Trapped In Iran

In 2009, Samieh Hezari made a terrible mistake. She flew from her adopted home of Ireland to her birthplace in Iran so her 14-month-old daughter, Rojha, could be introduced to the child's father. When the violent and unstable father refused to allow his daughter to leave and demanded that Samieh renew their relationship, a two-week holiday became a desperate five-year battle to get her daughter out of Iran. If Samieh could not do so before Rojha turned seven, the father could take sole custody—forever. The father's harassment and threats intensified, eventually resulting in an allegation of adultery that was punishable by stoning, but Samieh—a single mother trapped in a country she saw as restricting the freedom and future of her daughter—never gave up, gaining inspiration from other Iranian women facing similar situations. As both the trial for adultery and her daughter's seventh birthday loomed the Irish government was unable to help, leaving Samieh to attempt multiple illegal escapes in an unforgettable, epic journey to freedom. Trapped in Iran is the harrowing and emotionally gripping story of how a mother defied a man and a country to win freedom for her daughter.

Trapped in Iran is the astonishing real life-story of long time Fairview, NC resident, Saiid Rabiipour. Tracing his childhood in Tehran to a prestigious school at the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, SC and finally to a productive and happy life right here in the United States of America, Saiid was blessed with a beautiful family, friends and an abiding faith in God. However, Saiid encounters unexpected and dangerous challenges while visiting his Iranian family. Government authorities in Iran decide to detain him with endless roadblocks of hearings and demands of huge sums of money for his release. As weeks lengthen into months, despair and fear threaten-and yet, the powerful hand of God is at work. An incredible chain of events unfolds, leading to a midnight escape over the Turkish mountains on horseback. As you read this astonishing and interesting book you can't help but pause and think about thousands of other men and women who have been held there against their will while the Islamic Republic of Iran uses them to humiliate America at the expense of those innocent people. I was one of the fortunate ones who managed to escape, but many continue to be held and suffer against their will. This is my story . . .

Trapped in Iran is the astonishing real life-story of long time Fairview, NC resident, Saiid Rabiipour. Tracing his childhood in Tehran to a prestigious school at the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, SC and finally to a productive and happy life right here in the United States of America, Saiid was blessed with a beautiful family, friends and an abiding faith in God. However, Saiid encounters unexpected and dangerous challenges while visiting his Iranian family. Government authorities in Iran decide to detain him with endless roadblocks of hearings and demands of huge sums of money for his release. As weeks lengthen into months, despair and fear threaten-and yet, the powerful hand of God is at work. An incredible chain of events unfolds, leading to a midnight escape over the Turkish mountains on horseback. As you read this astonishing and interesting book you cant help but pause and think about thousands of other men and women who have been held there against their will while the Islamic Republic of Iran uses them to humiliate America at the expense of those innocent people. I was one of the fortunate ones who managed to escape, but many continue to be held and suffer against their will. This is my story . . .

"Our guide would show us the lights in the distance and tell us we were nearly there. But I knew it was a lie. Those lights were at least a few days away." Shabnam Ighani's happy and carefree life shattered after the revolution of the Islamic Republic in 1979, bringing discrimination for her Bahá'i faith and being a female, a marriage she felt trapped in, and a desire only to escape and build a better future for her family. Determined, Shabnam fled Iran with only what she could carry and her two young sons. Follow Shabnam on her harrowing and triumphant escape from Iran, and discover the 10 self-made rules she used to build a new future for her family, free to mix into society with the freedom to fight for a better future.

In the Summer of 2011, Amir Hekmati travels to Iran to visit his relatives for the first time. 3 weeks into the trip, and only a few days before his return home, he is abruptly detained by Iranian Intelligence operatives, and imprisoned. Amir's arrest coincides with the US arrest of Iranian National, Mansour Arbabsiar in NYC, the man convicted of attempting to blow up the Saudi Embassy in Washington D.C. Amir Hekmati, a former US Marine and Combat Veteran, is subjected to torture, sentenced to death by hanging, and ultimately endures close to 5 years in Evin Prison while negotiations for a prisoner swap are underway. Amir details his story of survival under the horrific conditions he endured. After a 18 month period of solitary confinement, Amir is sent to a maximum security prison where his cellmates are career Iranian operatives arrested for having worked for the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and British MI6. In exclusive, never before told details, Amir tells the stories of those imprisoned for having been on the front line of the covert war being waged between the USA, and Iran as told to him by career Iranian spies. Amir's story is also one of high stakes diplomacy at the highest levels of the US and Iranian Governments. President Obama, Secretary Kerry, US Military Generals, celebrities, politicians, and everyday Americans unite in a multi-year campaign to bring an American home. In Crossfire: Trapped in the US-Iran Covert War, Amir takes the reader through a journey of covert war, high-stakes diplomacy, and what it is like to be caught in the crossfire.

Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh knew they were putting their lives on the line. Islamic laws in Iran forbade them from sharing their Christian beliefs, but in three years, they’d covertly put New Testaments into the hands of twenty thousand of their countrymen and started two secret house churches. In 2009, they were finally arrested and held in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, a place where inmates are routinely tortured and executions are commonplace. In the face of ruthless interrogations, persecution, and a death sentence, Maryam and Marziyeh chose to take the radical—and dangerous—step of sharing their faith inside the very walls of the government stronghold that was meant to silence them. In Captive in Iran, two courageous Iranian women recount how God used their 259 days in Evin Prison to shine His light into one of the world’s darkest places, giving hope to those who had lost everything and showing love to those in despair.

The true story of Betty Mahmoody's escape from Iran with her daughter after her Iranian husband attempted to turn a two-week vacation into a permanent relocation and a life of subservience for Betty and her daughter.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire