iOS app Android app More  Melody Moezzi   Suffocating in Iran
Posted: 10/12/11 07:34 PM ET  I left Iran early last time. Not
because I wanted to, but because I couldn't breathe. It was mid-
December 1999, and the air was heavy with a thick black smog. My
father and I, visiting from Ohio, weren't used to it. On the
streets, those with surgical masks wore them to block the
pollution while the rest just used their headscarves, hands or
shirts. Everyone's greatest hope was rain -- the thought being
that the rain would somehow magically "wash away" the pollution,
as opposed to simply spread it onto our gardens, rivers, lakes
and playgrounds.  But it didn't rain, and wimps that we were, my
father and I left Tehran early, with my grandmother in tow. It
would be the last time she saw her homeland, before coming to
America and ultimately succumbing to Alzheimer's eight years
later, thousands of miles from home. So too, that was the last
time I stepped foot in my ancestral homeland, not knowing that
my increasingly pub