Over the Edge: A Thriller

By J. D. Knauer

Iran's tyranny grips two escaped refugees: one who saves lives and one a cold-blooded killer, with the destiny of both in one woman's hands.

Dr. David Badalian, a Christian anesthesiologist left Iran owing them for military service, so looking over his shou

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jukebox Publishing
• Release date: Sep 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781087986302

Book preview

"Even the best amongst us,

when pushed over the edge,

belong to tribes."

- Tarek Fatah, Canadian Muslim Congress leader, to BBC Radio News, July 2006,

remarking on the arrests of six Muslim men on suspicion of planning to bomb the

parliament and decapitate Canada’s Prime Minister.

1

Qiyam-Dasht District, Tehran, Iran

August 1979

Hani Zafar slipped out his bedroom window so he could track his mother to the shuttered bazaar. His only companions: darkness and a hot breeze heavy with raw sewage stench.

Hani darted among sinister shadows in the familiar alley and snaked his way between buildings.. The hardened soles of his bare feet made no sound. Still Sanji’s scrawny mongrels sensed him. They barked and howled, warned the neighborhood someone caroused. 

After sunset prayers Hani’s father ordered Farah, Hani’s mother, to deliver a note to a man who waited at the bazaar. Now, across the street in the dark unpatrolled market, Farah stopped. She stood under a sliver of moonlight, maybe six meters from Hani.

Farah took great risk coming to this dangerous place alone at night. Hani reasoned that his mother needed his protection while he counted on Allah to watch his back. Hani also depended on Allah to keep this little nighttime adventure between the two of them, unless his mother fell victim to attack. He hoped that was unlikely, but these restless days who knew.

Over on Pahlavi Street he heard the ever-present traffic hum. The chirps from night insects stilled as he passed. He wished for more moonlight so he could watch out for the nocturnal camel spider. But shit, if he did spot one it would already have bitten him and he’d be dying.

Hani dashed across an alley. He hugged the crumbling outer wall of a store. His shirt open, the rough clay was warm against his bare chest. Pungent odors leaked from the tobacco shop’s battened windows. Hot wind whipped around the corner and he squinted against gritty dust.

He wiped sweat from his face onto his shirtsleeve and stared hard into the night to see if his mother had moved. She had not. Tiny whirlwinds blew market trash around her dark figure in the black abaya. Farah’s favorite purple niqab shrouded her face.

A man abruptly stepped out of the shadows and walked toward her.

She bowed her head to look at the man's feet and held the paper out to him. The note disappeared inside his shirt. He turned and the night swallowed him.

Hani’s heart raced. He lost sight of her. He stuck his head out further from the building’s corner, his eyes strained into the darkness. There. She had moved and pressed against a storefront, hiding under its corrugated tin awning. His father’s instructions were for her to stay until the man returned with a responsive note. The good wife obeyed her husband...but then she had no choice.

His heart swelled for his mother. She exuded strength behind her natural beauty that he wished she would use and be tougher against his father’s cruelty. A vulnerable woman should never have been sent on this mission.

Almost fifteen, Hani understood if men saw her as she dressed within their home, without the extraneous covers that screened her face and figure, they would desire her, which meant she committed grave sin. Hani felt it his duty to look out for her.

He held his breath. The man reappeared. Without looking up at him, Farah snatched the man’s note and turned to leave.

Hani cried out as long fingers clamped onto his shoulder and dug jagged fingernails into tender nerves and muscle. Hani’s assailant held tight against the teen’s instinct to run.

Do you seek trouble, young man? The accusation blasted like a sonic boom, an explosion in the night’s stillness.

Hani raised his eyes to the sneer on the holy man’s lips. His grotesque features repulsed Hani. He twisted and spat, but the big man held firm. The mullah’s long beard smelled like old garbage. Hani pressed his free arm against his nose and refused to answer this stinky goat.

Then they heard her.

Hani? Hani?

The giant’s grip loosened. Hani squirmed free.

The mullah now blared allegations toward the woman who stood frozen, alone, and afraid for her child and scared to death for herself.

The mullah’s shouted as he approached her. Where is your husband? Your brothers? Answer me. Only a whore meets men in the night.

Farah saw Hani free himself and she ran. The long abaya wrapped around her legs, slowed her escape. She glanced back as the old man took swift lengthy strides to stay in her wake. Mullah Al-Irani knew the Zafar family. He would go straight to their home.

