I grew up in Arizona, after my family immigrated there from Iran when I was four. There wasn’t much of an Iranian community in AZ when I was growing up, which meant there weren’t really any markets or restaurants that catered to the very distinct Persian palette. Around the time I was in high school in the late 80’s, there was a sudden influx of Iranians- some coming directly from the homeland; others moving to Arizona from California, seeking affordable housing and better quality of life for their kids.
As the Iranian community grew, so did the need for cultural resources. Slowly but surely, the Persian markets and restaurants started sprouting as well as the “discos” and the lavish dinner parties where families had a chance to mix and mingle and check out the options for potential mates for their kids of marriageable age. Clueless as I was at 17, I was also apparently being scoped out by Iranian families as a potential candidate for matrimonial match-making.
By the time I was 19, it was clear to me that I was not destined for the traditional route of a semi-arranged marriage to a nice 30-something engineer who came from a “good family” and who would support me while I got my college degree in pharmaceuticals or dentistry (to have in my back pocket for later, after the kids grow up and I could go back to work.) I hadn’t yet fallen in love with my first boy (a Sephardic Jew from Mexico City who was in my marketing class) or my first girl (an Iranian-British classmate in my accounting seminar).
I knew something was “different” about me, but had yet to discover what exactly it was. All I knew was that I noticed that I often made the elder Iranian men in my community very uncomfortable when I was around them, whether it was at a family dinner party or at a public community gathering.
One day when I was 19, my mom asked me to pick up some Persian ingredients for her from one of the local markets. That is the day I learned the significance of “pickled” in the culture I grew up in. The shop owner was a traditional Iranian man who knew our family. As is customary, he asked how my family was doing and if I was engaged yet. I was used to being asked this question by my Iranian elders at every gathering I went to, and the silently judgemental look I would receive when I would say with relish “No thank God I am not engaged to anyone!”
This time, however, I did not receive a silent stare when I gleefully replied that I was not engaged. Instead, the well meaning man told me I better hurry up and find myself a husband before I became “Torsheedeh”. The word “Torsheedeh”, I found out, comes from the word “Torsh”, which in Farsi means “Sour”, or “Torshi”, which means “Pickled”. I learned that day that single women who were considered past their prime were thus referred to as “Torsheedeh” amongst the community and could be viewed with both pity and distaste. Once a woman was given that title, she was no longer desirable or someone to considered as potential wife material.
