Tale of Two Persian Grandfathers

As a genealogist, I am interested in family history and have been able to research my mom’s side of the family back to the 1500s. My mom, Charliene Lucas, was descended from Lithuanians on one side and English on the other. The Lithuanians and English have birth, marriage, death, and census records that go back several centuries. However, when I tried to research my father, Said Saadati, who immigrated from Iran, I began to realize how difficult it would be to extensively research his side of the family. Prior to 1919, most Iranians did not have surnames. This all changed in 1925 when a law was passed requiring its citizens to select a surname for their family. At that time, most Iranians were illiterate and had no idea what to choose as a surname, so government agents chose for them. Some people were called by the name of their tribe, village, profession, or just the name of their father with a prefix or suffix. Another challenge is that prior to 1925, birth and marriage registration were done by local clerics, neighborhood elders, or tribal elders with no central collection or storage. In 1925, parliament passed a law requiring all Iranian citizens to have a registered birth certificate. In addition, there were no modern styles of census done of the country until 1939, meaning an individual could not use government survey records to trace their family tree. Therefore, the only way a person would know about their family tree would be from oral history passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, when I recently found a stack of over one hundred letters handwritten to my father from 1958 to 1975 from his father (Seyed Mohammed), friends, and other relatives, I was hoping they contained some firsthand documentation of genealogical information. I found that my father could no longer read the letters as they were written in old Farsi. Fortunately, I found that my father-in-law, Ali Sharifzadeh, could read them. As he slowly translated each one out loud, I realized that they included not only genealogical information, but told a story about daily life for my family in Shiraz for that time. Sharing the stories from the letters jarred old memories from my father about his childhood. Translating and reading the letters also jarred old memories from my father-in-law about this childhood in Rasht, which was quite a contrast from my father’s childhood. Although they are about the same age, they grew up in different parts of Iran, with different histories. What follows are my father’s family stories from the letters, old photographs, his memories, and my father-in-law’s stories from his memories. Some translations of the letters sent to my father by his father and nephew, Hashem Majdi are included. Since his father was illiterate, the letters from him were written by somebody else, but they give a sense of his personality. To give some context to these family stories, Iran, or Persia, is one of the oldest countries in the world with a history and culture that goes back tens of thousands of years. Its culture is more collective than individualistic. This means loyalty to the family and serving the interests of the family is more important than the needs of any single individual. This also means the family will make decisions for individuals based upon what brings honor to the family rather than shame. In contrast to modern American society, where the individuals live their lives for their own fulfillment, not worrying about what this means for their immediate or extended family. Some of the decisions that my father’s family or my father-in-law’s family made may seem strange or wrong to a modern reader. But they made sense in the time and place in which they were made.