Hani took a shortcut.

Even in the dark he could fly over Baranyi’s fence and Magra’s trash heap. He jumped the slender sewage stream that ran down the middle of the alley. He used the empty oil drum to reach the high window from which he left. Back in his bedroom he fought to catch his breath. He heard his mother slam the front door to their first-floor apartment.

Hani walked into the kitchen. He used his shirttail to wipe away stinging sweat. The upstairs neighbors would hear the mullah bang on their door, his shouts to be allowed inside.

As his father opened the door, the mullah rushed in and pointed at Farah.

You disrespect Allah’s word? You shame your husband to meet alone with a man…in the darkness of night?

She did not speak but stared at the floor. Hani moved up beside her.

You saw her. Mullah Al-Irani’s eyes bore into Hani’s wide stare. You hid and watched your mother commit adultery.

Hani shook his head.

Are you calling me a liar? Look at him. He pants and sweats like a sick dog. Look under his shirt at his shoulder. My marks are on him.

Hani’s father grabbed his arm and yanked the open shirt down off his shoulders. The mullah’s ragged fingernails had broken Hani’s skin, left four evenly spaced bruises. Farah gasped. She took Hani by the wrist and pulled him toward the sink where she grabbed a bar of soap.

I knew nothing of my wife’s wandering into the night. Hani’s father turned on his wife with fury. Woman, do you cheat on me while I sit reading the glorious Qur’an?

His father lied with vulgar conceit to save his own skin. To speak truth meant he would have to reveal the secret business that brewed in their neighborhood, business that boys Hani’s age weren’t supposed to know.

But he and his buddies did know.

A revolt smoldered in their District. His father and men of their Shari'a tribe bargained with Frenchmen to buy guns and ammunition. When the time came, they would be prepared to hammer the Shah’s forces. But this…his father used his wife to carry his secrets so he would not be caught. 

She is a whore. His father stepped up to Farah and slapped her cheek. He turned to Mullah Al-Irani for approval. He did not see the fear in her eyes as she left the room. Hani’s stomach turned sour.

Late in the night his mother sat on the side of his bed. She held him and swayed back and forth with him, her baby, rather than a teen. Her grip tightened around his shoulders, causing pain where the mullah clawed him. She kissed Hani’s face repeatedly and told him how much she loved her only child. She reminded him that his Persian name meant happy. She pleaded with Hani to always live happy as he felt the soft patter of her tears drop onto his head.

This morning men came, and his father led her out of their home.

The black burka covered her from head to toe, her beautiful eyes hidden from view. Men held her arms and led her down the gray dirt alley that wound to a rocky gorge at its end, just two blocks from their home. Hani thought she looked tiny.

The rising sun burned through his dark hair as he followed them. He had no power to stop this, or choice but to stay and watch.

The six men who formed a wide circle around his mother were all a family friend or neighbor. Today their faces belonged to demented monsters. Each man took his turn cursing Farah for unfaithfulness to her husband and to Allah. Their dark hairy fists bulged around large stones stained maroon with old blood.

Hani shouted at them, She did nothing wrong.

An unexpected solid shove from his father felt like he’d been hit by a truck. The force flung him backwards where he slammed hard on his tailbone against a ragged boulder. Crushing pain jolted through his backside and rode like a lightning strike up into his skull. His tailbone felt trapped in a fierce fire. Certain he heard bone crack, he rolled onto his side.

Hani reached back and felt the wet sticky blood. His father grabbed Hani’s arm and pulled him off the ground, only to throw a backhand across Hani’s face. This time Hani caught the fall with his hands on the sharp, gouging rocks. His left cheek throbbed under his eye.

Tormenting venom bristled in the air as the men simultaneously let loose the first stones. Hani turned away and covered his ears. But nothing could keep out the hard whap that made him jump as each rock struck his mother. His stomach erupted. Hot sour bile splashed onto his bare feet.

Beside him, his father picked up a rock and threw with rage. The sight turned to slow motion as Hani watched, helpless. Another rock left his father’s hand and slammed into the back of his mother’s neck. Farah crumpled to the ground. Stones flew at her and bounced off her head. A growing mound formed over her. Agony twisted Hani’s face in undisguised anguish.

His father grabbed his arm. Hani did not recognize the dark nothingness in those eyes. He looked down at the rock his father thrust into his hands.

