I text the person who arranged the meeting and she tells me to wait. Two minutes later, the door opens and a man edges out cautiously. He is wearing thick framed glasses, baggy Iranian-style pants, and a short-billed beanie. His name is Shahin Najafi. Last May, at least three ayatollahs called for his execution after he released a song they interpreted as insulting to Shia Islam’s 10th Imam. To sweeten the deal, a regime-controlled website offered $100,000 to whoever pulled the trigger. He invites me in and pours me tea.

“Of course I’m scared,” he says. After the first fatwa in May, Najafi hid out near Cologne, Germany, under police protection. In late September, he came to a city he thought was safer: Berkeley, Calif. Here, he still goes out in costume, and only under the watchful eye of his manager, but he believes the odds of assassination are far slimmer.

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