Abolfath Bani Ardalan 72 Los Angeles, CA

June 30, 1934 - April 12, 2007

Abolfath Ardalan 77 Vienna, VA

October 21, 1929 - August 31, 2007

Cirous Ardalan 63

November 5, 1940 - March 7, 2004

Farangis Ardalan 93 Mc Lean, VA

June 23, 1912 - August 8, 2005

Majid Ardalan 73 Sonoma, CA

September 30, 1929 - November 1, 2002

Masoumeh Ardalan 85 Santa Monica, CA

August 26, 1919 - February 24, 2005

Susan L. Ardalan 46

June 24, 1957 - May 17, 2004

If any of these loved ones are your family members you can go onto the website and become the “Historian” of their memory.

Source: Tributes.com

I can’t believe this news. My heart feels like it is broken. As we all know Abol joon passed away last night. We created a little slideshow to remember him by.

Love,
Aman

Soraya grew up in a family that had lingered on the borders of Iran and Iraq for generations. Her family never recognized either country, referring to their frequent dashes across to escape persecution as merely “crossing to the other side”. In 1980, her family fled Ayatollah Khomeini’s persecution against the Kurds to the relative safety of Halabja; a trip that Soraya recalls was as exciting as any religious pilgrimage. That same year though, she began to witness what she called “the dark truth” that Kurds in Iraq were just as oppressed and miserable as she was in Iran and the tales she heard from Turkey and Syria were even more horrific.

Then in March of 1988, 30 members of her extended family, the same ones that had given her refugee from Iran, along with another 5,000 people died in Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons bombing of Halabja. Their only crime, Soraya recalls, “being born with the curse of a Kurdish identity.” Soraya and her immediate family had left Iraq by that time.

As a journalist, I found her background fascinating. She was an active member of the Kurdish National Congress of North America (KNC) working to bring about unity among Kurds. When we met at the grocery store or at the school parking lot our conversations were always intense. She knew my family was of Kurdish origin and as such I’d be more interested in what she had to say. I personally was drawn to her activism. Last fall, when she was on her way to visit Iraqi Kurdistan for a conference on Kurdish independence, I asked her to keep a journal for a possible essay on NPR. The essay never made it to air but in the process I learned more about her passion for her cause.

She recalled she could hardly contain herself hearing people speak her mother tongue - as the official language. She felt as though her secret Kurdish life was being exposed minute by minute but this time she felt safe.

“I arrived in Sulaimani, to spend the Eid of Ramadan with my great aunt,” Soraya wrote. “Her glance and the lines in her face tell a thousand stories of hardship, pride and resiliency that I was ready to hear.” Her aunt was eighty years old and the matriarch of the family. She had survived the killing of her husband by Saddam and was deported along with her daughters to the south of Iraq, living in a tent while her land and home were given away to the Arabs.

Her formal sitting room that day was full of men who had come to pay their respect. These men were from all walks of life, a driver, university professors and the head of the Kurdish armed forces in Sulaimani. Soraya decided to stay back with the women in the family room where many of the female visitors would stay. Over the course of the next three days, Soraya met over 100 women and many men and spoke to more than a dozen in detail about their experiences, hopes and fears. She expected to talk to them about their basic needs - water, electricity and corruption but all they wanted to talk about was politics.

The level of political suaveness of these women astonished Soraya. Having lived twenty years in the U.S., even she had believed in stereotypes regarding women in the Middle East. One woman, with only a fourth grade education, whose husband works for the Kurdish Regional Government analyzed the situation with regards to Kurdish independence as follows: “The party leaders are way behind what people are demanding but they should not forget that we put them there and that we can take them down. If they get comfortable with their position of power and forget our sacrifices, there will be an uprising against them”.

After Sulaimania, Soraya stopped in the town of Koya where a new university campus had been built and met with the president and some of the professors. At the lunch table, she sat across from two businessmen from Chicago who were also guests and were there to bid on a project for the communication system at the university. Soraya recalls that the optimism in the air was contagious as they all agreed that this was the best location for a university when somehow the conversation veered off to the issue of other parts of Iraqi Kurdistan that are not yet under Kurdish rule. When the group started planning for similar work in Kirkuk, the Chicago businessman casually mentioned that the fate of Kirkuk is not yet determined and Soraya says it was as if a silence bomb had dropped, the entire table of over 25 lunch guests was speechless. A Kurdish lady who teaches chemistry at the university turned to the American and in a very quiet but determined voice said: “All you see here, we will give up in a heart beat in the fight for Kirkuk”.

Since her untimely death this past Monday, Soraya’s family has been inundated with flowers and messages from around the world. A remembrance of Soraya on kurdishmedia.com says, “Today, she has left us to join some of Kurdistan’s most remarkable women such as Rewshen Bedirxan and Leyla Qasim. Soraya will always be remembered as a nationalist daughter who dedicated her life to the cause of her nation.”

Soraya is survived by her husband Tom Ver Ploeg, and her children Aveen and Daryan.

Note:
Iran Davar Ardalan is a producer for NPR’s Morning Edition based in Washington D.C. Soraya’s essay about her first journey back to Kurdistan written in November 2005 was used as part of this remembrance.

ArdalanFamilyTree.com

Great job!

http://www.legacy.com/washingtonpost/Guestbook.asp?Page=Guestbook&PersonID=14797815

As her youngest granddaughter I have vivid memories of playing in her garden in Tehran in springtime and in the winter snow…. the cherry blossoms that adorned the entrance to her house… those carefree days when she taught us to leave an empty bowl out in the cold to catch fresh falling snow and then drip cherry juice on top for our very own homemade snowcones!

In her later years, I was lucky to live close-by and as such was able to see her more often. I thought of her like some treasure that I sought to seek. I longed to know of every little detail of her life. She was very private and rarely spoke about her past but I prodded nonetheless, as though I was searching for things to survive. She told me of her life as a young girl, the day she and her aunt took it upon themselves to carry several watermelons up the steps only to have them come smashing down and bursting in the courtyard with her grandfather’s stern face appearing in the doorway. He never ever punished them but always reminded them not to misbehave. To me this was a moment in time of no significance to the history of man and yet it brought a smile to my face and brought insight into my own life and my own mischieviousness. I was perhaps looking for clues in her life and that of her father’s Davar that I could carry with me like artifacts of my past. It didn’t have to be a vase or ring or even notepad, just words that I cherished because they had withstood the test of time.

I learned that as a young girl, Farangis Davar was raised primarily by her grandfather, known as Khazaneyeh Khalvat or personal treasurer to the Qajar king. As such, my grandmother Farangis grew up amidst kings and politicians. Her mother was the beautiful Derakhshandeh and her father, Ali Akbar Davar. Davar was a nationalist, a pragmatic journalist at first who would take corrupt politicians to task. By the age of twenty-four, his tenacity led him to be named Prosecutor General of Tehran where he found a love for the law. He then went to Europe for eleven years where he got his law degree and later served as Iran’s Minister of Justice and Finance.

When he returned to Tehran, he bought a home with a big garden on Safi Ali Shah Avenue. Farangis later recalled that the house had many rooms with an inner and outer part. Her older sister Afsar and her lived in the inner part of the home while her father had many visitors who came calling in the outer part of the home. Farangis saw very little of her father but knew that he loved music. At a young age, she was interested in musical instruments and took up the tar. In the mid 1920’s Ghamar Molouk Vaziri was a very popular singer and as such was very selective as to where she would peform but she had great admiration for Davar and would attend gatherings at his home. One night, Farangis and her father were sitting next to the fireplace and after Molouk sang, Davar said, “Farangis, what about you? I understand you have learned how to play. You play for us. She played all the songs she had learned. Another musician played along as well. When they finished, Davar turned to the musician and said, “I hope you don’t mind. You were Farangis’s teacher but Farangis’s fingers are sweeter than yours.”

By the age of 16, Farangis was engaged to be married to one Abbas Gholi Ardalan. Abbas’s family had first gone to her grandfather and later to Davar to ask for her hand in marriage. Davar said, “I have to ask my daughter. I am not like the old timers to give my daughter in marriage without first asking her.” He then said to Farangis, “He comes from a good family. But you have to agree. I will not speak on your behalf.”

Such was the way Farangis was raised. This sense of individual integrity and pride that emenated from her came from her father’s sense of justice.

Farangis said to her father, “Whatever you say.” In others words, I accept.

Nine months later they were married. A year later, her daughter Pari was born. In 1935, Abbas left Tehran for London where he attended the London School of Economics. The following year, Farangis and Pari went to Brussels where Farangis studied French.

In 1939, Farangis bore a son, my father Nader and by 1947 the family moved to Washington, D.C. where Abbas was assigned as the economic attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Washington D.C.

From 1953 to 1957 Abbas and Farangis lived in New Rochelle, New York where Abbas was the Iranian Representative to the Narcotics Commission at the United Nations. The two also spent two years in Ghana where Abbas served as economic advisor on behalf of the United Nations. They returned to Iran in 1960.

At that time Farangis became one of the originators of the legendary Ardalan family gatherings or doreh. Having mastered the art of Persian cooking and combining this with her decorating skills she created culinary sensations with great style and elegance.

As a mother she was devoted and took great pride in her children’s accomplishments. As a grandmother, she taught us about integrity, pride in family, and a love of hospitality.

I saw my grandmother for the last time at the hospital a couple of weeks ago. My aunt Pari had made her Asheh Sabzi and brought her several pieces of watermelon in which she took great delight. My father Nader was on his way from Kuwait to see her. I spent that night in her room with her checking her monitor for her heart rate and blood pressure every hour even though there were plenty of people more qualified already keeping an eye on her. She asked for some juice. With a straw, I gave her a cup of cranberry juice and ice. I kissed her hand and touched her angelic face. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

I found myself once again cycling her life in my thoughts. Farangis the granddaughter of Khazaneyeh khalvat, daughter of Davar, the wife of the diplomat, the mother of Pari and Nader, my grandmother. I felt I was in the presence of death but the heart monitor was beating strong and steady and so I kept on writing and kept on remembering that she is the physical manifestation of my past – where I come from.

I am now without her… but my heart is beating strong and I will make her this one promise that I will carry on and our family legacy will carry on and we will keep her memory alive in our hearts and minds forever.

Davar Ardalan
Supervisory Producer, Morning Edition
NPR NEWS
dardalan(at)npr.org