PEBBLE BEACH — Evelyn Koontz Musavi had entered her 80s when she decided it was high time to tell her story. Having grown weary of trying to convince her husband to write his memoirs, she realized how inextricably linked much of his life has been to hers and decided to pick up a pen.
The story reads somewhat like a journal, written in longhand on pages, now tattered, discovered in a trunk in the attic by someone who begins reading amid the dust of things forgotten, as she tries to imagine a life lived before hers in a place she’s only heard about.
Musavi, who lives in Pebble Beach, actually believes her husband’s life path has been far more exciting, fascinating, and far-reaching than hers. Except she has escorted him throughout most of that journey, helping to pave much of that path. By the end of the preface, readers are already aware of this.
There is a reason she titled the book, “The Wife of the Doctor,” but there is more to it than what we might think.
Musavi based almost her entire book on serendipity. Mostly because it suits the story of her life events and the key players who helped shape it, all of which has resulted from a surprising concurrence of events, meaningfully related, plus pure happenstance.
The meet
Musavi grew up in a Victorian-style home in rural Maryland her parents shared with her maternal grandparents, on 10 acres, just a short walk from town.
“I explained to my children that, considering our current standards of their time, I would have been considered poverty-stricken and culturally deprived,” Musavi said. “Yet my childhood was an exceedingly happy and serene time.”
It was 1950 when Evelyn Koontz enrolled in nursing school in Maryland, at a time when there were few productive paths for a female high-school graduate, beyond becoming a schoolteacher, secretary, registered nurse, or wife. She chose nursing and graduated with honors. Yet she was mere months into her first professional position in Baltimore when she met an “attractive, beautifully tailored young intern,” who seemed to be even more captivated by her than she was, by him.
“Years earlier, as a little girl playing pretend,” she wrote, “I had always envisioned a handsome husband with black hair, loving and protective, and a little son, who looked just like his father.” To this day, she wonders if the whirlwind romantic courtship leading toward her vision was an example of serendipity.
Their relationship was like a storybook romance — dinners, dancing, theater, and movies — moving faster than Hallmark. They married quickly and, 11 months later, welcomed their first son, who looked just like his father. Her nursing career had ended before it became established.
After his final year of residency, her husband, Dr. Sadri Musavi, accepted a one-year fellowship in cancer research at Sloan Kettering in New York City, after which he departed for his native Tehran to practice medicine. His wife, with their young son, followed a few months later.
It was in Tehran that Evelyn Koontz Musavi became known, socially, to her husband, and among his family, as Khanumeh Doctor — nothing more and nothing less than “The Wife of the Doctor.” Based on this title, the breadth of her accomplishments and identity had been distilled to her relationship to her husband.
She says she didn’t mind the title that offered no identity beyond her marriage to a doctor because, in some ways, it was flattering and because women weren’t subjugated in the early ‘60s — a comment she revised to “I didn’t feel suppressed in the early ‘60s.” Ironically, other than her acknowledgments, throughout her book, she never refers to the doctor by name, calling him, instead, “My husband.” Likely it was the role that matters most to her.
An interpretation of these titles is best delayed until you’ve read the book to consider them in the context of the culture, the era, and the relationship between the husband and wife — of the doctor.
“I felt very comfortable with my husband’s family and was accepted by them,” Musavi said. “I care for them, and they care for me. I learned so much about their Persian culture and came to consider myself bicultural. I did learn to speak Farsi; although today I consider it ‘kitchen Farsi’; I can have a functional but not in-depth conversation.”
Family first
During their four years in Tehran, Musavi’s husband hoped to elevate the level of medical care in his country, and to that end, his father offered to build him a hospital.
“I think we could have developed a different form of medicine in Tehran,” she said, “but my husband didn’t accept his father’s offer. In the midst of a lot of political unrest and resulting demonstrations, we began to think of returning to the United States.”
Musavi flew to Maryland in 1964, where she deposited their children with her parents before she joined her husband on a research mission to decide where he wanted to practice medicine. After meetings in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin, he confessed that he’d rather live and work in California.
“I would have supported wherever my husband chose to move, as this had to be his call,” she said. “I knew he was a kind, caring, considerate, and thoughtful husband and father. I had complete confidence he would choose wisely with the welfare of all of us uppermost in his mind.”
Based on the recommendation of friends, the Musavis settled in San Jose. She moved their family, of now four children, into a second-story apartment, while her husband established his practice.
“Life was good. Life was busy. My husband’s practice was doing well,” she wrote, “and he was highly respected within the medical community. My life revolved around my husband, children, and home, as well it should.”
Musavi was once asked why she didn’t return to nursing. Rearing four children, she said, was her number-one challenge, and she wanted to put forth her best effort. Failure, she said, was not an option.
Next chapter
Once her nest began to empty, Musavi felt the need to be in charge of something outside the home. She obtained her real estate license and had begun working in a local office when a private elementary school was established in San Jose. Three years later, through events both serendipitous and sad, Musavi took over the operations as director of Carden School for the next 25 years.
“After 50 or more years of long days and sleepless nights while working in the medical/surgical field, in 2003,” she said, “my husband decided to retire. I continued to work for a few more years, while my husband researched the most attractive location to retire. We chose to remodel a home in Pebble Beach.”
In 2013, Musavi and their four children celebrated her husband’s 90th birthday in a country home they rented for two weeks in Provence, France, giving him the “glorious and memorable occasion” he wanted for all the family. Now 97, he is both supportive and proud of his “wife, the author.”
“In writing this book,” said Musavi, 88, “I was reminded of how much I was able to adapt to my circumstances, always using my mantra to work hard, tell the truth, mind my own business, and go to church on Sunday. There is merit to the way I’ve lived my life.”
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