My Grandfather - Rabbi Dr. Soleyman Dayan z"l

Googled my grandfather for the first time last night since he passed away about 7/8 years ago (and amazingly my cousin zvi thought to do the same the night before, some sort of parapsychological communication i guess) and found this article. He was a good man I feel.
טוב שם משמן טוב.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE3DB1131F93AA35754C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

For Emigres, A New Land Of Sorrows
By DONATELLA LORCH
Published: July 9, 1991


Yahya Azizi, an Iranian Jew, finally joined his wife and children in America in November 1988, sick and exhausted after three months of torture in one of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's prisons.
Ten days later, on a cold night, two men in jeans and sneakers knocked loudly at the door of the Azizis' apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. They were Secret Service agents, they said, and they wanted to talk to Mr. Azizi's 21-year-old son, Michael.

The next few minutes were all shouting, fighting and confusion. And when it was over, Mr. Azizi, his wife, Ketayaf, his daughter, Mitra, and Michael Azizi were handcuffed and placed under arrest. Mr. Azizi had made it out of Iran, but his family's newest sorrow was only beginning.
There is a simple reason why a routine call about a check-theft charge ended so badly for the Azizis: both agents were injured in the melee, and even Michael does not deny that he struck them. To the Azizis and their friends and supporters among New York's Iranian Jews, though, the story is far more tangled and far harder to understand: an extreme case of the trials of strangers in a strange land. Fear Molded by Persecution

More than anything, they say, the fight was a matter of self-defense. They could not believe that such casually dressed men were actually Federal agents. A mother was protecting her son. The son was protecting his mother. Captives of their misunderstanding and fear -- fear molded by years of religious persecution in Iran -- they did not know what was happening to them.
"I couldn't understand," Mr. Azizi said. "I was worried that it was happening just like in Iran. They just take you. No questions."

Now, two and a half years later, after a trial and an appeal, Michael Azizi is serving a 24-month sentence in a medium-security Federal prison in Danbury, Conn., for assaulting Federal officers. Miss Azizi and her parents were acquitted of similar charges. Charges of check theft or fraud were dropped by the United States Attorney's office. The Azizis are bewildered and lost. They say they have lost face and self-respect in their new country. And for a time, they have lost their only son. He was the reason the Azizis came to America, they say, and, as the only one in the family who could speak English, their guide to the new world.

In prison, Michael Azizi, who constantly worries about his family, has lost weight and says he fears for himself and for his family's survival. Mr. Azizi, 55, and Mrs. Azizi, 45, speak only stumbling English and shuttle between their jewelry store in Jackson Heights and their home in Forest Hills.

"I can't believe this happened to us," said Michael's 25-year-old sister, Mitra, who keeps a Persian-English dictionary under the store counter to help translate for her parents and herself. "It was just like a movie. A dream. Now when we see a policeman, even one with a uniform, my parents' face, it turns white."

Small and frail, Mrs. Azizi, speaking in Persian, interrupted her daughter. "We came just for Michael, for his happiness," she said. "He wanted to study to be a doctor." Fled From Iran in 1986

Michael (Merhdad) Azizi fled Iran in 1986 by horse and camel to Pakistan. Like many other Iranian Jews, he was escaping anti-Semitic decrees under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime that did not allow Jews to attend a university and that subjected them to summary arrests. He also fled the country to avoid being drafted into the army as many Iranians are. Once in New York, he enrolled in Queens Community College and worked as a busboy in a restaurant at night, Mitra Azizi said.

Mitra Azizi, his mother and his then 10-year-old sister, Sharhzad, joined him in early 1988, settling first in a tiny apartment in Rego Park then moving to Forest Hills.
In March 1988, Yahya Azizi also tried to flee Iran. He was not as lucky. The Iranian police caught him as he was about to cross the border into Pakistan. They stole family jewelry and stamp collections -- the little wealth he could carry with him to help start a new life in the United States -- and threw him in jail.

"They blindfolded him and they put him on a rack and they shot blank bullets at him," Mitra Azizi said. "They took a thick cable and hit him on his hands and back."
He was freed after three months and made his way to New York by December.
The Secret Service agents went to the Azizi home on Dec. 12. They were investigating charges that Michael Azizi had cashed two Social Security checks totaling $700 that belonged to another Iranian, but had never sent the other Iranian the money. Confused by the agents' attire, Mr. Azizi asked his son to call 911 so that they could confirm that the men were in fact law-enforcement officers.

Mr. Azizi said he asked his son to block the door. The family said a fight broke out, Mrs. Azizi grabbed an agent's gun, then Michael jumped on the agent who had begun hitting his mother. Among other injuries, Michael Azizi broke an agent's nose. The other agent needed stitches inside his mouth. In 911 recordings presented during the trial, Sharhzad and neighbors screamed for help.

"It was intentional and deliberate," Jonathan Polkes, the assistant United States Attorney at the trial, said of Michael Azizi's aggression. "This is how life happens."
In a recent telephone interview from prison, Michael Azizi said he had done nothing wrong.
"I see him choking my mother to death," he said. "The fight happened, but I've never been sorry."

Within the 15,000 Iranian Jews in New York City, many say they believe that the fight was the culmination of a series of cultural misunderstandings. Dr. Soleyman Dayan, a rabbi and the president of the Rabbinical Sephardic Community in Queens, did not know the family in 1988. Yet he put up the $50,000 bail and said he signed a statement that said he would go to jail in Michael Azizi's place if the youth disappeared.
"Where are they going to run away to?" Rabbi Dayan asked. "Iran? Without Michael the family is lost. He was the doer. The father is destroyed. He never knew what was going on. He thought it was all a joke."

In the cramped family store, named Mike's Jewelry at 37-67 Street off Roosevelt Avenue, it is as if life has stopped. The Azizi family seems to live on automatic pilot. Customers say Mrs. Azizi often breaks down and cries. Mr. Azizi, his face etched with lines of a man 10 years his elder, rarely speaks.

Michael Azizi opened the store for his family in 1989 before he went to jail. The day before it opened, the previous store was burglarized for $100,000 worth of jewelry. The family had no insurance, Mitra Azizi said. To pay debts they keep the store open seven days a week. Before he turned himself in, Michael Azizi taught his sister Mitra how to do basic repair work, where to order jewlry and how to balance the accounts. Miss Azizi still has trouble with English and at times does not understand her bills.

Jackson Heights is mostly a Hispanic neighborhood, and Miss Azizi has learned to bargain in Spanish. As in shops in Iran, the Azizis offer their customers candy and black-sugared tea served in a glass.
Mitra Azizi plans to marry in August and dreams that her brother might make the wedding. She will not live with her husband in Washington but stay and run the store until her brother is released.

Michael Azizi calls home every day and Mrs. Azizi cries. His day is spent washing floors, mowing lawns and avoiding his fellow inmates whom he describes as a "rough group."
"I didn't come to America to kill somebody," he said. "All my dreams were always to come to America. I feel scared. But the U.S. is my last stop. I still believe in this country."
While Miss Azizi is angry at the system that punished her brother, her parents are resigned. Mr. Azizi, like his son, still loves the country he came to.

"When you say 'America' in Iran, you think freedom," the father said. "I came here so that Michael could have his freedom, his education. I had everything I needed there. But my life is here now and I like America."