Hey, before we get started today, I got to read you a comment that came in from one of our listeners. She said, I realized listening today that it was shame that I've been feeling my whole life.
This broadcast just nailed it on the head. I've spent my whole life trying to find love and acceptance. And after hearing this show, it just made so much sense. God does love me. When Ann said the line, you're already loved, I cried. I said, that's for me.
I'm already loved. I'm telling you, it's when people are impacted like that, that that makes me cry because that's our hope that people will meet Jesus and be helped. I mean, that's why we do what we do. I think that's what all of us want. We want to make a difference. We want to leave a mark. And family life's all about leaving a mark and helping you leave a mark. And let me tell you, we have a goal, a financial goal in the month of August so that we can leave a mark and you can leave a mark.
And you won't believe this. The goal is $250,000. But we think we can do it. So we're asking, will you help us reach that goal? Yeah, jump in with us at any level.
FamilyLifeToday.com is where you can do that and become a partner. If you jump in with us, we can make a mark in your life and you and I can make a mark on all kinds of people for legacies and generations to come. And guess what? If you jump in with us in August, we're going to send you Brant Hansen's book, Unoffendable. And a pen, a Family Life limited edition pen, you know, make a mark.
That's what pens do. And you're going to use it to just carve up through Brant's book. It's a crazy great book. But let me just say this. We need you. We love you. We want to partner together. And when you and I, you and we partner together, we can change the world.
So let's jump in together today. How do you get out of a country that is overseen by a totalitarian theocracy? How do you escape? Do you bribe everybody? Do you just go to the airport? And you know, we did.
We went to an airport sort of in some ways knowing we were going to get flagged. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. I have never read a book quite like this. This was an exciting, exciting read. And we got the author in here. Listen to this.
Everything said is untrue, but it's a true story. Right. About our author sitting right here.
This is going to be super fun today. Yeah. Daniel Nerari is with us and here I'll read the opening. Well, Daniel, first of all, welcome to Family Life Today. Do you even know where you are right now?
Thank you. No, I've been scuttled from the airport into underground bunkers. That's what it's like.
I could be 50 miles from anywhere. I mean, you're like, yeah, you listen to Family Life Today every day, right? All the time. Tell our listeners that. Oh, I mean, I have the shirts.
I've got the mugs. I'm an an-head. They're a fan base. They're called an-heads, right? That's right.
Well, we don't know what everything said is untrue means. Do you know what Family Life Today means? Yeah. It's more straightforward.
More honest, I'd say. Yeah. Let me read to our listeners. No, here's how it starts. And I read this out loud to Ann.
Yeah, you did. When we got the book, I'm like, oh, listen to this. This grabs you. Our books never grab anybody, but yours, it says, all Persians are liars and lying is a sin.
That's what the kids in Mrs. Miller's class think, but I'm the only Persian they've ever met, so I don't know where they got that idea. I mean, that's the opening paragraph. You are a writer, dude. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Yeah. It's sort of playing with this idea. I mean, anytime you have a, you know, you're a writer.
You're playing with this idea. I mean, anytime you have a character who's trying to tell you this big story and some of it is really grand and has all kinds of what you'd call coincidences or miracles or whatever, he's sort of immediately trying to address the skepticism of somebody who's just not going to believe it. And so he says, all right, well, everybody thinks I'm a liar, but I don't know what to tell you. It's what happened.
Well, I mean, in some ways, as I've heard your story and reading it and then watching it on YouTube do interviews, they really did think you were lying about your story, right? Well, and as a kid, it totally makes sense, right? I mean, when you're, I mean, it opens with a young boy who's in the sixth grade standing up in front of his classroom and trying to explain what life was like back in Iran, right?
And this is your life memoir. Correct. Yeah.
Yeah. And so, and anytime I would say that, like, you know, admittedly, we were, we were fairly poor when we came to Oklahoma. I dressed in like Sam's Club sweats. And I thought it was cool if you do the matching top and bottom pajamas. I didn't know someone should have labeled it at Sam's Club pajamas, not for school. And then my social life would have wouldn't have taken such a hit. But so, you know, you have a kid standing there in like one color, Sam's sweats going. We used to have a house with a pool and an aviary in the middle where every wall was glass.
And you could look in and see the tropical birds. And my father's father had orchards and great land out in the outskirts of Isfahan. And Isfahan is an ancient city from the Silk Road where, you know, the great Arabian Nights tales happen. And then and you can imagine a kid's going like, yeah, sure. I think you saw that in a video game called Prince of Persia and for sure made that up.
