The Female American Dream
It was 1979 when the Shah was exiled from Iran by those loyal to the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, ending the reign of the the last Persian monarch. For years leading up to and years thereafter, rebel troops worked to overthrow those loyal to the Shah and Westernization. What was once a Westernized epicenter in the Middle East and ally of the US, was now being destroyed and taken over by domestic terrorists.
At Aryamehr Institute of Technology, now Sharif University of Technology, a young woman was facing her own battles in a completely different revolution, taking her final exam as one of the few females to earn her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at what is considered the MIT of Iran.
After years of dedication in a field dominated by men, she was finally seated in her classroom one last time to complete her final exam and earn her computer science degree. It was late autumn of 1978.
As she was completing her final exam, loud noises from across the campus competed for her attention. It seemed that with each question of the exam she completed, the noise grew closer, as did the nervousness of the professor and other students in the room.
She was used to people trying to distract her in a field that people told her she had no business in. She was determined to finish the examine and the years of work dedicated to this moment. Imagine if you will, everything that went into the preparation, dedication, and work throughout her adolescence to be admitted to such an establishment as a female in the 1970s in Iran for Computer Science. And here she was, almost done. Loud noises weren’t going to deter her.
She kept her head down as the sounds grew closer and louder. This was not the first time rebels raided the campus to terrorize students and it would not be the last. However, this time the students in her room started to become viscerally afraid as the outside noises grew more demonic.
When the sounds grew too loud to ignore, she turned to see rebel soldiers had broken through the classroom door. Within seconds a baton struck her in the back of the head and brought her to her knees. They continued to beat her and the other students in the room to inches of their lives. But she was savvy and found a way to escape.
Who knows why the rebels did it, was it her assumed political views, her female gender, or punishment for embodying western fundamentals in this field at an elite university, or a combination of everything.
She fled the university and on that day, without knowing, said goodbye to Aryamehr Institute of Technology and the country she had loved for 22 years, Iran.
The United States granted her political asylum and in January 1979, she moved to a foreign land with no money, a remedial understanding of English, no family, or friends. And since she didn’t finish her exams, she also had no degree. A broke, non-English speaking, uneducated immigrant here on our land.
What now.
Well, this particular young woman woke up the next day, got dressed, walked out her front door, and started over. She worked part-time jobs, learned the language, and was accepted to Sam Houston State University. She enrolled in the same Computer Science classes and spent the next several years living déjà vu but this time in Huntsville, Texas.
Sam Houston was a good school, but this was no MIT nor the bustling metropolis of a large capital city, and it sure as heck didn’t hold the same pedigree. It is, however, most notable for being next to the most murderous prison in the country.
In addition to all of the other stereotypes she had to face growing up as a ambitious female in the middle east, she now had to deal with anti-middle-eastern sentiments, even though she was forced out of her birth country because of her love for western culture, freedom, and everything America stands for.
Here in the heart of the United States, she found many Americans didn’t reciprocate her love, often finding in its place disgust, racism, and a total misunderstanding of her Westernized Iranian heritage and struggle in the new world.
I cannot think of a more frustrating and contradictory struggle to put on a young lady.
But she didn’t let it deter her. She stuck to what she knew, what made her successful in the past, she ignored the negativity and racism surrounding her, kept a positive outlook, worked hard and passed all of her classes for the second time and finally earned her bachelor’s degree.
You won’t find any wikipedia article on this woman, but this woman who has been my inspiration since I was a little girl. This woman that I’m so honored to call my mother, Nahid Toubian Dull.
She was literally beat down to absolutely nothing and rose again.
She started over. She went back to school to complete her degree in a language foreign to her, she worked hard, she even got her MBA while raising two children, had a successful career, bought and sold many homes, and is happily retired. Today marks the 40th anniversary of that fall year in 1978 and just so happens to be her birthday as well. I love you, mom.
You are the American Dream.
Every person reading this today, your journey is yours to own.
We, as women, were giving the blessing of birth because of our unique internal strength. What we may lack in physical muscular makeup compared to our gender counterparts, we are given ten times over in mental fortitude. Our voices are powerful, our intuition unmatchable, and together we are unstoppable.
To conclude my mom’s story with the words of Maya Angelou:
