The Iranian Man Who Forever Changed the Lives of Obama and His College Friend

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Years before President Barack Obama dealt with the Iranian Nuclear Deal, he had an encounter with an Iranian man in the university library that prompted his closest college friend, Marcus, to drop out of college and Obama to change his views about racial justice forever. Here is how Obama recalls the inspirational incident in his best-selling memoir, Dreams From My Father:

"And Marcus? I wasn’t sure what had happened to Marcus. He should have had one more year left, but something had gotten to him midway through his junior year [in university], something that I recognized, even if I couldn’t quite name it. I thought back to one evening, sitting with him in the library, before he'd decided to drop out of school. An Iranian student, an older balding man with a glass eye, was sitting across the table from us, and he had noticed Marcus reading a book on the economics of slavery. Although the drift of his eye gave the Iranian a menacing look, he was a friendly and curious man, and eventually he leaned over the table and asked Marcus a question about the book.

"Tell me, please," the man said. "How do you think such a thing as slavery was permitted to last for so many years?"

"White people don't see us as human beings," Marcus said. "Simple as that. Most of 'em still don’t."

"Yes, I see. But what I mean to ask is, why didn't black people fight?"

"They did fight. Nat Turner, Denmark Vescey-"

"Slave rebellions," the Iranian interrupted. "Yes, I have read something about them. These were very brave men. But they were so few, you see. Had I been a slave, watching these people do what they did to my wife, my children … well, I would have preferred death. This is what I don’t understand-why so many men did not fight at all. Until death, you see?"

I looked at Marcus, waiting for him to answer. But he remained silent, his face not angry as much as withdrawn, eyes fastened to a spot on the table. His lack of response confused me, but after a pause I took up the attack, asking the Iranian if he knew the names of the untold thousands who had leaped into shark-infested waters before their prison ships had ever reached American ports; asking if, once the ships had landed, he would have still preferred death had he known that revolt might only visit more suffering on women and children. Was the collaboration of some slaves any different than the silence of some Iranians who stood by and did nothing as Savak thugs murdered and tortured opponents of the Shah? How could we judge other men until we had stood in their shoes?

This last remark seemed to catch the man off guard, and Marcus finally rejoined the conversation, repeating one of Malcolm X's old saws about the difference between house Negroes and field Negroes. But he spoke as if he weren’t convinced of his own words, and after a few minutes he abruptly stood up and walked toward the door.

We never did talk about that conversation, Marcus and I. Maybe it didn’t explain anything; there were more than enough reasons for someone like Marcus to feel restless in a place like Occidental. I know that in the months that followed, I began to notice changes in him, as if he were haunted by specters that had seeped through the cracks of our safe, sunny world. Initially, he became more demonstrative in his racial pride: He took to wearing African prints to class and started lobbying the administration for an all-black dormitory. Later, he grew uncommunicative. He began to skip classes, hitting the reefer more heavily. He let his beard grow out, let his hair work its way into dreadlocks.

Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett (left) with Obama

Obama was influenced by Iranian culture in other ways too. One of Obama's closest friends and advisers, Valerie Jarrett, was born in Shiraz, Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty, to American parents who ran a hospital for children in Shiraz. When she was five years old, the family moved to London for a year, later moving to Chicago in 1963.

Obama was also indirectly influenced by Iranian culture. His role model, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was a student of peace activist Bayard Rustin who in turn was inspired by Gandhi and Thoreau who developed their non-violent ideals partly from the teachings of Iranian Sufis and Persian poets like Saadi.

The pages of Henry David Thoreau's books are filled with the richest tributes to the wisdom of Persian literature. In Walden, for example, Thoreau expresses his appreciation for Saadi's greatness: "I read in the Gulistan, Flower Garden, of Sheikh Sadi of Shiraz, that they asked a wise man, saying: Of the many celebrated trees which the H. M. Arif Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call non azad (free), excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied: Each has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuous of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azad, or religious independents ... Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Baghdad after the race of caliphs is extinct, if they hand has plenty of, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like cypress."

Henry David Thoreau

Elsewhere, Thoreau writes: "I can find no essential difference between Sa’di and myself. He is not Persian — he is not ancient — he is not strange to me. By the identity of his thoughts with mine he still survives … If Sadi were to come back to claim a personal identity with the historical Sa’di he would find there were too many of us — he could not get a skin that would contain us all.... By living the life of a man is made common property. By sympathy with Sadi I have embowelled him. In his thoughts I have a sample of him a slice from his core."

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