Freedom Chicken
By Lindsay Sterling
Parivash Rohani heard about
Immigrant Kitchens from a friend and reached out to see if she could be
involved. In her home in Portland, Maine, she taught me how to make her favorite Iranian
dish, called fesenjoon. It's chicken
breast cut into cubes and cooked in a nutty sweet and sour sauce that's kind of like Persian bar-b-q sauce, but without the
tomato base. Ground walnuts give the sauce body, richness, and a touch of
bitterness. Pomegranate molasses adds dark red color and pungency.
Fesenjoon is really too intense to
be eaten straight in a bowl. It’s perfect served over saffron-colored basmati rice. You couldn’t have a better match for fesenjoon’s bold flavor than
a Shirazi salad, named after a town where Parivash spent her teenage years in Iran.
Lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes, tossed with lime juice, olive oil, dried mint,
and sumac, make for a fresh, cool accompaniment. She remembers her mother using
the juice from unripe grapes called ab
ghooreh instead of the lime juice.
Parivash's mother and father still live in
Iran, but 16 of her friends from childhood were executed by the Iranian
government between 1982 and 1985 for believing in her religion, the Bahá’í
Faith. It is the largest minority religion in Iran. When she was just six years
old, fanatical Muslims threw stones at her and pulled her hair. In her teens,
an angry mob of Muslims burned her home to the ground along with those of 500
other Bahá’í families. In 1979 the Islamic government denied Bahá’ís access to higher
education and work, and started imprisoning and executing them. Parivash fled
to India with two cousins when she was eighteen, thinking she would stay until
the persecution ended.
After six years, her
Indian visa ran out. She could neither return to Iran nor stay in India. She
had no permission to live anywhere. She applied to the United Nations for
refugee placement. In 1986 she made Maine her permanent home to be near friends
and a relative. She said, “the first day I got to America, I was human. It was
so liberating. For the first time I felt: I am safe. I belong somewhere. I can
be me.”
Parivash loves making this meal because
her husband and grown children love to eat it. She met her husband, who is also
from Iran, when she was in exile in India. Their daughter was born there. One
son was born in Canada, and two sons were born in Brunswick, Maine. Her daughter
is now a nurse; her son, a pharmacist; and two sons are college students at University
of Southern Maine.
After working in nursing for over
20 years and raising her family, she now dedicates her time to building
community and helping humanity. She is on the board of the Maine chapter of Interfaith
Power and Light, an organization that brings diverse religious groups together
to save the earth. She volunteers on the “Education is Not A Crime” campaign,
setting up documentary film viewings and speaking at educational institutions
about the continued deprivation of education for the Bahá’í in Iran. She is
also working with local organizations in Portland to plan this year’s festivities
for World Refugee Day on June 20th.
Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2016
