American Wings, Iranian Roots
When he arrived in the United States in 1983, Reza Abedi had $300 in his pocket, a few words of English and a strong desire to experience life outside Iran. At his first job as a gas station attendant, he knew so little about America he waited for his customers to prompt him when he had given enough change — usually by offering him a huge smile.
At the time that Abedi moved to the US, Iranians had been living under Ayatollah Khomeini, who ruled the country with brutality and intolerance, for four years. The new ruling elite had failed to deliver on the many promises of the revolution, including economic ones. In addition to the climate of fear that hung over every aspect of people’s lives — anyone who criticized the regime faced harsh persecution, jail sentences, and even execution — poverty was rife.
Abedi drew on his own physical and mental strength, as well as on the persistent support and dedication of his family, to qualify for the 1983 World Wrestling Championships. Although he was set to represent the Iranian team, Iran’s corrupt system almost replaced him with a wrestler with close ties to the regime.
As Abedi boarded the plane with the Iranian wrestling team to travel to Venezuela, two thoughts collided in his mind: he was never coming back, and his imprisoned 13-year old brother would be murdered by the regime in revenge for this decision.
After the wrestling competition, he and three other teammates risked their lives to escape with the help of brave wrestlers from the US team. They knew if they returned to Iran, they would be used as an example to warn other would-be defectors. “In that moment, knowing that if you’re caught defecting you will be jailed, tortured and probably killed, you have to be completely dedicated to wanting a better life. You can’t have a shred of doubt,” Abedi told the newspaper Kayhan Life in February 2018. “You can’t have a shred of doubt — you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price, or you will never go through with it.” Eventually Abedi applied for refugee status in the United States, and moved to California in 1985.
[bctt tweet="American Wings Iranian Roots"]
The Trump Order
Reza Abedi remembers how he felt when he first came to the US. So when President Trump announced his executive order banning Iranians and people from six other countries from entering the United States in 2017, it had a profound impact on him, as it did on so many others. And for Iranian-Americans like Abedi who had made the US their home for decades, it was a reminder of the vulnerable situation in which they once found themselves.
“There has not been one single incident where an Iranian citizen has done anything bad against Americans nor any European countries,” Abedi told IranWire in an email, adding that many Iranians hoping to immigrate to the US today share the desire to contribute to the country as the generations before them did.
“I think Trump made a huge mistake by doing this, because lots of intelligent Iranians will leave Iran and go to Canada or European countries,” Abedi says. Despite numerous legal challenges to the executive order, it remains intact, although it has been amended twice, the last time being in December 2017.
The Birth of a Book
When Presidents Trump and Rouhani exchanged insults at the UN General Assembly in September 2018, it was a renewed call for Iranian-Americans to redouble their efforts to foster greater understanding about them, and about Iran.
Kristin Orloff knows all too well this need for understanding. When the author and Abedi met at their sons’ baseball games back in 2004 in Orange County, California, Abedi confessed that the first time he played baseball he ran to third base — not knowing the rules of one of America’s favorite games. It gave Orloff a glimpse of life outside America, of another culture, but was also a reminder of one of the core values of education. “I’ve dedicated my life to educating others, and yet, I was so ignorant,” she says. “In my knowledge of Iran, I too was running to third base.”
That meeting led to American Wings, Iranian Roots, Abedi’s incredible story told by Orloff, the product of six years of discussions, research, interviews, drafts, reworkings, and the mapping of major events in Abedi’s life with the momentous changes of 1970s and 1980s Iran. Abedi says he wanted to share his story “because there are so many people who left for the same reasons as me.”
Both Orloff and Abedi believe it’s important that the book brings together the Iranian and American experience. “Every third chapter features a brief first person present tense reflection framed within my ‘white picket fence’ American point-of-view,” Orloff says. The book examines what’s different about Abedi and Orloff and their families, but more importantly, what they have in common. “I hope the take-away from the book is that the Abedis are just like most families throughout the world,” says Orloff. “Their culture and traditions are Iranian, yes, but they have the same hopes, dreams and struggles as do millions of other families.”
Wrestling, Education and Freedom
On April 15, 2018, Abedi was inducted into the California chapter of the US National Wrestling Hall of Fame. It was a great honor, but it was about so much more than excelling at a sport. It was a recognition of what helped him be who he is today: a teacher, a coach, the father of two sons who share his love of learning. Wrestling is what helped save him, and it also provides the cornerstone for American Wings, Iranian Roots. As Orloff puts it, wrestling defines Reza Abedi.
From his childhood in Kermanshah in western Iran to his escape into exile to his rescue of and reunion with his family, wrestling was always present. Orloff’s account celebrates the concept of the pahlavan, the term for a master of one of the world’s most ancient sporting rituals, which originated in Persia. As Orloff explains, a pahlavan is “a champion through words, actions and deeds,” a hero possessing integrity and strength of mind as well as physical might.
When Abedi arrived at the excruciating decision to leave Iran, it was intertwined with his desire to teach and learn. As his childhood friend Ardeshir puts it, “getting a degree from the university has been Reza’s dream since — probably since he was born.”
In early 1980s Iran, education was no longer a right, but a privilege awarded only under strict conditions. Unable to prove that he had a “deep devotion to Islam” and to Ayatollah Khomeini, Abedi was refused access to higher education.
“I felt if I stayed in Iran, I couldn’t be myself,” he told Kayhan Life. “I would be forced to live like someone else. I would always feel like I could only breathe air from a small paper bag and I wanted to be able to entirely fill my lungs.”
Confronting the “Death to America” Stereotype
Through the book and the educational references they have produced alongside it, Orloff and Abedi seek to challenge the most damaging stereotypes and misinformation perpetuated about Iranians, and about immigrants and refugees in general. Many Americans still equate Iranians with the hostage crisis at the US embassy in 1979, or with angry mobs carrying “death to America” placards. When she started the process of writing the book, Orloff remembers: “I wanted to run into every secondary classroom and say “Wait! We are missing so much of this time in history! There is so much more we need to teach you!”
And this commitment to education was key to what drove her. “As a teacher in high school and middle school, I am significantly aware of the inexcusable lack of literature studied in the secondary schools with protagonists who are from Iran — or anywhere in the Middle East,” Orloff says. “The heavily Euro-centered curriculum, in both language arts and social studies, leaves little room for significant study (and subsequent understanding of) this enormous part of our world, history and culture. The more research I did and the more I spent time with Reza and his family, the more I knew our story could serve as one of the planks to build a bridge to close this gap.”
The curriculum that Orloff developed, alongside an Educational Resources Website, encourage educators to use the book as a set text for English and Social Studies courses. The free resources teach about Iranian history and culture, Iranian identity, the role women play in Iranian society, friendship, family and the often misunderstood notion of heroism. “In one of my many ah-ha moments, I realize that Reza’s story follows the authentic arc of the hero’s journey,” she writes in the epilogue to the book. “Fueled by the excitement of this discovery…I dream that this story will be a staple in the public school system.”
The Next Generation
“The moments that stand out most clearly to me are when we speak at high schools,” says Orloff. “I can easily see the row of second generation Iranians. As Reza tells his story, they sit up a little straighter. Their eyes have a bit more of a shine and sometimes they will smile and nod. Here stands a true role model, before their peers — an Iranian man who represents the best of humanity. Reza is someone who they can feel connected to with pride and with hope. Similarly, immigrants from all corners of the world hear his story of grit and commitment in earning his college degree, his teaching credential and his Master’s degree. English is Reza’s third language and although he struggled, he never quit.”
Orloff says she’s disgusted by what’s happening in the US today. But then, she says, “I am so proud of the thousands of Americans who rallied at the airports to offer both legal and emotional support when the travel ban was first enacted. The travel ban is a dark period in American history and will be viewed as such.” She compares the current climate to what she describes as “two similar blights in American history”: the first being when the US denied entry to ocean liner the St. Louis, whose passengers were Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939; the second was the more broad Jim Crow Laws, which enforced segregation in US society, particularly in the south. Despite this, she, like Reza Abedi, have reasons to be hopeful. “When my heart breaks for the refugees wanting desperately to come to America, I find peace in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
At the heart of the book is the recognition of this arc, and a commitment to sparking conversations. “I hope in sharing Reza’s story with both citizens and students, we will have fact-based, rather than fear-based, conversations,” says Orloff.
American Wings, Iranian Roots aims to honor the values and traditions of the pahlavan hero — integrity, strength, commitment — and the acknowledgment that storytelling is a powerful tool for change.
[bctt tweet=”American Wings Iranian Roots”]
