Iranian Refugee’s Memoir Challenges Immigration Myth

A courageous and hopeful new memoir by human rights activist and Seattle dentist Mahvash Khajavi-Harvey is available as a Kindle e-book and in print for pre-ordering.  Daylight Forever: A Memoir is the true story of a young Baha’i girl growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War who lives in daily terror of religious persecution and bombing raids. Taking destiny into her own hands, 15-year-old Mahvash escapes on a solo trek across the Iran-Pakistan border under cover of darkness with shady smugglers she does not know and will never know. “My childhood is over,” she writes.

Daylight Forever is a portrait of a childhood cut short, a family torn apart as it flees from Iranian oppression. The story follows one immigrant’s struggle for religious freedom, opportunity and belonging. Her daring and dangerous  journey to the United States illuminates the consequences of war, religious persecution, women’s oppression and the denial of education and basic human rights — and the lengths to which refugees of all ages will go to find safety, education and a place to call home.

The story is also one of hope, of the will to live, survive, and thrive as a refugee. Mahvash Khajavi-Harvey wrote Daylight Forever to encourage compassion, tolerance and acceptance in the debate over immigration in the United States.

“Daylight Forever is both stunning and heartbreaking,” says Megan Febuary, founder of For Women Who Roar. “Mahvash brilliantly invites the reader into her personal journey as a refugee and allows you to experience her life through the eyes of a young girl. This memoir was gripping, visceral, and sacred work. Not only does this book need to be a required reading, it deserves a prize for the bravery that it represents in honor of every refugee, both present and past.”

Dr. Harvey lives in Seattle, Wash., where she and her husband are raising three children. She began writing her story after her oldest daughter was stung by a middle school classmate who felt emboldened by the rhetoric of the country to declare to his classmates that there were too many immigrants in the US and they should all be deported. 

A dentist in private practice, Dr. Harvey is a firm believer in the power of community — both far and wide. She has volunteered dentistry services overseas in third-world communities and also provides free dental care in Seattle at local homeless clinics every year. She supports numerous nonprofits including the Mona Foundation, the Tahirih Justice Center and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, who will receive the net proceeds from the book. She has also served on the board of “Journey with an Afghan School,” a non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), which was founded post 9/11 to build schools for girls in Afghanistan.

Dr. Harvey is available for interviews and readings.