You will stone the whore.

No. I will not.

I order you in Allah’s name.

"Order all you want. She did what you told her to do."

His father’s right fist struck Hani’s head. The blow knocked him sideways and left him stunned and dizzy, but he did not fall.

Do you defy Allah, you son of a whore?

Hani opened his fist and let the rock roll off his fingers.

Damn you to hell, Hani Zafar. I said take this rock and hit her. The other men stopped and watched. His teeth clacked as his father shook him. Another, larger stone was thrust into Hani’s hand.

His mother lay there, not moving. He felt certain she had stopped breathing. For long seconds watching her, so did he.

Hit her! Throw it! Now! His father yelled.

Disgrace would fall on his father if he did not throw the stone. But worse, Hani would feel forty lashes for disobeying. His mother had not moved. Hani threw the rock. It hit her shoulder and rolled away.

She never made a sound, no cry for mercy, no plea in her own defense. But any words she may have spoken would not have changed the outcome.

Today seven men… and Hani Zafar… stoned his mother to death.

Leaning across the grave on his bare knees, he patted the crumbled dirt and small stones on top his mother’s resting place. He wiped the back of his hand across his nose and looked over at his two uncles, her brothers. They too had tears streaming down their cheeks.

He knew no prayer for this moment or for one that could put to rest his lethal anger. Hani did not wonder what killing his father might feel like. He made his decision over his mother’s grave and felt a sense of calm certainty.

These tears were his last.

Three months later, November 4…

Guttural cries for death to the Satan United States roared from the mob. They pushed and flailed their way into the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran. In the streets, the normal stench of factory exhaust and foul sewers was joined by the odor of fear. Gunshots stuttered in the clamor, but bullets were fired overhead to strike terror rather than a purposeful target. While many in the rebellion made sure cameras saw them, others turned their faces away, uncertain which tribe would win this current battle.

Hani rode scrunched in the back of a pickup among a dozen men from his father’s tribe. Like the others, he was armed. Two more trucks from his neighborhood were deposited two blocks from the compound where a large crowd gathered. Hani felt the cool, still air on his cheeks as he walked a few paces behind his father and the girl who slept in Farah’s place. Rioting students took the lead.

Within sight of the Embassy, Hani stopped and called to his father. The elder Zafar turned. Hani raised the Famas G2 commando rifle with the magazine that held thirty rounds.

He put light pressure on the trigger. He did not hear the percussion nor sense the recoil. He experienced only wonder as three rapid rounds turned his father’s head into a crimson pinwheel. Another bullet hit the girl’s throat. Blood gushed from her neck. Her pretty head fell to her left shoulder.

Hani’s revenge took mere seconds. Not long enough. His father deserved slow agonizing pain. Disappointment cramped Hani’s stomach.

Hani Zafar took a deep breath then ran into the mutinous crowd and stopped being.

2

Frankfurt, Germany

August 2010

She watched the Delta jet make a right turn out on the tarmac. Misery crept up beside Ava Sevani, unsettling company. She swallowed the sensation of sudden loss and hurried toward an exit of Flughafen Frankfurt am Main. In minutes, David would be high above the clouds on his way to the United States. Her breaths quickened, matching her pace…and the mounting fear.

Everything felt surreal. From her father’s phone call last night that scared the crap out of her, to withholding that secret from David through their intimate night and this morning. She should have passed along the distressing message and to hell with her father’s warning not to. But she could never ruin David’s dream or burden him with worry.

Pride and relief wrapped around her thoughts of David. He would be safe.

She rushed down filthy littered concrete steps to the lower level where she parked her Peugeot two hours earlier. The clack of her heels was magnified into a loud creepy echo off the walls in the massive dank structure. A chill swept through her. A woman alone had no place in an unpatrolled parking garage. Ava glanced at her watch. 12:20 p.m. Fear wouldn’t have entered her mind in the first place if not for Michael’s ominous warning.

Last night she caught the relapse in his urgent tone to his Persian accent. She wondered if the almighty Dr. Michael Sevani realized his voice quivered as he welcomed her into his nightmare.

 I’ve made some very bad alliances with terrible people. I believed they paid well for my expertise so they could do good with it. I do not have time to explain. Bear with me, Ava. I must sound vague. This line… I am sure you remember the businessman who lectured in Berlin on environmental concerns two years ago? He and I appeared together at the International Consortium. He showed a special interest in you and your hospital. I don’t want to say his name.

