Apr

2022

Third-culture kid

I had a good life and a career as an English academic in Iran before losing everything in the Islamic revolution of 1979, coming to Britain and re-training as a nurse and midwife.

Born in Switzerland and raised as a Muslim in a Persian family, I attended the International School of Geneva for ten years before we relocated to Iran. Many of its international pupils were, like me, products of two or more cultures. At school we were known as the “3^rd culture kids”.

After my family’s move to Iran during my teens, I was obliged to switch my mindset from a permissive European culture to the more restrictive Middle Eastern one, and to adopt Persian and Muslim values and mores. To complicate matters I became a Christian in Iran in my late twenties, and was baptized in Tehran in 1978 during the final year of the Shah’s reign.

In the political turmoil and purges that followed in the wake of the Revolution, I was an anomaly: a female Iranian convert to Christianity. The new theocratic Muslim republic that my homeland had become had no place for me. I did not fit in comfortably anywhere within its social structure. A fortuitous move to England enabled me to start over again, training to be a nurse. This meant yet another cultural adjustment in order to integrate fully into modern British society. My subsequent happy marriage saved me from the threat of a rudderless existence. Husband, children, and a permanent home in Edinburgh finally enabled me to embrace a completely new identity enhanced by an intimate blend of different languages, cultures, and religions. I’m now a surprisingly stable adult “3^rd-culture kid”!

If you want to know how I survived the Revolution, changed religion, adopted a different national identity, lost my homeland and family, started from scratch in a new discipline, and yet can lead a meaningful life in my adoptive country, then you should read In the Shadow of the Shahs published by Lion Hudson (2019)—it’s the story of my life and its cultural challenges.

Mar

2022

Learning music in later life

Learning Music in Later Life

For the first fifty years of my life I was completely non-musical. Growing up in a middle eastern family it wasn’t a subject my parents considered ‘useful’. I admired school friends who took lessons in piano and violin, but sadly I wasn’t one of them. When I was first married, we lived in Glasgow and had a season ticket for Scottish Opera. During the intermissions I would peer down reverently into the orchestra pit and James would name the various instruments for me—back then I was unable to identify any except the violin! Remarkably, our four children all showed a great facility with music, and two of them are now professional musicians. After endless years of supervising their music practice, I wondered whether I too had the ability to learn music—or was I now too old?

Friends suggested that if I wanted to learn music in later life, I should choose a relatively unpopular instrument in the hope of ‘getting somewhere’ before being overtaken by infirmities of age! So I took their advice at face value and plumped for the viola, but learning to play it has been anything but easy. The viola is larger and heavier than a violin—in long passages it feels much like holding up a wardrobe with one arm! Also, since music written for the viola is invariably in the alto clef, that’s the only clef I learned. I still slightly panic if a passage on the stave continues in the commoner treble clef. Transposition? Forget it!

Despite these battles, I love my viola and never cease to be amazed at its potential. How is it that a basic wooden box with just four strings (the original structure has not changed in centuries) can be capable of tugging at one’s heartstrings with such infinite nuances of passion, and tenderness? When people of a similar age to me say how lucky I am to be able to play an instrument and how much they wished they could too, my response is invariably, “If I can do it, anyone can!”

Mar

2022

Cries for a Lost Homeland

Reflections on Jesus’ Sayings From the Cross by Guli Francis-Dehqani

This book by Guli, Bishop of Chelmsford, is an inspiring set of reflections on Christ’s Seven Last Words. Its perspective is quite different from other books on the crucifixion because the context from which Jesus’ final sayings is approached is uniquely personal—namely, Guli’s Persian heritage and her own experiences as a refugee. The references to Persian culture, the fledgling Iranian church, and the drama of her own losses, lends a fresh insight to the interpretation of Jesus’s last words from the cross.

The most generous of Christ’s seven final sayings is surely: Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do. This sublime act of forgiveness is the crux on which Christian doctrine is based. Ultimately it is God’s forgiveness of us that sets the standard for all acts of forgiveness. Guli’s reflection on these words in the light of her own brother’s murder is profoundly poignant, a reminder of the key message that we are to be in the world but not of the world. Unless we Christians learn to forgive the many injustices wrought by men against men, we can end up consumed by anger and regret.

Loss of one’s identity, perceived or otherwise, is a theme that runs throughout this work.

Unlike in the West where faith is a personal matter, in the East religious faith is deeply rooted into one’s cultural identity. Thus, Persian Iranians are assumed to be Shi’a Muslims, while the label “Armenian” is often just another word for “Christian”. When regimes impose or enforce theocratic morality, any apparent non-compliance with the expected behaviour can lead to ostracism or persecution. This is happening not only in Iran but in other countries too, and coupled with civil unrest and economic privations it has resulted in a surge of migrants world-wide. Different looks, different accents, different ways of thinking…all these things conspire to view refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants as outsiders. Even people like Guli and myself who have successfully “integrated” do at times feel different. Though as she wisely adds: “The challenge has been to not get stuck in that place…

Guli’s reflections contain much on which we may, and indeed should, ponder. A challenge for churches is how to meet the real needs of people disadvantaged through circumstances not of their own making. By reflecting openly on her own experience of displacement, loss and renewal, others may be likewise inspired: My hope is that by talking about my stories, you will start thinking about your stories –go tell your story; the world needs it.

I recommend this book as spiritual reading for all Christians in our multi-cultural society. It lends itself especially to study during Lent.

Review by Farifteh Robb

(Featured image courtesy of Local Government Chronicle)

Dec

2021

TransAtlantic relationships

My roots lie in Iran and a Persian society where close-knit family ties are all-important. Here in the UK the Robb family into which I married has a few scattered relatives and not many family links. Jim and I have bucked the trend!

Jim Holmes is a freelance publishing consultant in Greenville, South Carolina, USA. Coincidentally, he also happens to be my husband’s cousin. In 2015 I contacted him online with a request for advice regarding writing something about my past life for my grandchildren, and the possibility of getting the finished pages bound for them. That was the start of a transatlantic friendship. Two years on, and more than 1000 emails later, Jim published the first edition of my memoir, Unexpected Grace: a Life in Two Worlds.

After I left Iran following the Revolution, knowing I would not return was a wrench. felt I had lost my family. Little did I envisage when Jim and I first met in April 2017 what a rich vein of gold I had struck. To quote Mencius, “Friends are the siblings God never gave us”.

Dec

2021

Love thy neighbour

Love Thy Neighbour

My faith journey to Christianity from Islam began largely through Catholicism. I like to underline this fact because it does not appear to be a well-trodden route. As a Muslim I lived for a few months among practising Catholics (in a convent with nuns & in a Jesuit house of studies), and was able to experience first-hand how Catholics might react towards an ‘unsaved’ soul in their midst.

Interestingly, those nuns and priests are among the most tolerant Christians I ever met, and I got to know them very well. Although they were aware that I was then in the personal throes of questioning my faith, they never attempted to convert or influence me away from Islam. Their prayer was always that God’s will be done, and if it meant I remained a Muslim, then so be it, for it is God alone who directs our souls.

Catholics are not pushy evangelists, theirs is generally a quiet, unwavering devotion to God, and a striving to imitate their exemplar, Christ. The abiding memory of those months I spent in their midst of is one of Christ-like kindness. It certainly shed a favourable light on the Roman Catholicism so often criticised by my staunchly evangelical friends.

Learning Music in Later Life

Love Thy Neighbour

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