It's About Me

31 years, 1 month and 5 days ago there was a revolution going on in Iran. The people clamored to the streets to protest, chanted to Allah, and wanted their freedom from their dictator and tyranny in their government. My family had been living there for 2 years. In one blink of an eye we lost everything, were whisked to the airport and evacuated out of Iran – without my Dad.

My mother, carrying my 2 year old sister, me, my brother and a friend of ours boarded a plane with only what we could carry. For us, we each carried two ski-boot bags full of brass, copper, silver and gold. My mom, all 90 pounds of her, carried my sister and one bag, tried to keep her eye out on three teenagers while worrying herself sick that we’d get mugged.

We landed at Turkey to get jet fuel but because they too were undergoing a coup we weren’t allowed to get off the plane. We were lucky to get the fuel without getting shot out of the air. We didn’t know that at the time.

Next we landed at London Heathrow to change planes to go to New York. We had to take our hefty bags, too heavy for a 12 year old girl to haul far, and walk through the airport, down some escalators, through the terminal to another plane. Some stuff we had in trunks that was in checked baggage went through customs without us having to deal with it. We boarded in barely the nick of time, flying out in the middle of a snowy night.

As we collapsed in our seats and settled in for the long flight to America my mom slept for the first time. I’m sure she cried herself to sleep, but being twelve, I was on an adventure and didn’t realize the bad things going on around me. I was happy to be headed home to Texas to be with my grandmother, Ma. I just assumed my Dad, who was left behind, would be fine. None of us knew at the time that he would barely escape with his life just a week or so before the hostages were taken at the American embassy.

When we landed in New York the weather was bad and they required us to stay overnight at a hotel. Us kids were thrilled, my mom was not. We had to once again haul all those bags through the New York airport, filled with expensive goods, and not get mugged. We were backwoods Texas hicks. Everyone looked like a mugger.

Customs stopped us in our tracks. They never once looked in the bags in our hands but our trunk was supposed to weigh no more than 100 pounds. One was WELL over 200, the other had a room sized hand tied Persian carpet meticulously folded to fit into the small trunk that contained it. It took every mathematical theory my physics degreed Dad had to make it fit. But it did. And it was very, very heavy.

The bellhop guy looked at my mother and said “Lady, this bag ain’t no hunnerd pounds!”. She just stood there and started crying. I piped up and told him we were being evacuated from Iran and pointed to the rest of the kids. He gave my mom a hug, and hollered out at the guy behind him “Trunk moving on, move ahead lady, move it on!”. We were passed through customs without another look back.

We will always remember that blessed man. I hope God has taken good care of him.

As much as I remember of that trip, getting through customs and standing in the middle of the airport to a mountain of reporters is probably the most memorable. 15 reporters came running up to us with microphones in their hands wanting to know all about how terrible it was in Iran, how much we hated the country and the people, and to tell our harrowing tale of the evacuation.

But we didn’t tell them that. We told them about the people we knew and how they were lovely, good, hard working individuals. The country was simple and beautiful and backwards, but in a good way. The evacuation went very smoothly. In reality we were never in any real danger. Boeing, Bell Helicopter and the American military had a very smooth evacuation plan that went off without a hitch.

The reporters couldn’t get away from us fast enough. They didn’t want to hear that! They wanted to hear my friends mom who was crying it up like some chick on Jerry Springer, with her overly dramatic and not quite true tales of woe. That image has been burned into my mind forever, and I remind myself of it when I see nothing but bad news of wars and terror overseas on the TV.

We evacuated out of Iran on January 6, 1979 and landed on Texas soil on January 8, 1979. Our country was about to go into a severe recession. We would have gas lines, and rationing of gas. My dad would finally return home in late March. I would kiss my first boyfriend. We would move to Utah.

But the people of Iran were entering a time of growth. They wanted freedom. Freedom from a dictator that they didn’t believe in. Freedom from other countries making decisions for them. Freedom from ‘the man’. What they got was a religious zealot that was worse than any dictator in 4 centuries. A man who pushed their country back in time five hundred years. A zealot that took freedom and rights away from the women worse than they had ever seen in their lifetimes.

Those same students who stood up and protested and said they wanted freedom were then in a religious prison worse than what they had under the regime of the Shah. Those same individuals are now 31 years older and have had enough. They’re living under the tyranny of an idiot and they hate him. They want their freedom. They want their government to make sense.

I pray for them. I really do.

They are standing up to a crooked government and are trying to take back their country. They want growth, and freedom, and the technology we all take for granted. They want something to believe in that is true. They want only what is good for their country and for their children. They are tired of the poverty that comes when government mandates every facet of its natives lives.

Watch them. Watch their heartache and frustration. They are standing up, risking their lives, getting beaten in the streets. All to show their government that they are tired of being mandated, tired of being squashed and being used as pawns in some madman’s game. They’re tired of passively sitting by and thinking ‘if God wills it’. Insha’Allah.

I wonder.

When will we wake up to our own plight?

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