Omid’s Journey from Afghanistan
Sometimes what we have to share is our story.
A story behind the numbers; from Afghanistan to the UK, this is Omid’s journey in his own words.
We recommend reading Nima & Omid’s Stories together; two young men who made the journey to Europe who, at their very lowest, found strength in each other.
PART 1/3
I WAS BORN A REFUGEE AND HAVE BEEN A REFUGEE MY WHOLE LIFE
I was born in Iran to an Afghan family, my parents fled from Afghanistan when the Taliban rose to power in the 90s. I was born as a refugee, and have essentially been a refugee my whole life. I have two sisters who are married and one little brother, I also had an older brother. It was never possible to gain full citizenship in Iran, every year we had to pay a lot of money just to renew our temporary refugee papers. There are about 2.5 million Afghans living in Iran and according to the law we cannot hold a driving license, buy a sim card or own a house. One of the first times that I noticed I was different was at school. Every month they would take all the Afghan children out of the class and take us to the principal’s office. They would demand money of our parents to keep us in the school. I was a really good football player, and I loved it as a teenage boy. I played all the time with my friends and I wanted to join a club. I went to some try-outs for different football clubs and I didn’t tell them that I was Afghan. They were impressed by my game and some of them even offered me some money to play for them. When I brought my papers to enrol I was told it was against the law, and I couldn’t play for their club as an Afghan. I also remember that a mobile blood bank came to collect blood from our school. I left the line because one of the boys in front of me was turned away. I heard the doctor tell him that they do not accept Afghan blood. If you need to visit the hospital as an Afghan person, you can expect to pay 4 or 5 times as much as an Iranian.
Even though I finished a university degree in software engineering, my papers wouldn’t allow me to work in my own field. The Iranian law only allows Afghans to work in a limited number of manual jobs like a shop assistant or as a construction worker: jobs which are usually badly paid and you have to work under very bad conditions. When my parents had saved enough money to buy a house, we couldn’t buy it in our own name. We had to buy it through an Iranian person and then we moved in there. Living as an Afghan in Iran you are looked at as the very lowest group in the Iranian class system. Afghans are really hard working so we would often say they don’t give us our freedom to work our way up because we would be so good at it. The Iranian government tell people that their country would become like the Israel and Palestine situation, but in my opinion the same segregation already exists. The only chance of getting proper residency papers is to sign up with the army and go to Syria. But Afghans are used at bait in the frontline of fighting ISIS. An Afghan’s life means nothing to the generals, so they are sent out on the most dangerous missions. I had an Afghan friend I would sometimes talk to at the gym I was going to, he was a young guy, only 18. I hadn’t seen him in a while and I asked one of his buddies what had happened to him. He showed me a photograph I’ll never forgot. It was a photo of his head on a stake - he had been captured by Daesh in Syria.
Out of all my Afghan friends and relatives I knew in Iran I was the only one to go to university. I had to work so hard as a boy, and I was only accepted because I had straight A’s in school. I actually wanted to study architecture, but no other university would accept my application because of my ethnicity. My father pushed me to go, even though I wasn’t particularly interested in software engineering: he just didn’t want me to end up as a manual labourer like him. I went to study at university and I had many friends there: people liked me, I was a hard worker, I helped them with homework and we would play football together, but I never dared to tell people that I am Afghan. I didn’t even tell my closest friend at university for 5 years. When I eventually came out he was upset that I had hidden it from him, and that he wouldn’t have cared, but I had felt too scared. To be honest, I don’t think Iranian people are necessarily that racist, but it’s the government that enforces segregation and wants to keep hold of its authoritarian position. I applied for many jobs after I finished my degree but they all told me: ‘sorry, we cannot employ you because you are Afghan’. I was so frustrated that after all my years of studying, all my knowledge and everything I had learned was essentially useless. I decided to open up my own business: a clothes store, but again of course officially it was under an Iranian person’s name. I had to get an Iranian person to be in the shop at all times in case they would check. If he’d wanted to he would have been able to take over my shop and according to the law I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. To be an Afghan living in Iran, you have to bribe your way through life. On top of that, when I went to renew my papers after finishing university they told me they couldn’t renew it, and that I would have to go back to Afghanistan. I couldn’t return, it’s a country I hardly know and it is extremely dangerous, especially for Afghans returning from abroad. A huge tragedy occurred in my family 7 years ago. I had an older brother who went back to Afghanistan when his visa in Iran expired. My father tried to persuade him not to go, but my brother was tired of living like a second class citizen in Iran so he went back anyway. At some point we stopped hearing from him, and we couldn’t reach him. Nobody knows where he went, he completely vanished overnight. I think he was killed by the Taliban, but my mother still has hope that he is alive somewhere. Every time I would see police I would turn around and hide because I was so worried they would check my papers and sent me back. I was stuck, I didn’t even have manual working papers at this point and I had no way of moving forward. I had no energy left to hide and fight the system, and I decided I had to leave Iran. My mother didn’t want me to leave, she wanted me to stay with them because she knew how dangerous the journey would be. After losing my brother she was terrified of losing another child. But my father could see my sadness, and he wanted me to make something out of my life. He talked to her for a long time and eventually persuaded her to let me go. I know it broke her heart, and my father’s too, but they decided to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of my future and let me go.
