A FAMILY IS TORN APART AND REUNITES FOLLOWING
THE FALL OF THE IRANIAN MONARCHY
AT NASSERI is sitting in an office
at the family’s Wilmington Oriental
rug gallery. Her husband, Fred, is in
the spacious showroom, surrounded
by hundreds of Persian carpets. Her
P
son-in-law, Tim, is in the adjacent office. Her daugh-ter
Shahrzad, who, Fred says, really runs the place, is
somewhere in the back.
The family business is successful. Pat’s son Shawn
is a few miles down the road, running his dive opera-tion
and shop, the biggest in town. She has been
blessed. Life is good.
But in an instant, the present fades. She is trans-ported
back in time.
Her eyes mist over. She looks out the window, but
she doesn’t see the traffic whizzing by on Oleander
Drive.
She is no longer an expert in rug restoration and
repair, successful businesswoman, and family matri-arch
with a comfortable home and lifestyle in North
Carolina.
She is Parvaneh, a refugee of the Iranian
Revolution living in a modest ranch house in
Fayetteville, Arkansas. A single mother struggling to
raise her three children — single because her hus-band,
Fereydoun, once an Iranian government official,
is imprisoned in Iran. Or worse, has been executed.
A fine woven rug and a collection of Oriental carpets from
Fred and Pat Nasseri’s Wilmington store. The rug was
woven in the northwest of Iran from a French painting
called “Escape.” Depicted are two lovers escaping from
their family to get married. Pat and Fred Nasseri in 1972
going to the palace for the birthday of Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, the Shahanshah of Iran.
Cutline here.
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