My story begins before I was born. Although I was born in America, the man who would be my father is a native of Iran. He was not well off by any means. In the winter he had to wrap cloth around his feet because he had no shoes. His dad fought for the Nazis in World War II after the British and Russians had invaded Iran. He abandoned his family and retreated to the mountains of the country where he fought with a resistance group. He left my grandmother alone with many children in a war torn country.

My dad to be had three brothers and three sisters. One brother died of pneumonia because Iran didn't have the drugs to save him. The second youngest sibling, my dad to be was high-spirited and rambunctious. He loved America and what it stood for. He often read books about the American old west and would sneak away to attend John Wayne movies.

When my father reached the age that he could attend college in 1965, the Shah sent him with a host of other Iranians his age to the United States to be educated as an engineer. He attended Truman State University in Kirkville, Missouri. The school was well known to Iranians because it hosted many Iranian students through the years. He worked in the school's cafeteria to pay for his tuition, room and board and his books and he befriended a man about his age who turned out to be the brother of the woman who would be my mother. The two developed a friendship and the friend soon introduced him to his sister. My dad and mom courted and were married. I was born in 1969.

In 1971, when I was no more than two years old, the Shah requested my dad to return to Iran. He wanted Iranians who had been educated in America to come back and help in the economic development of the country. So at a time when I was too young to really understand, my family packed up and left the rural life of Kirkville, Missouri and journeyed to Iran.

The Shah assigned my father to a steel plant in Silberan. The Russians had constructed the facility in the 1950s and people were needed to run it. We were there for about four years. Life was good. The Shah was a great ally of America and as a result there were a lot of Americans present from engineers to the military.

By 1975, my dad had an opportunity to take a job as an engineer for the American company DuPont. The Shah encouraged him and we returned to the United States and lived in South Carolina while my dad was trained by DuPont. Once the training was finished the company assigned him to return to Iran. The company had many facilities in the country employing a number of Iranians and people were needed to train them. So, once again we packed up and went back to the land of my father.

The Shah was still in power. But a change was in the offing. It was around 1978. It wasn't too long after we arrived that the street demonstrations against the Shah began. At first they were relatively peaceful. Soon, however, the Army was confronting the protesters with tanks and guns. And the protesters were hurtling molotov cocktails back at the troops. It really started to get ugly. I was about nine years old and this all came as a shock to me. I had never experienced a country's Army confronting hundreds, then thousands of protesters who had the goal of overthrowing the government. To say the least, it was unsettling for me and my whole family.

By the following year, 1979, the Shah was gone and a new state -- an Islamic Republic -- was in power led by an old cleric with a long gray beard -- the Allyatola Khomeni. Muslim fundamentalists took control and the country was forced to follow the ways of the Koran. Unless it was specific to the teachings of Mohammed and the Koran, it was not accepted.

Almost over night, my family and I were under suspicion. We were Americans, the enemy of the Revolution. Moreover, we were Baptists. Our religion was not favorably recognized by the ruling Mullahs. We were outcasts, blasphemists and enemies of the state. We were traitors, my mother was an American whore and my dad was a spy.

The intimidation started almost immediately. The Republican Guard came to our house, grabbed my father and took him away. We were sure he would be executed and then my mom, me and my baby sister would be next.

But we all got something of a break. While the Shah held power Americans were heavily relied upon to run the country. When the Shah was overthrown, the Americans left and the Mullahs didn't know how to run the plants that used to belong to the Americans. So they forced my dad and others like him to run things. My dad was set free and forced to help run the steel plant he had been working in when DuPont still controlled it.

Still, he was not trusted. A new organization called the Hezbollah was formed. They guarded the plants to keep the workers under control.

Things quickly changed for me too. When the Shah was in power, I attended an American school. All my friends were Americans and life was like it would have been in America. When Khomeni took over, everything changed. My friends and their families left Iran. The American schools were closed and I was forced to attend an Iranian school. I was only nine years old at the time. And I wasn't going to take crap from no one. I was an American and I was Christian, no matter what anybody said.

I was proud to be an American and a Christian. If my fellow students didn't know, I wasn't afraid to tell them. And the school's principal and teachers would let the students who were unaware know. It became clear to the students that they would not be punished for intimidating me. And they did every chance they got. And if they didn't, members of Hezbollah did. In the first months of the Khomeni Regime, the Hezbollah with their uniforms and guns appeared at school. Soon a branch of the Hezbollah called the Baseej was formed. It was like the Hitler youth and they recruited teenagers. The youth members of Baseej were given the responsibility of patrolling the schools, spread Islamic propaganda and beat up kids who did not follow. When there were problems that the Baseej could not handle, the Hezbollah were called in for more intimidation, more beatings and even to kill.

Every day, I was barraged with shouts of, "Death to America." I was beaten, kicked, and spat on. And the principal and teachers would see this, laugh and continue to smoke their cigarettes.

There were attempts to get me to ridicule America but I didn't take the bait. The school was surrounded by a massive wall. At the entrance there were three flags painted on to the concrete -- the American flag, the Russian flag, and the Iraqi flag. The students would stomp on each flag with glee. I would jump over the American flag and get beaten up by the students and lectured by the principal for my deviant action.

