'Doctoora' tends to refugees

Potent swirls of incense smoke and festive bowls of pistachios do little to mask the sadness that hangs over the lives of 10 Iraqi refugees in a three-bedroom apartment in Coon Rapids.

Four generations of the family live together — from the octogenarian grandmother with traditional tattoos on her hands and not a word of English to the little boys fighting over video games without a trace of an Arabic accent. In between is the father who weeps for his slain brother, the mother who sees ghosts, and three beautiful young women suspended between custom and curiosity.

All these lives are broken, stunted by torture and bombs and exile. They know something is wrong with them physically or emotionally, something that may not be fixed by the Shiite cleric who appears on their TV screen every day to offer inspirational verses from the Quran. The war in Iraq — which makes them worry for relatives there and feel guilty because they are safe here — only highlights their emptiness.

The doctoora is Dr. Pari Beyzavi, an Iranian-born therapist who has become a sort of all-purpose healer to more than 100 Iraqi refugees in Minnesota. Members of the Coon Rapids family vie for her attention, trying to impress her with a few words in Farsi, presenting her with Iraqi delicacies, promising to follow her treatment plans. Beyzavi returns their kisses and the Islamic blessings they bestow. She has become equal parts therapist, social worker and friend.

On a home visit this month, the grandmother clasped Beyzavi's hands and told her how much she wants to return to Iraq to see the son she left there nearly 14 years ago. "Please," the woman begged in Arabic as tears rolled down her cheeks, "pray for me to see my son before I die."

Beyzavi pulled the woman close and whispered in her ear three times, "Insha'Allah (God willing)."

Other family members looked uncomfortable and finally one of them confided in hushed tones that the woman's son was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime several years ago and that no one in the family could bear to break the news. Beyzavi was quiet.

In the mid-1970s, Beyzavi was an ambitious young woman who had worked hard to attain a governmental post in Tehran, the Iranian capital. She earned a master's degree in rehabilitative counseling and supervised about 4,000 teachers who worked with deaf and mentally disabled children across the country. She and her husband, an architect and artist, enjoyed a comfortable life.

Beyzavi, 48, first came to Minnesota in 1974 as a Fulbright scholar assigned to teach special education in Twin Cities schools. She lived with a host family for four months and returned to Iran with fresh ideas and renewed enthusiasm to improve her country's special education services.

Her work, however, was interrupted by the 1979 Islamic revolution in which the Shah of Iran's secular despotism was replaced with the Ayatollah Khomeini's clerical autocracy. Beyzavi's female colleagues were fired; her position was spared because the new regime could not find a male counterpart to head the program. She returned to work in hijab, the Islamic dress that became mandatory after the revolution.

She continued to teach and to gather materials from universities in Europe and North America — a practice that raised the suspicions of those in power.

"They said it was spying, even though it was just educational materials," Beyzavi said. "I didn't want special education to collapse."

By this time, the Iran-Iraq war was raging and Beyzavi slept in her daytime clothes because she wanted to be ready to run when the bombs fell too close. Increasingly worried for her family's safety, she started looking for doctoral programs outside Iran. A phone call from a sympathetic friend inside the regime forced her into a decision.

"He called me and said: 'Your life is in danger. If you are lucky, you'll be jailed for 10 years. Otherwise, you'll be executed,' " Beyzavi recalled.

With a single suitcase, her husband and their 2-year-old son, Kamyar, Beyzavi fled on a path familiar to many of the Iraqis who now seek her counseling. The family went first to Brazil, then to the United States. Beyzavi was granted political asylum and decided to live in Minnesota — partly because she was familiar with the state and partly at the urging of her college adviser, Robert Bruininks, now president of the University of Minnesota.

Those first months in an efficiency apartment in Minneapolis were rough, Beyzavi said. She took a job at a day care center and her husband couldn't find work — a humiliating experience for a man who had enjoyed success in Iran. Eventually, the couple divorced and Beyzavi obtained her doctorate in educational psychology. She now lives in Plymouth with a new husband and her son, who is in college.

Those first unsteady months in Minnesota, however, are recalled when she listens to Iraqi women in the same situation.

"For four years, I experienced everything my clients are now crying to me about," she said. "They are like I was. These women are under pressure, they have dreams they could never follow."

Beyzavi's first Iraqi client was a young woman who was referred to her by Hennepin County in 1997. The next day, Beyzavi said, another Iraqi called, then another and another. Iraqis are now a major part of her clientele, which also includes Hmong, Afghan, Iranian and Middle Eastern refugees and torture victims.

Beyzavi still works in special education as coordinator for a life skills program at Southwest High School in Minneapolis. Her afternoons and weekends are packed with therapy sessions, which she conducts either at her office at the Well Family Clinic in St. Paul or at the homes of women still too scared to venture out in public. A man who can't open his heart to her without chain-smoking receives his counseling in a smoker's lounge at the clinic. In Ramadan, Islam's holiest month, Beyzavi's clients unpack plastic bags of home-cooked food and break their fast in the middle of therapy.

Her roster includes people who still have bullets lodged in their heads, a man who lost his foot to torture, and women and men with scars hidden under shirts and pants. The psychological effects of their pasts, she said, are even worse. The war has impeded their healing, rekindling fears and undoing Beyzavi's lessons of trust and security.

The woman was 9 during the 1991 Shiite uprising in southern Iraq that was crushed by Saddam. The woman remembers hiding with her uncle, who peeked through a door and was shot in the head. The war has made the memory of her uncle collapsing in front of her more vivid.

"Since the war started, she's had more flashbacks, more nightmares," Beyzavi said. "She tells me she hears war noises."

Beyzavi's job would be unbearable were it not for the small successes — women who learn to drive and proudly show the doctoora their cars; men who invite her to visit their newly opened shops. But most Iraqi refugees in Minnesota are still struggling, navigating their way through cultural minefields with a handful of English words.

She said the Coon Rapids clients are a good example of how such crisis can unravel a family. The bombing in Iraq brings turmoil for the parents, whose despair quickly turns to anger when they realize their children — who were young when the family fled — don't share their feelings.

"It is my hope and prayer that they can get rid of Saddam and have democracy in Iraq, so these people have a choice, an option, to stay here or go back," Beyzavi said.

I have sympathy for refugees having worked as a volunteer with them for years. However, this spin on this article is that the WAR going on right now is THE BIGGEST problem they have....

flashbacks, nightmares, the longer it goes on...blah!blah!!

I am far MORE CONCERNED for OUR soldier's families at this time.

I woould have preferred that this article make MORE mention of:

WHO EXACTLY AND WHICH REGIMES DID ALL THAT TORTURE AND TERROR and caused these folks to have to flee Iraq and Iran.

Perhaps then, we could have seen YET another reason to fight saddam.

Life as a refugee is no bed of roses... I know that full well. Compared to what they suffered in their home countries, life here is walk in a rose garden.

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