It was an early Saturday morning as Zohreh Assemi, a 50-year-old Iranian woman, began her day by opening her second floor, high-end nail shop located in Locust Valley in Long Island. As Assemi approached her business door, two men exploded from a bathroom across the hallway.
According to Assemi, they violently restrained her from behind, shoved a gun to her head and forced her inside the salon. They then slammed her head on a counter, gagged her with a towel, and pulverized her hand with a hammer. After crushing her hands, they then used box cutters to shred the skin on her face, neck, back and chest.
She allegedly was then able to peer up and witness the slathering of anti-Muslim messages on her mirrors as they accused her of being a terrorist. They also stole $2,000.
“They were cursing, ‘Muslim, go back to the place you came from,'” Assemi said to Newsday. “They said if I call the cops, they’ll kill me and if I don’t leave, they’re gonna kill me.”
Assemi told police the suspicious behavior began last month, when she began receiving frightening phone calls from people accusing her of being a terrorist and commanding her to leave the shopping center.
In 1982, Assemi and her 5-year old daughter fled the security forces of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a religious Shiite leader, after they imprisoned her father-in-law, a general with the previous government.
After the events of Sept. 11, Assemi made the decision to become a U.S. citizen.
Zohre Bahrayni, another woman of Iranian descent and mother of Guilford student Nasimeh Easton, came to the United States to earn a doctorate degree.
“I am pretty fortunate. There has never been an issue with my ethnicity,” Bahrayni said. “I am very open about where I come from and more than happy to inform anyone that has questions concerning Iran and Iranian people.”
Bahrayni had been notified of the Assemi case by communicating with her Iranian community.
Despite this incident, Bahrayni does not worry about her daughter being discriminated against.
“I do not fear for Nasimeh’s safety because she is Iranian, but because like any other mother, I worry because she is my daughter and I ask her to be careful while walking at night.”
First-year Alex Tarnow, who is part Iranian, believes the atmosphere is ignorance that can be easily solved through people educating themselves about other cultures.
“It seems that people of Iranian descent will never fully escape the accusations and image of being a ‘terrorist’, but I feel that it is people’s ignorance of race and religion that is keeping past labels alive,” Tarnow said. “People just need to be informed.”