I know so little about my mother’s father, Abol Ghassem Bakhtiar, who passed away 40 years ago today on January 9, 1971, at the age of 99. I saw a post on Facebook from my cousin Iran Ardalan, quoting the story of his youth which he dictated to his son, Cyrus Bakhtiar in 1951. I read it out of momentary curiosity, since I’ve never attempted to know more about him. All I’ve known are odd stories I’ve heard from my mother and other family members. He was a self-made man, one of the first Iranians to study medicine in America, one of Reza Shah’s personal doctors, the man who pulled me out of my mother’s womb at his clinic in Abadan. That pretty much sums up grandpa for me. Even as I read his words, I felt I was reading the story of someone I’ve never known. One of these days I should read the biography my aunt Laleh Bakhtiar wrote about him with the help of my mother: ” in 1927 in New York City. She had traveled from Weiser, Idaho, to teach nursing in New York City. They moved to Iran in 1931.
