HIGH LIFE: A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Children of 2 Cultures : Iranian Students Who Fled Homeland Have Special Insight Into Revolution

High school social studies teachers talk about wars, conflicts and revolutions all the time. They relate stories about such trouble spots as Iran, Lebanon and Vietnam. But can students born and raised in peace in the United States fully comprehend what actually occurred and, in some cases, is still happening in such countries?

Probably not. But some of their peers can.

These are the students for whom war has been a firsthand experience.

These are the immigrant students who have left their homeland and are now adapting to life in America.

At Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo there is a small population of Iranian students whose immediate families fled their country during the revolution of 1979.

Seniors Azita Karimkhany, Sue Sepehri, Nima Talebi, Babak Rahimi and Ali Sadri left behind lives of luxury--nannies, chauffeurs and expensive private schools--only to arrive in America with little money and no relatives.

“My parents thought we’d be gone from 15 days to a month . . . it’s been 10 years,” said Karimkhany, 17. “It was really bad (when we first arrived). None of us spoke English, and since we thought we weren’t going to stay for long, we only brought $10,000.”

Said 17-year-old Sepehri: “We lost everything. We had to come here and start new. We had a good life in Iran; there weren’t any problems for us (before the revolution).”

Talebi, 17, who left in 1981, remembers Iran before the revolution as “a lot like Europe--a nice country. People dressed nice. The middle class was doing well.”

Said Karimkhany: “I wasn’t deprived of anything. I didn’t see the poverty, I (only) saw the goodness in Iran.”

The Karimkhany family fled Iran because Karimkhany’s mother had close ties to the Shah’s family. Many who were in any way connected with the Shah were either executed or imprisoned during or after the revolution.

Sepehri’s father, Hossein (now Michael), was the deputy minister of agriculture under the Shah.

“I remember my sister and I, since we were the youngest children of the people who worked under the Shah, were chosen to give flowers to (the Shah) whenever he returned from trips,” Sepehri said. “We went to his kid’s birthday parties.”

Rahimi’s last days in Iran in 1987 were filled with images of war, fear and the death of his father.

“My father was a general for the Shah and when Khomeini took power, we did not leave,” said Rahimi, 16. “My father loved his country too much. He wanted to stay and help, so he started leading a revolt against Khomeini from the hills of northern Iran. Soon, the revolutionary soldiers found out and came to our house to arrest him, but he escaped.

“After 2 years, my father was really involved in leading the revolt, and at 2 one morning, the soldiers came to our house again and arrested him. He told me, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back.’ But I didn’t see him again.”

For 5 years, Rahimi remained in Tehran with his sister and mother in hopes of being reunited as a family, but he never heard from his father.

The next year, with the help of their grandmother, they migrated to Germany, where they stayed a few months before coming to the United States.

It was Rahimi’s grandmother, with whom the family now lives in Mission Viejo, who told him of his father’s death. “She told me they had killed him,” he said.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Rahimi experienced the horror of nightly raid alerts and bombings.

“It is scary because you don’t know where the next one is going to be dropped,” he said. “It’s hard when you’re 11 (to have to go through that). I think of it, and I want to throw up.”

Sadri remembers his last days in Iran as confusing and frightening ones.

“Everywhere you looked there was the military,” he said. “I had no idea what was going on. The last couple of weeks (in 1979 before his family left) there was chaos. We saw sandbag fortifications all over the place with soldiers behind them holding M-16 rifles. I thought that they were going to be fighting pretty soon.”

His instincts were correct because soon after his family left, the Shah was overthrown.

“I remember watching television in France (the country in which they first sought refuge) and seeing troops (Khomeini’s forces) actually invading the military base where we lived,” said Sadri, whose father, a military doctor, was Queen Farah’s physician and delivered the last princess. “I saw these soldiers actually running on top of our roof on our house. I recognized my house!”

But in recent years the students have settled into life in their new country.

“I love the United States,” Talebi said. “I want to become an American citizen; I consider myself an American. I have American values. I was really too young to care about Iran.”

Said Sadri: “My roots are Iranian. I’ll never forget (where I was born), but I’ve lived here for 10 years. Essentially, I’ll always be an Iranian living in the United States.”

But the 17-year-old doesn’t see this as a problem. “I’m just kind of adding to the melting pot,” he said. “(Being from Iran) hasn’t really gotten in my way.”

Karimkhany admits to an identity crisis.

“I don’t consider myself either Iranian or American,” she said. “It’s really confusing. If I become an American citizen, I feel like I would be betraying my parents and my country.

“For the field I want to study, I have to become a U.S. citizen,” said the aspiring American ambassador to Iran. “I am more grateful than happy to live in this country. I really feel that the more culture (I am exposed to), the better person I’ll be.

“But our two cultures are contrasting. The teen-ager in America seems aggressive and assertive. In Iran, we are passive, and you respect your elders.”

Karimkhany said she has not completely adjusted to life in America.

“It’s still difficult. For example, none of my friends have curfews, and I have a very strict one (11 p.m.). I don’t think I will (come to terms with the adjustment) until I’m independent. Right now, I’ve kind of developed my own culture, which is a little mixture between the two.”

Rahimi, who arrived in the United States a year ago, said he is still having trouble understanding the new culture and living in a foreign country.

“America is a great country, but it’s not my country. I miss my country. I love Iran. I love my people. Trying to be an American, acting cool (is very difficult). Like talking about surfing . . . I don’t even surf.”

Sepehri said his adjustment was made easier because “a lot of Americans were really understanding, really kind and down-to-earth. They looked at us as people and not just Iranian people. They made us feel at home.”

But the teen-agers felt little of this kindness toward the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom they remember with resentment and bitterness for turning their worlds upside down.

Sepehri expressed anger at the killing of “a lot of innocent people that didn’t need to be killed.”

The death of his father and many of his friends hurts Rahimi, who said: “I hate Khomeini. He killed my father. My best friend was killed by an Iraqi bomb.”

Added Karimkhany: “The one thing I resent the most is that one of my cousins died in the war.”

Sadri recalled his impressions as a 7-year-old. “I saw myself as living a happy life and then this guy with a long beard comes along, overthrows the Shah and kicks us out of our country,” he said. “Now I realize that the Shah wasn’t paying too much attention to the religious factions and favored the upper classes. The lower classes’ needs were not being addressed.”

The Iranian-born teen-agers believe that their futures lie in the United States. All said they would like to attend college in California and only want to return to Iran for visits.

“If I went back to Iran,” says Rahimi, “I would not have a future. I can’t go to college (in Iran) because my father worked for the Shah. I’d like to become an engineer and go to college here.”

Sadri hopes to become a doctor and would “love to go into the Peace Corps. . . . Helping people out is one thing that makes me happy.”