You are. And I was the you know, the poor refugee kid. So I completely understand, you know, anyone's skepticism. And I think when you tell a story, especially when you tell a story with a kind of wistfulness that a kid does like, well, my father was there and my grandfather was there. And you don't I mean, every kid kind of says, you know, my dad can beat up your dad. But, you know, there's that kind of heroism that we see our fathers and grandfathers with.
And when that gets seeped into the story, all of a sudden he's a larger than life figure. And my dad memorizes poetry and he's a great dentist. Everyone is. Fahan agrees he's the greatest dentist there. And it's like, well, maybe he is.
I mean, he's a good dentist. I'm certain. But, you know, I was a doctor. That's right.
Yeah, she was. And so, you know, all those little fishtail exaggerations maybe are also a part of it. And I completely admit that that's what happens when a kid is trying to remember.
Remember, like a home that was at that time, you know, complete and whole. And that was that. So it all kind of comes together in that. And then, you know, fast forward to cafeteria and he's saying all this and the kids, the fastest response is like, yeah, OK. So we are all drawn to great stories.
Yeah. That's why, as Dave and I were reading it and looking at your book, we're like, man, our listeners are going to love this great story. Thank you. Of life change. And you're such a good storyteller.
You know, so this is really fun. Take us back. I mean, obviously, we're taking us back to that little boy in Oklahoma now, even pre-Oklahoma. Well, so the reason it starts there is because, as I said, when you're standing in front of a classroom and you're trying to express the fundamental question, which is, OK, so you're this little refugee from Iran. Why did you come here? The question is always why.
Right. And you say, well, we came here because we were refugees and we got asylum because a wonderful family in Edmond, Oklahoma sponsored us. And you say, OK, so then why were you refugees? And you say, well, we were refugees because my mother converted from Islam to Christianity. And that's a capital crime in Iran, which means if you're captured and found guilty of apostasy in the Islamic courts, then you'll be put to death. OK, well, why?
Why did you commit a capital crime? Right there. Aren't kids like I'm assuming that people, their jaws are kind of open and what? Right. But there's also a lot of questions, because just every noun I just said requires some explanation. Wait, Islamic courts?
It's like, well, yeah, it's a theocracy over there, which means there are both legal courts and theological courts and you can be found guilty of religious crimes. And so and so you're kind of explaining a lot. You find yourself in that position where you're telling the story and you say, OK, well, then why did she do that?
Well, that's a bigger question. Why did she, you know, you know, commit this crime? It's like, well, she'd been captured by the secret police and they you know, they told her that they wanted to know the names of all the people in the underground church where she was attending or they would kill her and her kids. So, well, why? OK, she joined the underground church because she had converted when we as a family had gone to the United Kingdom in order to attend a wedding.
It's like, well, why did you go to this? You know, OK, well, I have to back up a little bit. So my grandmother, who's my mother's mother, was exiled to the UK because, you know, she had divorced from her husband, which was my grandfather. And with her went her youngest daughter, which is my mom's youngest sister, my youngest aunt. She grows up. She wants to get married. Normal thing to do.
So we go to attend. And now my mother, who at that time was a very devout Muslim, she was a Quranic scholar. She was on the side of the you know, a lot of people think we came here because a lot of Persians came here after the revolution. And they were because they you know, there was an Islamic revolution in the 70s.
My mother was on the side of the revolution. She actually was very, very devout. As I was reading, you were talking about your family has links to Mohammed. That's right.
Yes. So there's a there's a theological concept in like Shia Islam, which is the idea of being from the bloodline of the Prophet Mohammed. And the term for that is Sayyid.
And so, yeah. So even even theologically, there was this very strong tie to Islam. My mom was a Sayyid, for example. And so when we go to the United Kingdom, you know, this is it's a Christian nation. They're going to get married in a church. They had converted to Christianity. And so my mother at first was very, you know, hostile to that notion.
And she was kind of, you know, a standoffish, I guess you'd say to with the with the church. And the idea is, OK, we're going to attend the wedding, but no, nothing more. Were you at the wedding? I was. There's a video of me as a young trying to convince my cousin to hold my aunt's the tail of her dress out, like taught so that I could run and jump on it as a trampoline. I thought I thought I was going to have one of the cartoonish, amazing bounces. And you can imagine I would have just yanked her back in the middle of a photo. I was so excited. And you can see my dad. One of his great fatherly moments, I think, was I am charging toward doing this. Yeah, I'm running.