PART 2/3
I COUNT TO THREE AND THEN YOU ALL HAVE TO RUN
I paid a smuggler to take me across to the Turkish border, we tried four times but the police caught us each time so we had to run. It took about a week before we managed to get into the mountains, the journey took 24 hours. At some point our group was waiting to cross under the cover of darkness. In the distance the police was approaching. The smuggler told us: I count to three and then you all have to run. There was a family with two small children next to me, the father asked me if I would take his little girl by the hand. I had 2 backpacks on my back and I took a hold of this girl, I think she was about 8 or 9. The single men all sprinted ahead and the families were much slower running behind. I ran in between the two groups. I was following the group of single men in the front but it all just happened so fast and we couldn’t see much in the dark. The little girl twisted her ankle and I ended up carrying my two backpacks as well as her. At some point we stopped and I realised we were lost and there was nobody around. I couldn’t see the group of men anymore, and I couldn’t see the family either. I thought that the police had maybe caught them and she was crying so much for her parents. I comforted her, it was heart breaking but we also had to keep quiet to stop the police from finding us. We waited the whole night and I couldn’t sleep. When the first light of day hit we started walking again, I saw a road and something told me to follow it. After a while we ran into another family who was also lost, I was so relieved just to see other people again. We were just walking around aimlessly through the mountains for a while. At some point we saw a car and this smuggler picked us up. The car was also searching for the other people, after a few hours we found some more people from our group, and luckily also the little girl’s family. Finally they were reunited. The smuggler took us all to this house, there were about 20 of us and they stuffed us into this tiny little room. It smelled so bad and it was so dirty, I really couldn’t sleep in there. I went out and the smuggler told me it was too dangerous to be out but I didn’t care, even though it was freezing cold outside.
I travelled onwards to Istanbul where I met some distant relatives of mine who had reached out to my family back home. A husband and wife with their two children. Their youngest child had died on the way from Iran to Turkey. She fell in the water and drowned. They tried to go after her but they never even found the body. The father had gone into a mental breakdown from the grief, and he was completely losing his mind. The mother asked me to help them and look after them, so I did as best I could.
We travelled down to Izmir, and at first we were trying to reach Lesvos. I tried a total of eight times before I actually managed to make the crossing. The scariest moment was during one of the attempted crossings when our boat got a puncture and started filling up with water. It was a small rubber dinghy and there were 50 of us. We were trying to empty out the water as it was coming in but it was filling up faster than we could empty it out. We were in the middle of the sea and could see no land either in front or behind us. We rang the Turkish coastguard who came out but they couldn’t find us. People were crying, praying and panicking, I was desperately trying to help with emptying the boat and calming people around me, but to be honest I really thought we were all going to die. All I could think about was my mother and how broken she would be if she would lose another son. It took the coastguard hours to locate us, I had never felt such relief in my whole life as when I saw their boat appear. But our joy was short-lived as they took us to an enclosed camp. And for two weeks were were locked up without being able to leave or contact anyone. We were only allowed 15 minutes of fresh air a day and then we would be locked in our rooms again. My relatives were in the camp with me, the ones who had lost their baby. The wife wasn’t aware that she was pregnant again, but they found out during a medical check up. We told the guards that I was the wife’s brother, and they let us all go. We waited in another house with our group for the smuggler to take us to the coast. One night this team of police burst through the door and they arrested one person. They told us he was Daesh, and they took him away. Then the smuggler picked us up and that’s when we finally managed to make the crossing and ended up in Samos.
