives, including my maternal uncle, Manuchihr Khazei, who served on the Tabriz Spiritual Assembly, and many of my father’s friends were arrested for being Baha’is. Later, imprisonment for many, including for my uncle, ended in execution.

We moved to College Station in 1980. My father became a real estate agent and then a broker, and worked in the same field until his death. He served on the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of College Station for fifteen years and as its treasurer for more than a decade.

Once in the US, he had to speak another language. While my father knew some English, he began an endless process of learning – even in his last days he was rereading a book by Al Frankin, having looked up and written down the definition of its unfamiliar words during his first read.

This brings us to one his loves, that of comedy. Everyone knows my father’s sense of humor. In the last few years, he had performed at Baha’i conferences and summer schools: he saw humor in his experience as an immigrant, in his battles with various companies and in the simple things of everyday life.

He loved fruit. His home province of Khorasan produced the best fruits in Iran – a fact that my father would defend against anyone claiming otherwise, especially those from Esfehan. And he is famous for picking the best fruit – even if it meant rearranging an entire grocery store’s watermelon display to find the sweetest one, which usually lay at the bottom of the pyramid.

He loved backgammon and saw the game as an analogue of life – a mixture of fate and skill. He had almost completed writing a book on the philosophy behind the game.

He also loved to dance and, thankfully, God granted his wish to perform a folk dance from Khorasan with the light of my parent’s eyes, their grandchildren, this past No-ruz in Austin.

He was a great husband, father and grandfather. He never stopped. He was always optimistic. Though he, like most, had losses in his life, he never became cynical. He was in the process of organizing an extended travel throughout the US to proclaim the Faith of Baha’u’llah and was waiting for a response from the Regional Baha’i Council as to where he could be of service, when God called. His earthly life ended on the morning of August 14, 2004 with our mother, Goli, at his bedside.

Now, he has to speak yet another language, but one in which he is already fluent.

I want to end by sharing one of his poems. In the mid 1980’s he had an angioplasty and his insurance carrier began increasing his premium with the ultimate intent of forcing my father to cancel his policy. Years later, in 1995, the same carrier sent him a solicitation letter asking for his business. True to his form, my father served them a piece of comic, poetic justice:

I had before this policy
you sold that with courtesy

Writing to me with a Dear
raising the fee in every year

As long as my health was O.K.
you were O.K., nothing to say

Suddenly I got some disease
you raised almost all the fees

Raised again, raised again
I lost, but you got the gain

Last raise came out as a shot
I terminated the contract

You ate before my flesh
my bones no longer fresh

Hated blue, hated cross
hated the shield with a plus