This is a sad story about life and mental illness in the great city of Chicago.
Approximately 15 years ago, Pastor Arthur A. R. Nelson invited an Iranian immigrant, Farhad Khoiee-Abbasi, to worship at North Park Covenant Church, located in Chicago, Illinois. Farhad, an engineer by training, became a Christian and an active church member. In fact, he and I served on a church committee, the Board of Community Concern, for several years.
Farhad attended church without his wife and daughter, and dressed in fine suits and ties. I remember when he told me of his struggles with his non-Christian wife. The downward spiral was quick. Farhad confided to me that his wife had filed for divorce and that he had been fired from his job at an engineering firm. He reasoned to me that his firing was due to his supervisor becoming aware that Farhad had charged (see flier) his supervisor’s son (an alleged FBI agent) with running a prostitution business that included Farhad’s wife. I found this extremely odd, to say the least.
In response, Farhad traveled to Washington D.C. to protest the high crimes alleged against Agent Saviano. At church, Farhad then showed me the large attache case he brought to D.C. He said he stood outside of the White House, very well dressed with attache next to him, when he got whisked away. Mind you, this is during Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, Farhad looks Iranian, and he has an object that clearly could hold a bomb.
So Farhad returns to Chicago, disappointed that he was unable to meet with elected officials in order to plead his case. He distributed this flier at church during coffee hour with all the church ladies present. I knew Farhad had been struggling, but now I knew his mental state had significantly deteriorated.
Farhad stopped attending church, but then I came across him at the SW corner of Daley Plaza. Around this time I started making inquiries to help the emotionally unstable Farhad. The police told me they could do nothing because Farhad had not threatened anyone. A social worker and psychologist told me nothing could be done because Farhad was not a threat to himself. Clergy had no other advice.
Firmly affixed to Daley Plaza, Farhad had multiple signs that proclaimed Mayor Richard Daley a dictator and accused said FBI agent of running a prostitution ring. Farhad’s vigil was persistent (an understatement), as he was there every time I visited the plaza. During this period, he stood silently, wearing fine suits and ties, and refused to talk to me. He would spin around in order to not establish eye contact with me.
A friend of mine who worked at City Hall, which is across the street from Daley Plaza, also knew of The Sign Guy. He mentioned that someone had created a Wikipedia page about Farhad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sign_Guy
Skipping forward to 2011, Farhad stopped wearing his suits and started to blow a whistle three times, then break, and repeat, incessantly, and I mean over and over and over and over. That is the second image you see on the Wiki page. When Rahm Immanuel succeeded Daley, Farhad had the cognitive functioning to change his Daley the Dictator sign to something about Immanuel. I do not have training in the area of mental illness, but find it fascinating that a man who has clearly mentally unraveled had the ability to change with the times, knowing that there was a new mayor.
I digress. Today, perhaps eight long years after he started his vigil, Farhad no longer holds a sign. He is gaunt. With bags in tow, he flips through a newspaper without actually reading its pages, and is not dressed for the summer heat. He is lost. He could very well perish at the corner he has occupied for a very long time.
And America watched.
[Update August 3, 2022 – The sign guy is spotted and photographed in Chicago’s Grant Park during Lollapalooza 2022.]
