I was nine years old when I woke up one morning and realized I was no longer going to be living in Iran.  I had overheard my parents discussing their immediate plans of moving to America.  The Shah of Iran had been overthrown from his secular monarchy by the Ayatollah Khomeini, a bearded 77 year old once exiled to France, now ruling Iran as the sign of God on earth.  My country was then, as it is now, in turmoil.

35 years have passed from those dying days of 1979.  And yet, I remember vividly the scenes of what transpired at the airport in Tehran.  Running alongside my mother and father, I held my 7 year-old brother’s hand as my parents desperately tried to board us on a plane in hopes of rescuing us from dangerous elements that would potentially challenge the safety and stability of our family.

En route to the United States, we were detained in Mexico for a 2-week period.  I was too young to understand what was happening but we were being refused entry into the United States.  We could not get a proper visa for my grandfather, who at the time was almost 90 years old.  I later remember my mother saying that my father would repeatedly go to the American Embassy to obtain an entry visa for him, but for unknown reasons, his application was constantly denied.  It was during this period of chaos and instability, uprooted and vulnerable, with no country or home to call our own and dependent on the trust we had forged with one another as family that I was left alone in our hotel room with my dad’s cousin.  What happened in that hotel room and in the years to follow would ultimately challenge any stability or peace of mind I would know for the next 3 decades...