LOVE FROM AMERICA by Alex Paen...

LOVE FROM AMERICA by Alex Paen with James Brown (Roundtable Publishing: $17.95; 203 pp.)

“I look Iranian with my black curly hair. . . . Besides, I’m young and single,” Alex Paen said, trying yet again to convince his boss, KMPC’s news director, to send him to Iran to cover the hostage crisis in 1979. Much to Paen’s surprise, his boss said “yes” this time, and days later, Paen found himself in Iran’s Mehrabad Airport, albeit with the barrel of a pistol pressed against his neck. Savvy beyond his 26 years, Paen talked his way out of the airport (“a mine field that would blow up in my face if I made one false move”) and many subsequent crises, winning the respect of senior American reporters in Tehran when he convinced American Embassy captors to allow one hostage to record a message for his family and others to receive Christmas cards from America.

While wheeling-and-dealing, Paen fell in love with Mina, an Iranian translator who becomes a principal focus of this book. Spats between the two color many of these pages, for Mina initially is a devoted supporter of Khomeini: “Alex, the Americans tried to rescue the hostages and failed!” Mina cries enthusiastically; “fantastic!” “Oh yes,” Paen responds. “Fantastic news. Planes crashing, people dying. Fantastic!”

This is, unfortunately, as deep as the political discussions get in “Love From America.” Instead of portraying the feelings, convictions or ideologies of embassy captors, hostages or resistance leaders, Paen spends most of these pages recounting the more banal details of his daily life as a cub reporter in Tehran. More problematic, however, is Mina’s abrupt and mysterious disappearance from this book. Paen describes many intense, loving conversations in which he longs to get her out of the country so the two can “end up together,” but when she finally escapes, we hear no more about her; a brief postscript says she lived in France for two years before leaving for the United States, where she married a Muslim man. Their estrangement isn’t altogether surprising, though, for the two never seem as close as Paen portrays them to be: She is a revolutionary deeply concerned about her people; he, an adventurous reporter caught up in the excitement of the moment.