When we arrived to the beach I felt so happy, it had been such an odyssey to try and cross, and everything had been against me so far. I felt like I had finally reached safety. I was taking lots of selfies and feeling hopeful about arriving in Europe. We asked some villagers to ring the police for us, and soon they came with a large van to collect us, and they drove us across the island towards the camp. When we came over the hill I was shocked: I saw all these white tents and so many people, the place was covered with trash and there was a queue with hundreds of people who were waiting for something. The police took us inside this locked registration area where we had to spend the night. I was just observing this place I had arrived to and I felt completely bewildered. Within just the first 2 hours of me arriving I watched about 5 or 6 violent fights erupting, and the police would bring them inside our holding area each time to lock them up. My fellow boat passengers had mostly been Iranian, so I had been speaking the Iranian Farsi dialect with them. In the morning we had to wait for a small interview to complete our registration. My interpreter was Afghan, in fact from the same city as my parents, so I thought that maybe he would help me. When I was answering the interview questions suddenly the interpreter said: ‘Oh he is not Afghan, he is lying - I saw him talking with the others in the Iranian dialect.’ The police took me aside and made me sit in the sun. I wanted to move into the shade because it was so hot but they said I had to stay there and sit in the sun because I was lying. I showed them my papers from Afghanistan and I asked to change the interpreter. But they told me to shut up and that I could only speak when I would admit I was lying. After a few hours of roasting in the sun they took me back in and I was grilled by the interpreter: he was asking me the difference between Iranian and Afghan Farsi words and he was trying his best to catch me out. In the end he told them he was sure I am Afghan. I was so upset with him, and I asked him why he would do that to someone from his own country. He replied saying that he felt responsible towards the other Afghans in the camp. It was the first time that I saw somebody taking such advantage of their position of power on Samos, and it definitely wasn’t the last, it made me feel so small.
In the evening we were let out of the registration area, we asked the police where to go but they just told us to find our own place. There were some Afghan people outside and they saw that we didn’t know what to do. They helped us a bit and explained how this camp works. We weren’t given anything, but I had a little money so we went into town to buy a tent, which we set up in the forest, a bit far from everyone else. I had no blanket, no food, no electricity and only a few disgusting dixy toilets that we had to share with thousands of others. This tent was the only shelter I had for the next 4 months. If I wanted to shower I would get up at 3am so that the showers would be more quiet, and sometimes you could even catch a small treacle of warm water. I didn’t mind so much in the summer, but in the winter it was so hard. I don’t think I showered more than once or twice a month because it was just too freezing. I told my parents that everything was really nice and that I was camping next to a beautiful forest, I didn’t want them to know how difficult life really was inside Vathy.
The camp was built to accommodate about 700 people, but there were nearly 6000 people living there together, living like sardines in a tin, in flimsy tents with not enough toilets and not enough food, and not enough of anything really. All these different people from different cultures, religions and languages thrown together into a camp that is basically set up to make people suffer. Tensions were so high that even if you looked at someone for a second too long they would start a fight with you. Some of the families would sleep in the food line at night to make sure they would get supplies to feed their children breakfast. I could never face the line: I just took the 90 euros we received each month and somehow used it to clothe, feed and look after myself. If there was anything handed out or organised in the camp, it was never given to the single men, we were always last on every list. Everything was set up to help families, who of course had it really hard. But also for us there was never anything extra, and never any comfort to spare.
I started leaving the camp at 6 in the morning and would be coming back late at night - anything to avoid the violence of the camp. After a couple of weeks I started to take English classes where I met lots of volunteers, and this is also where I first met Nima. We both started in the basic English class and the next day I saw him again and we started talking. I think he was also trying to keep busy and away from the camp during the day just like myself. I could see he was serious about learning as well, and I thought that maybe we could help each other. I was thinking of getting some fake papers to go to Athens but Nima told me that he had just come back from there. I was so excited and I wanted to hear all about it, but his stories shocked me - he had passed a really horrible time over there, he tried to convince me not to go. But still I thought I should try, maybe I would be more lucky. But I couldn’t get the smuggler’s papers. One night I was so desperate to go that I tried jumping onto one of the ferries as it was leaving. But I didn’t make it, now I think that maybe I was lucky I didn’t make it and that I was spared another horrible experience. So I stayed on Samos together with Nima, and we have been inseparable since. There was also Ruhi from Afghanistan who we met in English class, I thought he was such a smart guy. I instantly knew I could trust him. On Samos you would always see the three of us together. We said that Ruhi was the brains of our gang because he was so clever, Nima was the tongue because he was so good at speaking, and I was the heart because I was the most sensitive. I would say the best thing that happened to me was meeting Ruhi and Nima, whenever one of us was sad or disappointed the others were always by your side.
