The first breath of freedom: Armin Assadi's escape from Iran
From the time Armin Assadi could form memories, he sensed something was wrong. The world around him was changing and his family had become an ever-growing target. It was the early 1980s, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was still in its infancy. Violence clouds Assadi's earliest childhood memories.
"The first time I remember seeing people get killed, I was as young as four years old. As a kid, you don't really understand why someone is getting killed slowly, brutally, because they said the wrong words," he said.
When Assadi was three, state agents presented his father an ultimatum. He was not Muslim—and had ties to the previous regime. He was a target.
"They said 'You have two options—one, you sign this piece of paper that says you're Muslim and you can carry on your life as is and can continue to carry to worship whatever weird practices you have, but on paper, you will be known as Muslim," Assadi said. "Your second option is we take everything that you own, everything that you love, and little by little, until you have nothing left, including your own life. You have 24 hours to make a decision."
That night, Assadi says he remembers his father waking him from his sleep. He was just three years old.
"He looks at me and he says, 'Armin, I just want you to know one thing.' And his voice is shaking. So, as a 3-year-old who's never seen their dad cry or look or sound like that, I still remember it," Assadi said. "[He said] sometimes our decisions are based on our faith, and I want you to understand that your faith is worth dying for."
The years to follow were spent fleeing the regime.
"We spent several years on the run, just going from one house to the next house," Assadi said. "Just trying to avoid getting captured or identified- because once they find you, you might die on the spot, you might die later, but either way, you're going to die."
Eventually, Assadi's family decided to attempt to flee the country—making an illegal crossing into Pakistan with the help of human smugglers. The mission had the potential to be deadly. Smugglers were known to agree to help someone cross the border—only to turn them into the Iranian government.
On the day of the escape, Assadi says he remembers waking up to the sounds of shouting. It was the middle of the night—but it was time to move.
"They take about 10 of us and put us in this little tiny pickup truck," he said. "They're like 'You've got to hang on, there's no letting go. My dad is holding onto me. I thought I was shaking, but he was shaking."
Eventually, the truck took them as far as it could go. They would need to make the rest of the cross on foot.
"My dad straps me on his back with a bedsheet. Eventually, you see border patrol get close and you start going into panic mode."
In the early morning twilight, they hid the only place they could—behind tumbleweeds in the open desert.
"I remember being strapped to my dad's back. We're hiding under or behind these tumble weeds," Assadi said. "I remember in this instant, I kept hearing my dad repeat over and over, 'Please God, don't let my family die like this. Not like this. Please God, not like this.'"
Eventually, Assadi's family made it to a mountain pass. After a full day of fleeing, they made it safely into Pakistan.
"There's no part of it that's not intense. There's no part that you breathe," he said. The only time you finally breathe is when you finally get to the other side of the mountain, and you realize we're not in Iran anymore. We're in Pakistan."
Assadi's family spent their time in Pakistan applying for the opportunity to seek asylum in another nation. Eventually, they were approved to come to Minnesota.
"When we got to Minneapolis, we had to get off on the tarmac for some reason, and we were walking out, and, you know, we're walking to get inside to the airport, and my brother and my mom are ahead, and I'm just walking following. And I start looking for my dad, and I don't see him, so I start looking back, and I see my dad, and he's just like, frozen stiff, staring off into the distance," Assadi said.
"And he said, you see that flag right over there, that red, white and blue one? I said, Yeah. He said, Armin, this is the first time since you've been alive that you're breathing free air and you don't have to worry about being killed, or me being killed, or anyone going to prison. And the only reason that is, is because of that flag right there. So, I want you to take this in. You're free. We're free. It took about two minutes to fall in love with America. You know?" Assadi said.
A FAITH RECKONING
While Assadi's Baha'i faith inspired his family's desperate move, it wasn't something he carried with him through adolescence. The weight of what his family had experienced began to take a toll.
"The weird thing about freedom is, when you don't have it, you're so busy trying to stay alive, you don't deal with a lot of problems — because you have a big problem to deal with, which is life and death," Assadi said. "Once you come here, you're not escaping death and avoiding extremism at all costs, the new challenge is, you have to deal with your trauma. You have to deal with your past."
Assadi says for him, it was a complete faith fallout.
"That made me spiral. At that point, I lost faith, I lost family, I became something I never wanted to be," he said.
Assadi says it came to a head on his 26th birthday. In his early 20s, he found financial success, surrounding himself with a crowd he felt had become his new family. It culminated in an extravagant nightclub party, where Assadi says, he realized he was alone.
"I just remember getting there, sitting around, and my question was – how did I get here?" he said. "I realize I'm in a room surrounded by a bunch of wealthy, powerful, dangerous human beings. We all call each other family…. That was the most depressing moment of my life. I achieved success I never wanted and lost everything I actually ever wanted in the process."
The darkness of that moment pushed Assadi to consider his faith once more. This time, he was open for anything.
"I did rounds, man, if you had a spirituality of any kind, I was like, teach me, suck me in, show me this is real," he said.
Eventually, a men's group at a local church gave him new hope.
"It wasn't a sermon, it was just authentic men, with authentic hearts that asked authentic questions—that cared and authentically loved."
A VIRAL MESSAGE
When the conflict with Iran began weeks ago, Assadi's wife put out a Facebook post with their family's thoughts. It says in part:
"For over 40 days, we've already been at war. Not with weapons. With prayer. With fasting. With tears," the post reads. "We've sat with Iranians who are grieving. We've listened to stories of mothers who've buried their children. We've felt the ache of a nation that's lived under an Islamic regime for 47 years, a regime that's imprisoned, tortured, and killed its own people.
This isn't political for us. It's deeply personal."
The post has now been shared nearly 10,000 times, has thousands of comments, and more than 20,000 likes and reactions.
Assadi says it's given him a platform, even as one individual, to have an impact.
"I would say the Iranian community, for the most part, is very hopeful," he said. "These aren't warmongers. They're not excited for war. They're not excited for destruction. They're not excited for the loss of human life. Think the reason they're celebrating, you know, in Iran, even if it is quite literally blocks away from for the first missile struck Iran, you know, there's people dancing and singing in the streets… they felt dead for 47 years, and that was the first time they felt a glimpse of hope, of freedom," he said.
Assadi's new hope—Iran could become a beacon of peace for the world.
"If you look at Iran, it's almost the shape of a heart.," he said. "It's the heart of the middle east. It's been the brain and heart of the middle east. For 47 years, it's been pumping terror, death, destruction, wars, persecution, taking away women's rights. It has been pulsating a level of evil that the entire world has had to pay for. And there's a change happening. And I I'm not sitting here arguing, debating about how that change is happening, whether it's good, whether it's worked in the past or not. That's not my point. I'm just saying there's a change coming, coming, and if the heart of the Middle East can stop pumping terror and murder and it can start pumping the pulse of heaven, this isn't going to be a situation that only the Iranians are going to benefit from the global society will benefit from it."