Streetwise

[Reza <davood@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times
November 18, 2001
Streetwise
By SALAR ABDOH

   In 1980, the ruling Muslim clerics in Iran signed my father's
execution warrant and confiscated everything he owned. It was odd then
to watch another cleric administering his funeral in an antiseptic Los
Angeles cemetery some months later, after he had died of a heart attack.
I was barely 15. The Iranians who came to pay their last respects were
all fresh exiles like us who left Iran in a hurry after the triumph of
the Islamic revolution the year before.

My two brothers and I quickly drifted into the underworld of the city
after the funeral. We were the opposite of refugees who take with them
as many of their belongings as they can. There wasn't much to take
anyway. We had been in the States only a few months, and what we owned
was, like our estranged mother, back in Iran and no longer ours. So we
pretty much shed everything that had to do with the past.
FULL TEXT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/18/magazine/18LIVES.html?searchpv=past7days