Good because she did not want to hear his name. Michael Sevani waited until she whispered, I remember. Her heart pounded.

All right then. He took a loud breath. I’m his houseguest. I do not know for how long. No one is to know. Understand? No one, especially David. My host is protecting me from very powerful, very evil people.

The phone in her hand shook against her ear. How in the world did you―

I-I am being watched…followed. They want…they want…my recent work. I cannot say more. Our friend will take care of it. Ava, we are working together to help our country while our people fight. But…our friend said you, too, are now in danger. That is why I have called. He said you must get out of Germany as soon as possible.

"What?"

These awful people will get to you and use you. But our friend…he is away and cannot speak with you right now. He wants to help you. He has arranged for someone to contact you tomorrow at the hospital. They will have a fake passport, money, and a plane ticket for you. Go with them, Ava. Come to Canada now, but stay away from my Hamilton home. People watch it. Come to our friend’s estate where we can guarantee your safety. Michael Sevani lowered his voice. I truly am sorry I have put you in such danger, Ava. I love you, dear child.

The phone went dead.

Ava collapsed onto the tan leather recliner. She stopped breathing. She had never before heard the words I love you from her father, and they had to come in a sketchy threat on her life?

David walked into the room at that moment. She pushed the cellphone down alongside the chair cushion.

Beads of moisture from his shower clung to taupe skin and rippled muscles. Mischief played in his hazel eyes. With a towel wrapped like a turban over his wavy wet hair, he swaggered into the room in his favorite comedic role of dashing Arabian Knight…naked.

But this was no Arabian fairy tale.

She couldn’t even force a smile. David picked up on that and immediately sobered.

Sweetheart. You’re pale as a ghost. Are you sick again? I’ll get an icepack and some saltines.

She didn’t stop him. If he believed morning sickness could also occur at night, she saw no reason to confirm or deny.

They had been engaged six months. They talked about having children someday, but with them both in their late thirties, the sensibility of starting a family left her conflicted. Saying it out loud, telling David she had a baby in her belly, eased the trepidation only slightly. The dry heaves began five days ago.

Since their engagement, secrets between them just did not exist. But no way in hell would Ava dampen David’s excitement with an obscure story from her estranged father. Even a scary one. David was on the eve of achieving his dream. A Chicago hospital offered him a medical training position. If Michael Sevani had entrenched himself in a predicament that somehow involved helping our country…our people, then he stood on his own by damn.

Iran.

Iranian students took to the streets several months ago to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the uprising between pro-reform activists and the loyalist Basig. David’s frustrated anger unnerved her as he watched it unfold through amateur online footage.

From the day of June 12th and the sham presidential election last year, David sat long hours visiting online blogs that filtered illegally out of Iran. His concern was justified. Two cousins and their families lived there and were among the rebels.

Did you hear what that bastard said? David shouted. He said those countries who don’t like the way the election turned out, he’ll slam their heads against the ceiling. Whole countries? What a shithead.

Ava told him these events were in God’s hands and his worry would do nothing but heighten his blood pressure.

Now her own blood pressure soared since her father’s emotional forewarning. Maybe she had been wrong. Heated events roiling in Iran were not just in God’s hands. Michael Sevani, the biochemist, and Dirk Brown, President and CEO of Epic Inline, Incorporated, were mixed up in some dangerous scheme to aid Iranian dissidents. She knew of nothing godly about that.

Thank goodness David’s visa to the United States was at last appended onto his passport. He was fulfilling his dream. He would be too busy for Iranian politics.

More importantly, David could not know of her father’s warning concern for her safety, even once she learned exactly what Michael Sevani had done to put himself…and her…in danger.

Inside Frankfurt airport’s parking garage, nausea crept up on her. She hurried along the row of cars to the green Peugeot. It wasn’t lost on her that this was tomorrow.

She took the day off and had no reason to go to the hospital despite her father’s instruction. Someone may be there waiting for her. Someone sent by Dirk Brown. She refused to be caught up in her father’s troubles especially if Dirk was involved, even though that ominous warning pressed on her chest. What the hell was going on?

The theme from ER played from the hollows of her purse on the passenger seat. She rummaged blindly until she felt the cellphone. With her thumb, she flipped it open and had it to her ear in one motion.

