Nika Reinecke has spent decades waiting for her younger brother to be reunited with their family in the United States. The Iranian-born architect immigrated to North Texas in 1977, two years before the Iranian Revolution caused a seismic shift in the political and social fabric of her homeland. Her older brother had paved the way for the family in 1976, and Reinecke followed closely behind, enrolling at a boarding school in Denton before attending UT-Arlington. By the late eighties, Reinecke’s widowed mother and sister had joined them. They all became U.S. citizens. But her second brother, Alireza Zolghadri, was left behind.Zolghadri first attempted to leave Iran on a student visa in 1979, after the revolution, but by then the newly installed Islamic Republic had tightened…
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