Twice Under the Persian Sky

Chapter Two

My escape from Iran was ten years in the making. I was born in the United States in the early 1970s, when my parents were going to college to earn their undergraduate and graduate degrees. My father was earning his graduate degree in mechanical engineering, and my mother was working on her MBA.

By the late 1970s, my parents had completed their studies, and their student visas expired, which meant that it was time to return to Iran, their home country. This is how I ended up as a guest of the ayatollahs in Iran. I was, of course, only six years old and had no say in my parents' decision making process. More importantly, I had no idea what awaited me some 6,500 miles away in Iran. Had I been older and known more about Iran, I would never have chosen to go there with my parents. What I eventually found out about life in Iran was through bitter personal experience.

Growing up in Iran in the 1980s was difficult. We suffered through the eight years of Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). During the war, my family and I, along with most Iranian families, endured ration coupons, nightly blackouts, Iraqi bombings and missile attacks, and losses of dear relatives as a result of the fighting. If that weren't enough, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) service would make certain through one of its several propaganda channels that we were constantly reminded of the hard times people endured. IRIB repeatedly played the themes of the sacrifice of martyrs in every province, city, and village, and on every street corner, stressing how they would be rewarded in heaven.

I and most Iranians my age felt a rapid tightening of the circle of the limited freedoms we originally enjoyed. Soon even travel from one city to another or one province to another became perilous for young men. The local IRGC posts, or other stations manned by the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force under the full IRGC control of the IRGC, administered hundreds of strategically positioned checkpoints throughout Iran, in every airport and train station, and on nearly every road. The soldiers or militiamen would single out men under the age of 18 and harass them and detain them for interrogation. Their goal was to shame the youth into signing up to serve the Islamic revolution at the front lines.

The theocratic Iranian regime used teenage boys during the war to clear the minefields, by giving each boy a "key to heaven" and sending them to walk through the minefields. My cousin and a few of his friends were naïve. One day when they were heading home from school, a few Basijis approached them, brainwashed them, and put them on a bus to the front line of the war zone. My cousin and his best friend were the only survivors of a dozen boys who were sent through the minefield at the enemy lines. Both lost their legs. When I went to visit my cousin at the hospital, the government sent a mullah (a religious leader) to try to convince me that my cousin would get gold in heaven equivalent to the weight of the leg he lost in the war.

Ten years later, at age 16, I was frightened. I had played so many different scenarios in my head but reached the same conclusion every time: I had to risk trying to leave Iran to seek freedom. Staying in Iran would mean that after finishing high school, I would be compelled to join one of the military services of the Islamic Republic of Iran for a compulsory service period of 30 months. Upon completion of my service, I would have been added to an Iranian government "no-fly" list for an additional 30 months, because I would be considered in "inactive ready reserve" military status. I refused to waste an additional seven years of my life in a country run by theocratic totalitarians. I was yearning for freedom and I was willing to risk my life to experience it.

But I couldn't justpurchase a plane ticket and leave Iran. I was and am an American citizen with Iranian parents. Under Iranian law, however, I was consideredan Iranian citizen despite my place of birth, since my parents wereIranians. So I couldn't legally leaveIran. Knowing of my desire to leave Iranto seek freedom, my parents and family had moved from Tehran to down to thecoast near Bandar Abbas two years earlier just to find a reliable andtrustworthy human smuggler to take me across the Persian Gulf. Thus, my meeting Ahmad and Reza, and becomingacquainted with the goats. I felt theawkward sensation of being scared and excited at the same time.