And he intercepts me, picks me up, smiles, waves and moves on. And I was like, what would have happened if I accidentally I think I would have given her a neck injury. I don't even know what your entire family is there. My entire family is there.
I'm clearly just goofing around as a little guy. But but yeah, my father, my mother, my sister and I and we were there for a long time. It wasn't just for the wedding.
We were there for about six weeks, I think, in order to in order to help in order to just have a family reunion. You know, my mother's mother's there, her sister, all that stuff. And so so while we're there, you know, quite a few things happen.
And this is a category in the book. I sort of there are moments where you go, here's a moment where you don't have to believe in miracles. But then I'm just going to tell you a bunch of coincidental things that happen and we can just chalk it up to that if you like. But yeah, my there was a daycare center where, you know, we were as they were sort of helping with the wedding.
My sister was going to the daycare. And then there was a little boy there who, you know, who knows why little kids do anything. But he had sort of decided that he's going to trick her. He sort of says, hey, let me tell you something that he's kind of standing at the door jamb. And he says, you know, we stick your finger in this little door jamb.
And it's a fairly gullible thing to do. She does. It sticks her pinky in there and he slams the door and it severs the finger.
And it's just this horrible injury, this kind of thing that happens. How old is she? Well, so let's see. I was about six.
I'd be three at that time. My mother rushes to the hospital. Everything's fine. They sew it back on. It's just, you know, scary and traumatic.
Everything's fine. They sew her finger back on. That's the tip. Let's not get crazy here. I don't know how many times you've really been saved by the tip of your pinky.
I'm not sure. I mean, would it have happened if your mom wasn't a doctor? Did she put it in ice immediately? Yeah, she put it in ice immediately. And perhaps, I think everybody would probably think to put it in ice. Where else would you put it?
A pocket would be a terrible place for a pinky. She forever has lint in there. So we come back and it's the return that's important because my grandmother, her apartment, we were sort of staying there. And my sister goes, you know, they put her in my grandma's bed and just like, you know, she's kind of in that post, you know, traumatic lull. And she takes, you know, they're just going to have her take a nap.
And we were all in the living room. And, you know, not 30 minutes later, she comes back out and she's just sort of happy child, as the story goes. And everyone's kind of wondering what's happened is the, you know, the emotional elasticity of a child so good that she's bounced back already here. Or is she? And everyone's like, hey, you know, how are you doing? What's going on? And she sort of describes this moment that everybody still wonders about because she says, well, there was this man in my room.
And he was sitting at the corner of my bed and he said that everything's going to be OK and that I'm his now. And she just proceeds to describe him more. And one of the reasons this is sort of odd is, you know, of course, here in the States or anywhere in the West, we have a lot of just images of Jesus. We've seen these images and wherever on posters and people's living rooms. You know, we kind of have a sense of the iconographic Jesus, even on the crucifix. That's not how you're raised in Iran. The right Iran is not a Christian nation.
And those images aren't everywhere. And so for a little kid to make this description, it didn't feel as if it was coming from somewhere in her unconscious. It felt fairly authentic. And so my grandmother said, who was a Christian, said, you know, you're just that sounds exactly like Jesus. You know, that sounds. And she goes, OK, well, I'm a Christian now.
So famously, my sister is a very precocious, very smart, very stubborn. And so my mother has this sudden realization that we're about to go back to Muslim Iran, where there's a secret police, where the environment is that teachers would sometimes hold up pictures of whiskey bottles and ask if anybody recognized this, because, of course, alcohol is illegal in Iran. And if any child raised their hand because they had presumably seen that bottle at home, the secret police would raid their home by the afternoon.
So you're talking about a very intense totalitarian state. It's not the kind of place where a six year old can skip around and tell a story about her finger and Jesus. And and now she's thinking about being a Christian.
None of those are good moves. So I just have to go back to this moment because you shared that. Like, here she is. Your your sister has this traumatic event and she sees a man come in the room and your family assesses, oh, yeah, that's that's Jesus. Jesus has come in. Yeah, that's going around a lot in the Middle East.
Yeah. Our son was in Egypt and he ended up talking to a man that he was a taxi driver. And he said that Jesus appeared to him in the back seat of his of his taxi.
