The young Ahdieh from Nayriz married Tahirih Missaghi from Shiraz in a simple ceremony in their friend’s apartment in New York City. He had a car so they considered him rich. Being a poor student, Ahdieh could not afford much in the way of wedding trappings—serving turkey and cookies to the few guests.
Her father sent them the gift of a rug from Iran. Ahdieh asked his friend to bring his station wagon to go pick it up at the airport. He dreamed of this big beautiful rug coming from his home country which would give distinction to their small studio apartment. When he went to the counter at the airport, the attendant placed a small rug on the counter.
It was a personal prayer rug for our daily use as prayer was a true foundation and source of sustenance for a marriage.
All around the young Iranian couple, the new young American generation of the late 60s was challenging many of the social norms.
At the university, Ahdieh listened to a guest speaker rail against the government. He was astonished that hear this as such speech would not be allowed in the country he’d grown up in. Left-leaning Iranian students pressured him into joining one of their political groups but, being a Baha’i, he wanted to avoid partisan politics.
Universities were exciting places in those days. The Vietnam conflict had become a full-blown war after years of gradual military build-up. The public mood about Vietnam was souring as Americans saw the horrors of war in living color on their televisions every night.
The new generation was increasingly vocal about its antipathy to a war many young people had to come to see as immoral. A new sense of idealism was spreading among younger people who were earnestly seeking justice and answers. They had a great spiritual openness.
Ahdieh worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Black Americans in restaurant kitchens and got a glimpse into their lives and struggles. As a foreigner struggling in this new society, he felt a sense of kinship with the difficulties of his black coworkers who, like him, were often viewed with suspicion and were more likely to be mistreated than white persons.
The Civil Rights Movement also appealed to young Iranians who hoped to create a more open society in Iran. I joined a group of Iranian friends driving to the March on Washington in 1963. We had no money for a motel, so we slept in the car because we wanted to be a part of this exciting moment in history.
The quest for social justice and the teachings of the Baha’i Faith on racial equality attracted young people. Many of them became Baha’is in those days.
This American civil rights movement had started during the more conservative late 1950s when bus boycotts and sit-ins, led by the charismatic and inspiring figure of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others challenged the decades-long Jim Crow laws.
With his powerful persona out front, and a growing public awareness and acceptance among white people of the reality of racial injustice, the movement made substantial inroads resulting in the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.