Reza Ali Khazeni loved life but killed himself when he was 22.
He was, say his parents, a young man who was passionate about social injustice and preservation of the environment and had planned to study environmental law. A graduate of Boston University, he loved traveling and learning about different cultures. He was intrigued by the mystic philosophy of Iran, particularly the works of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi poet and philosopher. Reza Ali committed suicide in 1990 after a broken love affair.A year later, on the first anniversary of his death, his parents started the Reza Ali Khazeni Memorial Foundation.
Reza and Shireen Khazeni took all of Reza Ali's interests and made them the cornerstone of the foundation. It offers scholarships in environmental law and study abroad and has sponsored a competition for the best original scholarly paper by a university student on the life and works of Rumi.
On Friday, Oct. 6, the foundation will sponsor the first annual Reza Ali Khazeni Memorial Lecture in Iranian Studies.
The Khazenis, who moved to Salt Lake City from Iran in 1979, know that the name of their country has become synonymous with terrorism and fundamentalism. That's the Iran that Reza and Shireen Khazeni fled but not the one they want to remember.
Their Iran is different: a land with a long history of art and mysticism, poetry and philosophy, a heritage so ancient and vast that "culture" is almost too small a word, says Reza Khazeni. The civilization that began in Persia 5,000 years ago is the Iran he and his wife want to evoke Friday's inaugural lecture.
"Notes on the Definition of Persian Culture" will be delivered by Iranian scholar Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr. The lecture, which is free, will be at 6:30 p.m. in auditorium 1110 of the new Language and Communication Building at the University of Utah.
The lecture will focus on the Persian world view - strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism and Islamic spirituality - that has shaped Persian science, philosophy and art, from carpet weaving to poetry.
Nasr studied at Harvard and MIT. Currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, he has also taught at Harvard and at Tehran University and at the University of Utah. He is a family friend of the Khazenis and knew their son Reza Ali.
The Khazenis hope to keep the memory of their son alive by helping students with Reza Ali's same ideals and interests fulfill their own dreams.
This is not an easy thing: To watch and encourage the lives of other people's children when your has chosen to die. But for the Khazenis there is no choice.
Reza pulls out a book his wife recently gave him. It's Isabel Allende's "Paula," the book she wrote for her daughter, who lingered for a long time in a coma. In the front there is this poem:
We did not come to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves like the trees,
The trees that are broken,
And start again, drawing up from the great roots.