And Jesus talked to him. I'm hearing that more and more. Have you like I'm guessing that maybe isn't uncommon. Well, in the accounts of these things. Yeah.
I mean, I read them as well and it's kind of amazing. I haven't had it happen. So I'd be excited if that was that was in my future. But does your sister still recall? She was little. Yeah, sort of.
I think she has, you know, again, her relationship with it is a little bit different because and it really was like she was a child. Yeah. And it really was almost the the like inciting incident for all this.
But in and of itself, it was kind of this just remarkable afternoon. Right. But then what it really kicks off is this force that my mother now can't be standoffish with that church. She's not just going to attend. Now she's got to kind of attend to this. She's got to deal with it. And when she does. And by that, I mean, quite literally, she has to like read the Bible and say, OK, well, what is what is my grandmother doing?
What is what is happening? Yeah. And so when she reads it, one of the things she always describes is that a lucky factor in her life was that she had done all that reading of the Quran, because there are plenty of people who just are culturally what they are, whether that be Muslim or Christian or whatever they are. That's just the world they're in. That's the culture.
They don't know exactly what the specifics are of their faith. And so sometimes you can have these moments where you'll tell someone, especially a Muslim, you can tell them about Christ and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a good teacher. Yeah. We venerate him, too. Yeah.
And you go, right. I understand that. But there's a difference that makes a difference here. And for her, that was a very, very clear difference as she was reading that Bible. And so she converted during that time, specifically because as she's reading it, she's making that comparison and contrasting it and saying, this is you know, this is the truth.
I'm seeing it. And so we returned to Iran at that point from that wedding. And as I said, that was the inciting incident because now we're back and she's, you know, meeting up with a missionary.
They're helping. You know, this is a big deal. Yes. She knew how big a deal it was in Iran.
Right. She did. Although my mom, you know, I tell people like she's she's about as tall as a like a house plant. Like she's a very, very small woman. But also I've seen her like outwork, like college students like she. One time we were all moving me somewhere and all my college buddies, tough, big guys, you know, by by lunchtime.
They're sitting around that pizza exhausted. My mom is still just going back and forth like she's she's a toughie. That would be her. Yeah. And she's smart. She's a physician. Yeah.
So even though she knew she knew about that danger, but one episode I always talk about is because she was also so zealous and like completely unafraid in what might be, from the world's perspective, considered a reckless way. She just like put a cross up hanging from her rear view mirror. Come on. Which is nuts. It's a nuts thing to do. And we were she was at the market one day and there was someone someone scrawled on something, you know, and put on her car. If I ever see this cross again, I'll kill you. You know, it was like some just this kind of really aggressive thing to see the kind of thing that, you know, most people would sort of take take it down. Like it's not worth it.
Just go to the market, get your eggs and come back. And she she did take it down and she put up a bigger one. This says everything we need to know about your mom. Right.
Yeah. And I was like, I would never do that. Like I'm like four times her size.
I would still just kind of, you know, caution might might prevail. But that's not what she was up to. She was you know, she was going to job interviews as a doctor for this like this hospital and like witnessing to the interviewer, which is, again, in a city that is kind of being run by the secret police, which have the most ominous name in the world. They're called the committee, the committee committee.
Yeah, the committee. And if you get brought before the committee, you there is no desk between interviewing space. So it's just such a terrifying panopticon. Like everybody is telling on everybody. If you if you're throwing out beer bottles in the trash, the neighbor ladies might all of a sudden see it.
And almost again, that night you might get rated like this. It's such a tight and fear controlled environment. And for her to kind of do those fearless things always has always been a really what is your dad's drinking? Oh, he thinks she's gone crazy.
Yeah. He's a he's a Sufi. So he's a type of Muslim. Sufi is for those Sufi is the sort of the mystical tradition of Islam. They're like hippie Muslims.
It's the best way to describe it. Rumi, the famous poet, was was a Sufi. There's a great emphasis and incredible poetry. And and I think a really beautiful tradition of sort of reveling in the the majesty of the Lord and also kind of a very strong tradition of fear of the Lord. So a lot of interesting philosophers and writers have come out of the Sufi tradition. But but my dad is what you might call kind of a, you know, light on all this stuff and very much a pragmatist, not a religious man.
