Old and New
Nancy Soliman, the eldest daughter, arrives home first, at 5 o’clock. The UCLA senior sets the table and whips up a salad with cucumbers and cilantro.
The parents--Akila and Saad--filter in from their jobs minutes later. Akila Soliman, 45, a financial consultant, quickly puts the finishing touches on a top sirloin with mushrooms and a spicy zucchini-and-tomato side dish, baked the way her own mother might have back in Egypt.
Her husband, Saad, who owns a picture-framing business, plops down in the sunken living room, in front of the TV.
Finally, the younger daughter, Nellie, 17, steps through the front door.
Nellie is often the last one home because she baby-sits for nearby friends every day after high school lets out. She leaves that job at 6:30 p.m. sharp, however, for dinner at the Soliman home in Granada Hills means: Everyone at home at 6:30. Everyone around the table.
If you are looking for an updated version of Ozzie and Harriet, the quintessential American family of 1950s television, here it is.
The Soliman family lives in a four-bedroom home with red tile roof, vaulted ceilings and marble fireplace near the top of a road winding up the foothills of the San Fernando Valley.
Nellie attends Granada Hills High School, which once was synonymous with white suburbia. “E.T.” was filmed blocks away. The school’s most famous alumnus is a blond quarterback, John Elway.
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These days, the statistics still list the school as having a white plurality, at 39%. But the school’s corridors are filled with sounds of Spanish, Urdu and Arabic.
Nellie is typical, then, of the new Granada Hills. She is as popular as the characters on a favorite show of this era, “Beverly Hills, 90210.” She will soon join her sister at UCLA.
But not typical of this generation, or of America any longer, is how she’s home for dinner at 6:30.
“Eat,” Akila Soliman urges this evening.
She passes along rice, salad and lemonade.
The family usually dines in the kitchen. On this night, though, Nancy, 21, has brought her boyfriend, Farhad Heidari, 22. There are too many for the kitchen table. Dinner is served in the dining room.
No one rushes. The conversation is laced with Arabic. A light breeze drifts in from an open window.
Saad Soliman has been in the United States for 29 years, his wife for 24.
When it comes to their children, they are old school. Nancy lives at home while attending UCLA. Nellie plans to do the same.
Their mother still doesn’t know what to call Farhad, nearly 18 months after Nancy met the young man from Iran on the Westwood campus, where both are seniors.
“He’s not your boyfriend in the American sense of boyfriend, because the American sense of boyfriend goes a little too far,” Akila reminds Nancy. “That’s not what we are accepting.”
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The women clear the dishes and Nancy produces a tray of bananas, pears, apples and oranges in traditional Egyptian style. Akila then excuses herself to pray, a ritual she performs five times a day in accordance with Muslim law.
After she goes upstairs, the conversation runs from celebrity gossip--”Monica Lewinsky did a photo shoot in Vanity Fair,” Nancy reports--to school gossip.
“OK, Nellie. Who are you going to ask to prom?”
Nancy turns to their father: “Is it OK if Nellie goes to prom? I went.”
Quiet though he may be, Saad Soliman is the patriarch. “Then, Nancy,” he declares, chuckling, “you go with her.”
The fruit finished, Saad and Farhad settle in the living room to watch a Lakers basketball game.
Nellie does the dishes. Nancy prepares a tray of tea and serves slices of apple pie and chocolate cake. The family settles onto an L-shaped sofa.
Nellie sips her tea and reads an Advanced Placement history study guide, copying information on flashcards as she prepares for the AP test.
Only after dessert does everyone move on. Nancy drives Farhad home to Woodland Hills. Nellie heads upstairs to do homework.
Saad and Akila linger on the sofa, chatting about how glad they are that their youngest daughter is going to college close to home.