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During the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, many Persians who had reason for concern about their own safety under the incoming regime fled to the U.S. Many of these were wealthy or secular, and many of these had been supporters of Muhammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. In fact, historians have later said that President Carter's offer of refuge to the Shah, who had ruled the country with arbitrary brutality since his near ouster and return to power in 1953, may have been responsible for antagonizing an already inflamed people, prompting the Nov. 4, 1979 hostage crisis. The militants who held 52 Americans in the US Embassy in Tehran until Jan. 1981, it has been said, feared US involvement would return the Shah to power again, as it had in 1953. (Find a concise breakdown of Iranian history here).
In Southern California, from one city in a polluted basin ringed by hot, dry hills, to another, fleeing Iranians moved to what has come to be known as "Tehrangeles" or "Irangeles". In the glittering swath of land between Brentwood and Beverly Hills, some of the world's most valuable real estate, lives the largest Iranian population outside of Iran, beautifully described in Tara Bahrampour's "Persia on the Pacific".
On Sunset Boulevard, where wealth to the point of tackiness collides with snobbery to the point of bitchiness on a daily basis, one wealthy Iranian man bought himself a fancy fancy mansion. This mansion sits on a sweeping, lovely property, which is enclosed with a high wall. Such prisons are not meant to be aesthetically displeasing, so the wall is decorated, at regular intervals, with miniature nudes, statuettes reminiscient of early Greek art. The wealthy Iranian man who bought the home thought it shameful the way his Mediterranean brothers had left the figures naked and exposed to the prying eyes of the world, so he decided that he should remedy the situation.
So the guy bought wigs and outfits for each of the nude statuettes decorating the high wall surrounding his wealthy property.