And so, I mean, he has every single time I've ever spoken to him on the phone, said religion has ruined my life. Really, your mother didn't need to do any of this. And to jump to that moment, she you know, one day she's in that market again. And some unmarked men in, you know, not in uniform, pull up in a van and throw her in and the committee showed up committee. And they took her to a safe house and started to interrogate her and told her, of course, that what I said, which is that we want the names of the underground church and we'll kill you and your kids. And they basically just kicked her out of the safe house for her to walk home. And people always ask, like, well, why didn't they keep her in custody? And I go back to this is a city that's on lockdown at all times. Like, they know where she lives.
They know where she is. And was the underground church at that time growing? It was. Yes. So Isfahan is a city that is a fascinating place because there's a city within a city kind of like Vatican in Rome.
There is a city called Julfa in Isfahan and Julfa is traditionally an Armenian cultural city space. They've always been allowed because they've been there for so many years and they're traditionally Christian and they've been there for so many years that they're kind of, you know, they're allowed. They're part of the you know, there's obviously a tax.
There's obviously like social separation in those in those ways. And if any of them are ever discovered proselytizing, like they have wonderful bakeries there. And if for some reason some Muslim is like buying some cookies and then going, hey, you want to tell me about your faith?
Like, nope, that is not kind of the kind of conversation we can have. And if you do have it, you're going to prison. Right. So but what that meant was there were, you know, in a country that's ninety six percent Muslim, you know, the other four percent is not Christian. I think it's point seven percent Christian.
Last I checked. So a very, very small percentage Christian. There was still a population of them in the city where my mother was. And there was a missionary who was, you know, supported out of church in New York City who was there.
They were just sort of beginning an underground movement. And so when that happened that day where my mother kind of is given that ultimatum and that threat, I enter the scene when my dad picks me up from kindergarten and we come home and my mother is, you know, this is a loaded term. But accurate for the moment, like she is absolutely hysterical. Like she is doesn't know what to put in a suitcase and doesn't know what to where to go. It doesn't even know how it's going to happen.
And so there begins another series of miracles that I'll sort of leave for the book. But effectively, it's it's a lot of logistics. It's a lot of like, how do you get out of a country that is overseen by a totalitarian theocracy? How do you how do you escape? Do you bribe everybody?
Do you just go to the airport? And, you know, we did. We went to an airport sort of in some ways knowing we were going to get flagged. And eventually, you know, that was this moment where we sort of I realized as a young child that, like, oh, my my father has no real interest in this situation. He's leaving. Yeah, he's staying and we're leaving. And so I didn't even understand divorce at that point. I thought I thought my dad was like going to come later when he sold our house or something.
And let me ask you, we've got like a minute left. Oh, goodness. As a little boy, were you scared?
Yeah, I used to sleep under my bed for a long time because I thought that would trick the people who ran into my room. So your mom's fear and some of the things that of getting you guys out, you felt it as a child. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's an adventurous quality of seeing new places and things like that. But fundamentally, yeah, I had always assumed there were in a kid's mind, it's like the bad men are after me. Right. It's that sort of thing.
So I was very keen on trying to get strong, get good at self-defense, you know, hide, hide properly and well. So, yeah, that was that would be a part of the childhood. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to David Wilson with Daniel Nieri on Family Life Today.
Yeah, you can obviously be captivated by a story like Daniel's, but if you want to learn more, if you want to read more about what actually happened with him, you can read his book, Everything Sad Is Untrue, A True Story. You can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com or finding a link in the show notes. Or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy. Again, the number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Isn't it amazing how God works in families?
It's just so incredible. The stories that get told about how God works by bringing people into the context of families in order to see life change happen. And that's what we really believe in here at Family Life. We are dedicated to reaching families and making every home a godly home. And if that's something that you resonate with or you've been impacted by family life today, I just really encourage you to partner with us. Jump in, link arms with us, and become a financial supporter. Our goal in the month of August this year is to raise $250,000 in new funds by the end of the month.
And we'd love it if you would be part of the solution with us. And when you do, when you make a donation of any amount, we're going to send you a limited edition Family Life pen along with a copy of Brant Hansen's Unoffendable. It's just a small way to say thank you so much for partnering with us and making the ministry of family life possible. Again, you can head online to familylifetoday.com to make your donation, or you can give us a call at 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. Now tomorrow, Daniel Nayeri is back to talk about his journey from Iran to Oklahoma, as God used it to highlight his faith, build resilience in him, and discover that really there can be kindness in strangers. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
