Our Town: Finding freedom Our Town: Finding freedom (May 22, 2002)

by Don Kazak

One Palo Alto woman was so disturbed by the events of Sept. 11 that she wrote President Bush to express her anger and pain over what happened.

While she never received a reply, the life experiences she recounts are so different from those of most of us that they may be worth thinking about.

Tahereh Moghadam was born in the southern Iranian city of Zahedan, near the borders of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Moghadam, now 54, has lived in the United States for 21 years. She still has brothers and sisters in Iran, but is rarely in touch with them. She's never been back to Iran.

In a letter that is eloquent, understated and painful, she recounts her life's tragedies with a matter-of-fact directness.

Moghadam's father was an Army officer, a kindly man of whom she has fond memories. Her mother, the daughter of Moslem cleric, was extremely strict.

As a girl, Moghadam had a talent for music and started to learn the violin in school. Her father kept it a secret from her mother for five months.

"My mother became furious and blamed my father and said I was a loose girl," she wrote. She was 7 years old. Her mother broke the violin and burned it in their stove.

She was 12 when she finished primary school -- and learned that her mother planned to marry her to a 45-year-old man whom she had never met. Her father disapproved of the arranged marriage but couldn't stop it.

She had her first child when she was 13.

Her husband beat her repeatedly. He once locked her in the coal room of their house because she refused to sleep with him. She developed a lung disease and was hospitalized for three months. She was 15.

Her father finally interceded and arranged for her to get a divorce and return to live with her parents.

But her mother was critical of her for not obeying her husband and for getting a divorce. Then Moghadam suddenly collapsed and again had to be hospitalized. Her mother "had been mixing prayer sheets in my food. I had food poisoning from the toxins in the ink."

At 23, Moghadam married again -- once more to a man she had never met, a man who had been divorced three times, and who also treated her badly. They had two children.

After the 1979 Iranian revolution, Moghadam and her family moved to America. Her marriage ended several years later when her husband, who was absent much of the time, killed himself by setting himself on fire.

"All I had in my life was terror, sorrow, slavery and hatred," she wrote.

Moghadam now works as a service station manager on the Peninsula, and gradually has been able to put her life back together.

Her kindly father died of a heart attack when he was 52, perhaps broken-hearted when Moghadam's mother arranged another forced marriage for another unwilling daughter.

After his death, she learned that her mother made a pilgrimage to Mecca and gave away the family's wealth.

As a girl and then a young woman in Iran, she was never able to pursue her interests and dreams, and became the property of first one husband then another, neither time for love.

She still cares about what's happening in fundamentally conservative Moslem countries such as Iran and wonders how different Afghanistan will really be now that the Taliban is gone.

"The Iranian people are upset and angry, but they cannot say anything," she said.

But some things are looking up. She is extremely proud that one of her sons is graduating from San Diego State University this month. And she now is free to make her own decisions.

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty has become a cliché: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." But it's easy for us to forget how important that can be to other people without our freedoms.

Don Kazak is a Weekly senior staff writer. E-mail him at dkazak@paweekly.com.