Guten tag. She was surprised how her voice trembled.

Dr. Sevani. Thank goodness I reached you. I’m sorry to call on your day off, but about half an hour ago a young boy was rushed in here with serious trauma to one leg. It was Janice, head of the pediatric nursing staff.

Isn’t Dr. Lester on duty? Ava frowned, stuck her key in the ignition.

The boy’s parents insist you treat him. They said you saved his life last year when he had pneumonia. His leg is pretty bad, doctor.

Her heart rate picked up. Even abstractly discussing a patient’s condition went against regulations. But the state of Janice’s nerves was clear in her voice.

All right, Ava told her. I’m just leaving Flughafen Frankfurt. Is the boy stabilized?

We are working on that. We will be waiting for you. Thank you, doctor. 

Now she had no options. A patient needed her. Ava had to get to the hospital. She hoped no one would waylay her with some sort of foolish escape-to-Canada plan. The mere thought teetered on the edge of ridiculous drama.

The self-possessed Dr. Michael Sevani’s paranoid imagination could be going berserk. If his story was all a charade, she would kill him. His phoned wolf-cry made it impossible for her to share David’s excitement over finally realizing his dream.

Ava rested her forehead on the hard steering wheel and took deep breaths. The car was empty. Without David her world felt empty. She could still smell him, their sex from this morning. With the back of a finger, she brushed away a burning tear. Her earlier sense of loss now mixed up with those of abandonment, anger, resentment and disgust.

The abandonment was with David. She knew that was not fair. She felt selfish envy because his life in the United States was materializing without her. But only temporarily. Right? 

Anger, resentment and disgust roiled inside solely because of her father. He had crossed over the security wall she built with her on one side and Michael Sevani on the other. She resented his intrusion into the passionate, frenetic life she had with David Badalian. She was disgusted and royally pissed that her father was in coercion with―had dragged out of the muck of her past―Dirk Brown.

To help herself she would not miss David so much and definitely not think about her father. She would help this little boy whose parents trusted her.

Once at the hospital, she would make a conscious effort not to expect someone to approach her and hand her a fake passport, money and a plane ticket. The imagined scenario was absurd…except for the tone in her father’s voice. She sniffed and backed the Peugeot out of the parking space.

She glanced into the rearview mirror and gasped. A red Citroën jetted straight out from its slot five cars back. Tires squealed as the car turned toward the exit. Right behind her. The two men inside seemed very intent on the tail end of her Peugeot.

Of course her father’s call monopolized her imagination. She shook her head and drove out into traffic leaving Frankfurt and onto the autobahn. She headed for Angelika-Lautenschlager-Klinik on the Heidelberg University medical campus. Among other crucial activities, Ava chaired pediatric medicine at the campus.

Her father’s words resounded in her brain. What sort of ‘expertise’ had he conjured that would get him watched and followed? And even more ominous, how did he expect to work with Dirk Brown to help revolutionaries in Iran? From his hiding place in Canada, how could Michael Sevani do anything for Iran’s people? Those dissidents were many months into a fresh, bloody defiance of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that bastard Ahmadinejad, and his Revolutionary Guard. She felt the passion of wanting to help and heard it from David every day. But if Dirk Brown was involved in the plan to aid Iranian revolutionaries, there would most definitely be a benefit in it for him.

Five kilometers onto the autobahn her side mirror exposed the red Citroën two cars behind. She pressed the accelerator. At one hundred thirty kilometers an hour the Citroën zigzagged around traffic to keep her in sight.

Her imagination be damned. People were following Ava Sevani. Irritation fumed its way up her cheeks, right alongside her mounting fear.

3

He stood in the crowded tarmac at Tehran’s airport gazing across his flight companions without making eye contact.  Sweat rolled down his furrowed brow and crawled under his scraggly beard. David Badalian looked for men in white shirts and black pants, the secret police who would hang him if he was caught escaping his homeland.

A carefully folded head scarf and a long-sleeved robe, or Shemagh with agaand and disha dasha, completed his disguise. The outfit hid a fit body awash in nervous sweat.

Doctor Badalian! A woman called and waved.

He stared straight ahead at the steps that dribbled people onboard the jet. His heart hammered. The closest the radical Muslims allowed him, a Catholic, to perform medical procedures was as physician to Taj, its champion soccer team. Maybe that was how she knew him. But how she knew him didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting onboard this plane to Germany and not yanked off it by Ahmadinejad’s goons.