Imagine going through this every day from the time you are nine years old up through your teenage years. But they didn't break me. I didn't let them break me. I attracted hostility and provoked people. I had a GI hair cut and I wore Ray-Ban sunglasses. I stood out and refused to give in. I was ultimately expelled for my jumping over the American flag routine. It took my dad to talk the principal into letting me back into school.

Students were indoctrinated in the Muslim faith. But I wouldn't take the religious courses. Again, I could have been expelled. But my dad was able to make a deal. In order to get a grade in religion, something that was required, I was allowed to attend an Armenian school in Jolfa, Iran to take a course in Christianity. I would go to that school just for the religious course and then returned to my regular school.

A threat of being expelled from school was not to be taken lightly. By 1980, the Iran-Iraq War was raging. Expelled students of my age could simply be snatched from the streets and forced into the Army to fight. So my dad became very skilled in being able to convince the principal not to expel me.

After school was no better. Private citizens spied on us. We never knew who to trust. I only had two friends and it was my parents who arranged it because they knew their parents and trusted them.

This was my routine, if you can call it that. Then our worse fear, I WAS snatched from the streets and forced into the Army. I was sent to the front. The regular soldiers treated me okay. But the government didn't trust the Army and so there were Hezbollah around to keep us in line.

I fought in the war for three months. I saw a buddy of mine killed in front of me. His head was blown off. I suffered a nervous breakdown. There was an Army officer not associated with Hezbollah who liked me. He also liked America and had spent some time in Texas when the Shah was still in power. He sent me behind the lines to a hospital for two weeks and then I went home.

I was now AWOL and my dad told me to get out and hide. I fled to the mountains and lived with a nomad tribe called the Qashaai. They hated the Iranian government as much as I did and so I stayed with them for about one year. But, because I was AWOL from the Army, the Hezbollah were looking for me.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, my sister was one of thousands of survivors of Iraqi chemical warfare attacks. It caused her kidneys to fail and doctors gave her only weeks to live.

For my father, it was time to act. He arranged for my mother and sister to leave the country and return to the United States. He contacted the nomad tribe with whom I was living and arranged for my escape. He agreed to pay a total of $40,000 to people who would help me flee.

The Qashaai nomads hid me under the floor board of a car, packed blankets around me to try to keep me warm and drove me to a bus terminal where I met my dad. We traveled to a port city called Bantarabass in southern Iran on the Persian Gulf.

My father stayed, planning a later escape through Turkey and I was smuggled on to a small fiberglass boat and was transported at night during a massive storm across the Persian Gulf for one to two hours. Finally, we met up with a ship. I climbed aboard by clutching to and stepping up a rope ladder while I was plummeted by wind and rain and often knocked against the side of the ship. When I finally struggled on board, I was taken to the bowels of the ship where fish were stored and there I stayed shivering, covered with fish, forced to smell the odor of rotting fish while the ship traversed the Persian Gulf to DuBai. It was a three day trip during a storm and the ship almost sank.

When we finally reached DuBai, I was taken from the ship by people who my father had arranged to meet me. They rushed me to a car and drove me to the American consulate in DuBai. As they pushed me out of the car, one pointed toward a building and said, "Go there, it is the American Consulate." I looked at the building and saw the stars and stripes. What a beautiful sight that was for me.

As the car sped away I walked to the building entrance and was confronted by two American MPs -- one black and one white. I was smelling of fish, had fish blood on my clothes, was befuddled and the MPs, not knowing who I was, lowered their M-16 rifles and aimed them at me. I still had the presence of mind to tell them who I was and that I was expected. I was allowed into the building where I met the head of the Consulate. He took me into his office and he called my mother who was already in the States. "I got someone here who wants to talk to you," he said and he passed the phone to me. I couldn't believe it was my mom on the other end of the line. I didn't know until then that she and my sister escaped and returned to the U.S.

I stayed at the consulate for two weeks, then with a passport and airline tickets in hand I was taken to the airport and boarded a British Airways jet bound for Paris. After a four hour lay over in Paris, I flew to London, then to New York and finally on to St. Louis where my mom and grandfather met me. I was home.

The trauma of being trapped in Iran may have happened some 20 years or so ago but it lingers to today. My mom and dad are divorced now mainly because of our experience in Iran. He married an Iranian and now lives in Iran. Obviously, I have chosen not to associate with him. I blame him for what we all had to endure.

My sister, who was saved by a kidney transplant soon after returning to the United States, still suffers from the aftermath of the poison gas attack. Yet, she is married and works as a nurse for a doctor.

My mom still suffers with emotional problems. She has had two heart attacks and a nervous breakdown. She lives in severe depression, cries a lot and can hardly move.

I was married but due to the lasting effects of the trauma, soon divorced. My wife just couldn't deal with it.

I re-married a British woman and now have four kids.

The ordeal has poisoned my heart towards Iran. I understand that not all Iranians are to blame. I know that they the victims of tyranny and abuse too. Yet my ordeal has caused me to want to shun my heritage and not to associate myself with anyone from that part of the world. I thank God that I am back in my beloved America. And, although I know that it has been 20 years since my ordeal, I still look over my shoulder and eye all Iranians who I see in the streets with suspicion.

I take nothing for granted. I now take each day, one at a time.