This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Iranian Refugees find New Home in Athens

But some consider themselves "world citizens."

Massih Kharazmi, a Georgia real estate agent as well as a current student, knows how it feels to be forcibly separated from home for more than three decades.

“My country is hostile towards me because of my faith,” said Kharazmi, who was born into a Baha’i family in Iran years ago.

Iran is a dangerous and exotic place in the minds of many Americans, who associate it with veiled women, bearded men, nuclear experiments and a fundamentalist Islamic regime. What most Americans might not realize is that it is a very bad place to belong to any faith except Islam, or to refuse to collaborate with the people in power.

Find out what's happening in Athenswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Iranian refugees living here in Athens, however, are all too aware of this.

“They burnt down nearly 80 homes in one night and torched a father and a son,” Kharazmi said. One night a mob of fanatical Muslims broke into his family house, looted what they wanted and burned what was left. This happened about a month before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after which the new, fundamentalist authorities officially turned against non-Muslims.

Find out what's happening in Athenswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Kharazmi family came to the U.S. during the revolution, applied for religious refugee status, and were approved for green cards that allowed them to live and work here.

But that’s not the same as having a home.

“I am neither Iranian nor American, I am a world citizen,” said Kharazmi. In addition to living in the U.S. after being pushed out of Iran, he spent one year of voluntary service at the Baha’i World Center in Israel and worked in China for four years (starting a family in the process). He has now returned to the University of Georgia to complete a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics after being out of school for 24years.

“I need the systematic training in linguistics so that I can teach English in China,” said Kharazmi, who can imagine a future for himself in China, which he says is rapidly changing in both material and spiritual ways. The U.S. has a more comfortable standard of living, but he has learned to adapt to many different places.

Kharazmi has been cast as a “minority” of one type or another in his life. 

“Whether you belong to an ethnic group, a different religion, or another national origin, people want to fit you into an identity box,” he said. “For that reason, I have decided to adopt an attitude of world citizenship.”

George Shu is another non-Muslim refugee from Iran. His family left not because of religion but for economic and political reasons.

“My family survived the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but did not survive in the political disorder after that,” said Shu. His father was a wealthy man engaged in international business, and after the revolution the new government confiscated nearly all the family properties. The fact that his father would not play ball with corrupt authorities was the final straw.

“He was threatened at gun-point and was told to leave the country as he walked the street in 1993,” Shu said. “So we left and came to Chicago, U.S before we came to the Georgia state.”

In the chaos and economic problems that followed, his parents divorced. Shu’s father tried to resurrect his business, but was conned by his partners and lost everything. He is now unemployed and the bank is about to foreclose on his house in Chicago while Shu and his mother are living in Georgia.

Although Shu was not cut off from his homeland for religious reasons, religion now plays a role in his life.

“I became a Christian four years ago and my whole life has changed,” says Shu. He often attends church activities in Athens such as Snack and Chat in First Methodist Church.

Farshid Azami, like Kharazmi, is a Baha’i and likes to call himself a world citizen. He left Iran 32 years ago and is still on that government’s blacklist.

“I became a British citizen after I left my country and came here 8 years ago,” Azami said, adding that he would like to return to Great Britain someday because he likes the culture there.

He values the U.S., however, because of its emphasis on liberty. “This is a country that has freedom of speech so I am able to tell other about my faith without being fearful of the authorities,” said Azami.

Although he is currently unemployed, he says he lives in relative comfort with his family.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?