From Foreigner to Influencer

Fourteen-year-old Ari Ahdieh knows that his grandfather, who grew up in Iran and immigrated to the United States at age 19, has had a very different life to his. But, he says, there's still a lot of prejudice in the world, and the time to act is now.  

Hussein Ahdieh has come a long way. When he was born in 1942, it was a difficult time for Bahá’ís in Iran like himself. Since the Báb declared himself to be the Promised Qa’im [“the one who rises” or “messiah”] in 1844, and Bahá’u’lláh succeeded Him in 1863, and thereafter Bahá’í’s had been persecuted by the Iranian government and abused by the general public. Growing up, Hussein had to struggle with those conditions.

Even as a child, he was very clever: At the young age of 16, he was given the responsibility of managing the estate his mother had inherited from his grandfather, Mirza Ahmad Vahidi. Although he managed the estate well, he saw greed, even among some of his own family members, when they tried to steal her share of inheritance for themselves. Having thus, as he writes in his book Foreigner: From an Iranian village to New York City, and the lights that led the way, “received a massive dose of the realities of the world,” (page 86) Hussein began to feel down and started smoking heavily. In 1961, when he was only 19, he made one of the biggest decisions of his life: He decided to leave his family and home, and move to America.

Shortly after his arrival at New York Harbor, he realized the cold hard truth about himself: He “was just a broke and struggling immigrant sleeping on a bench along Broadway (page 99).” He struggled to find jobs to pay for his tuition and rent while missing his family terribly. However, he felt that he could not go back to Iran, where he had watched his fellow Bahá’ís being ridiculed and abused simply for who they were. In fact, Hussein never did go back to Iran, for fear of what would happen to him or his family if he did.

Even though his initial life in the United States had been challenging, he found love when he married Tahereh. He also found purpose in his new job as the assistant headmaster of the Harlem Preparatory School in New York — a school designed to get high school dropouts into college. Besides that, he also became an officer of the Local Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of New York City, and helped to purchase a new Center for the New York Bahá’í community. He soon started a family and had a daughter and a son, my Aunt Linda, and my father, Bobby. He had survived being an immigrant in the US and become an important part of his community.

I learned a great deal from reading my grandfather’s book ​Foreigner​, including how lucky I am to be free to express myself, unlike many of my ancestors in Iran, who were put to death for doing so.

I have the opportunity to be whatever I want, without fear of being punished. From the time I was born, I was taught about the unity that mankind will eventually achieve, and I have learned more and more about that aspiration as I have got older. I have attended many gatherings of my local Bahá’í community, including feasts and devotionals. I was also part of a children’s class, as well as a junior youth group when I got older. I have attended (and continue to attend) Bahá’í schools at various times of the year. My favorite one is Green Acre in Maine, which I look forward to visiting every summer, just like my father did before me. All of these opportunities have been blessings, but sadly, the Bahá’ís of Iran have not been able to enjoy them for many years.

Besides an appreciation of the opportunity to simply be who I am, ​Foreigner ​also reminds me of the task that my generation and I have been charged to carry out. We must be the ones to bring about “the Golden Age of a long-divided, a long-afflicted humanity,” as Shoghi Effendi writes in ​The Promised Day is Come​. We have been given great opportunities to learn about our world and to reflect on how we can help to fix it. 

The time for action is now, and young people must be at the forefront of the world’s efforts in pursuit of unity and justice. To achieve this, we have to foster equality between the sexes, races and ethnicities. Although the world has evolved since the time my grandfather immigrated to the United States, far too much prejudice still exists in our society. To get past that, we must work together and teach the entire world what it means to be one family.
 

Find out about Foreigner: From an Iranian village to New York City, and the lights that led the way by Hussein Ahdieh