For Bay Area Man, Holiday in Iran Became a Nightmare

It began as a simple homecoming, a chance for Mehdi Zakerin to show his wife and children the Iranian town he left behind for a new life in the United States 25 years ago.

The Bay Area family was nearing the end of a six-week tour through Iran last week when they made one last stop in Zakerin’s hometown. The visit would become a harrowing brush with disaster: The town was Bam, where at least 30,000 were killed in a magnitude 6.5 earthquake that flattened the ancient settlement Friday.

Among the dead were eight of Zakerin’s relatives. But Zakerin, a 54-year-old real estate broker, his wife and two children were spared, perhaps because they took shelter under a door frame.

On Wednesday, as the Zakerins headed back to their home in Alamo, about 20 miles east of Oakland, the scope of the tragedy they had witnessed was still sinking in. Mostly they were expressing gratitude -- and a little wonder -- that they had managed to survive.

“I’ve had several ups and downs in my life,” Zakerin said in Tehran, where the family was on a stopover. “But this was something different.... I got a second chance.”

It was Zakerin’s second trip back to Bam since he left in 1978 as the Iranian revolution was building. Joining him were his wife, Mai, an engineer, their daughter Soraya, 8, and son Bijan, 6. The trip began with a two-week stay in Bam to see Zakerin’s siblings. Then the family spent a few weeks on the road, touring ancient sites, before visiting kin in Kerman, about 120 miles northwest of Bam.

When the children asked to return to Bam a day early to visit their relatives again, Zakerin and his wife agreed. They headed to the town the day before the earthquake hit. They stayed in his brother’s house, a single-story home of beams and bricks.

Zakerin recalled feeling the ground shudder once, hours before the quake, a tremor that others have also reported. He was on the telephone at the time, planning a going-away party, and thought nothing of it.

The full earthquake hit hours later, shortly after 5 a.m., as the family slept -- the couple on a bed, the children on a pad on the floor next to them. Zakerin moved quickly to shelter the children. “I just rolled over on top of them,” he said. His wife “grabbed one, and I grabbed one.”

Recalling earthquake survival tips, the couple huddled under a metal door frame. “The rest of the house was shaking, shaking, shaking,” Zakerin said. “Everything was falling down.”

His brother and sister-in-law, who were awake for the Muslim morning prayer, raced out of the house. The Zakerins, still in their pajamas, made their way out too, running barefoot over broken glass.

Though the house was damaged, it stood. But virtually all of the neighboring homes were reduced to rubble. Zakerin helped a neighbor pull two women and a man from the ruins of one home. The man later died.

The losses would hit even closer: The city’s fatalities included Zakerin’s sister and seven other loved ones. He spent much of the weekend burying them, even helping dig a grave.

Mai Zakerin said she had been apprehensive before visiting Iran, but mostly out of concern for how she would be treated as an American and a woman. Earthquakes were not on the list.

Her husband said he hoped to return to Bam someday, and might try to find a way to help rebuild the date-growing city. For now, it would be enough to shed the shock of what his family just experienced.

“Every night I can’t sleep,” he said. “Every night at 4:30, I’m thinking about something shaking. I just wanted to get out.”