 The group surged forward. He was on the steps. From the corner of his eye he saw the woman drift back and turn away. No one followed her. But there was no sigh of relieve. As long as passengers remained onboard the Republic of Islam plane, they were considered in Iranian territory. Should Dr. David Badalian be recognized by Quds Force, he was a dead man. Not only was he leaving Iran with a fake permission slip, but he was wanted for not completing mandatory active military service.

His left hand tightened on the handle of his brown suitcase. In his right he carried a passport and a copy of the Qur’an. One document was a forgery, the other a ruse.

Finally onboard he stowed his bag overhead and sat in his assigned seat next to the window at his right. He hunkered low, his stare centered on the book in his lap. He turned pages and softly mumbled the Farsi words written there. David could also read and write English, German and Armenian. If anyone asked, he was on his way to visit relatives in the Frankfurt camp.

Five hours felt like fifty to David, but no one stopped him as he exited the plane in Frankfurt, even when he turned and spit on the Iranian jet’s fuselage. 

That was sixteen years ago. Why now did that dangerous time surface in his brain? His escape from Iran and today’s flight from Frankfurt to Chicago’s O’Hare held no comparison.

His passport was genuine.

A disguise was not necessary.

Neither was this gut-punch fear that tormented him. He looked out Delta’s tiny window on his right and talked himself out of an unusual claustrophobic moment. The plane barely bounced upon landing, still he couldn’t wait to get out of this composite and aluminum trap.   

The Boeing 747 taxied with excruciating lack of speed into its slot at Delta’s international gate. The symbol to keep seatbelts fastened glowed red, but most passengers ignored it. Including David. He stood slumped over until he could inch into the aisle.

The thin man seated beside was up and in the aisle where he unlatched the overhead compartment. As he removed a satchel and large camera bag, David stared at the strange scar under the man’s left wrist, a crudely etched dagger. 

He first noticed the scar nearly an hour into the flight. The man rose from his seat and rummaged in the overhead compartment for several long minutes. When he sat back down and opened his London Times, David saw the curious scar.

The pilot shut down the jet’s engines and David forgot his flight companion. He swiped his forehead with a sleeve of his light suit jacket. The cliché of having one’s whole life ahead of them could not have any deeper meaning than at this moment.

It took a risky escape sixteen years ago to lift himself from the suppressive sham Islamic rule laid out for his Christian life and medical career in Iran. One step up had been the pothole he sloshed through under Germany’s refuge.

Iranian refugees waited impatiently for Germany to hand out work permits. He worked at the children’s hospital in Heidelberg, but as a volunteer scrubbing floors, not as a doctor.

But there was a tremendous upside to scrubbing floors.

Slopping the marble floor with a sudsy mop, he backed into Doctor Ava Sevani. He looked down at her with the handle of the wet mop clasped in his large fists. His chiseled jawline cracked with a self-conscious grin.

Ma’am, I am so sorry. Are you hurt?

She shook her head as she came out of deep concentration over the papers in her hand. I’m okay. Her voice was deep and soft. Then she looked up at him. For seconds they stared at one another. Then he spoke.

I know you.

I’m sorry. Her dark eyes told him she didn’t believe.

No-no. I took your picture about a year ago in northern Italy. We were at a sand volleyball tournament. You were sitting with a bunch of young ladies cheering for the opposing team.

She laughed. Does that pickup line work?

It’s no line. I photograph very few beautiful women. I know I still have your picture. It’s back at my apartment.

Her eyes threw darts. Do I look like I would let strange men take me to their apartment?

His face burned. He shook his head and blew out a breath. I was not suggesting…I’ll bring it with me when I come in tomorrow. You’ll see.

Maybe. Please excuse me. I’m very busy.

He watched her until she disappeared around a corner. His smile was ear-to-ear. 

Friends and relatives in Iran fought government officials to obtain David’s records proving he graduated the University of Tehran’s medical school. He played a waiting game for his interview and work permit. The German government and Catholic services paid for food and housing so he could volunteer with a mop and otherwise remain idle. The hospital work saved his sanity…and had walked Ava into his heart.

Several weeks ago, the Germans accepted his college documents and David gained permission to intern at the children’s hospital. The internship was a helluva lot closer to his specialty in anesthesiology. Ava had more