On the 40th anniversary of the release of the Iran hostages, a fictional FSO heroine stirs memories of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and its aftermath.
Believers: Love and Death in Tehran An Excerpt
BY JOHN LIMBERT AND MARC GROSSMAN
Background
Believers: Love and Death in Tehran (Mazda Publishers, 2020), written by Ambassadors (ret.) Marc Grossman and John Limbert, both AFSA members, is a work of fiction set in Iran and Washington, D.C., during the 1980s and the present. The hero is the fictional FSO Nilufar Hartman, daughter of an Iranian mother and an American father. With the liberty of novelists, the authors have imagined her in scenes both historical and fictional with people real and invented. The following adapted excerpt, set in late 1980 and early 1981, ends with the release of 52 American hostages on Jan. 20, 1981, just a few minutes after Ronald Reagan took his presidential oath of office.