PART 3/3
IT’S AMAZING FEELING TO BE AROUND PEOPLE WHO CARE DEEPLY
I stayed on Samos for 2 years. I kept busy with volunteering, translating and joining different projects. I even did some construction work and I waited in a restaurant at some point, but the pay was so terrible, they would give me just a few euros after working a 12 hour day. Life in Greece was surviving but not living. We always felt bad about ourselves, and we constantly felt unwanted by everybody. So many things happened to us.There was a restaurant I used to go to with Ruhi, then one day it was busy and the owner told us we have to go now because there are Greek customers in the shop so we cannot stay. It was impossible to feel like a dignified person in that place.
Last year I heard that both of my parents had caught coronavirus. I was so scared because the virus was still so new and I was going crazy that I couldn’t be there to look after them. My little brother also had it, I would call them 10 times a day to make sure they were still alive. I had never felt so helpless. Then Ruhi got some really bad news: his mother had tested positive for corona and she passed away back home. He was so depressed. I got so scared for my parents after that and all I wanted to do was go see them. I decided I would try to go back to Iran and I went to the Iranian embassy to try and get a visa, but they told me that I would not be able to come back again if I went. Luckily my parents got better and my father persuaded me not to come. Together with Nima we also went through a terrible encounter with another smuggler in Athens, and he ended up breaking my hand. We were so scared of this smuggler gang, they are truly evil people. It was the final straw for us and we worked out a plan to leave Greece for good.
I also had a girlfriend on Samos, she is from Switzerland. We are no longer together because I came here and it is impossible to make it work: I cannot travel and she doesn’t have the money to visit me as she is a full-time volunteer in Greece. In the beginning our relationship was quite difficult because we are from such different cultures. But over time we learned more about each other. It wasn’t always easy because I didn’t want to ever feel like a refugee in our relationship, I wanted to feel like an equal partner. I told my girlfriend that she should be completely open and honest with me. And comfortable enough to be able to say anything she wants, once we started to communicate with each other we were so happy together. In the end we decided to part as friends because we knew a long distance relationship wouldn’t work for us, but I still miss her a lot.
We said our goodbyes to Ruhi and we flew from Athens to Paris, and from there we went to Calais where we tried to cross to the UK for one month. We stayed in a camp there for 1 month, and on some nights we stayed with the smuggler when we tried to cross. When we crossed we left at midnight and we were there for 7 hours. The two nights before I hadn’t been able to sleep because I was so nervous, and I kept falling asleep. Nima kept waking me up and telling me it was too dangerous to fall asleep but I just couldn’t control my eyes. It was super dark and we couldn’t see a thing. I was scared when we left, but as soon as we started I just decided to surrender myself to fate.
Because I had my broken arm they separated us and took us to different detention centres. Our phones were taken away and I didn’t know where Nima was or how he was doing. I kept asking about him but all they said is that I would see my friend again soon. After about a week he finally managed to call me and eventually we were both sent to London, we were a 20 minute walk from each other and it was so great to be able to see each other again. But at some point Nima was taken to these old disused army barracks. He had a really rough time there, so I was so happy for him when Amber offered him to move into her home.
I stayed in the hotel for several months. I liked my room a lot, it was clean and so much better than the conditions in Samos. But unfortunately the food was really terrible, and a lot of the time it was the same meals over and over again. It got very lonely there because there is not a lot to do and because of Covid all the classes and activities that would usually be running are now shut. When I wake up in the morning I try to do a little exercise because I don’t get out very much, and I take some time to study my English. If the weather is nice I go out and just walk everywhere: to London Bridge and the different parks, I just go and get lost and explore the city by myself. I also watch a lot of tv, sometimes I really like watching stupid or funny shows because it distracts me from thinking too much. When I think too much about the past and my unknown future I get so down that I just spent the whole day sleeping and I only come out of my bed to eat something. There have been times when I haven’t left my room for a whole week because I can hardly find the strength to move. It’s hard to keep yourself motivated for such a long time, and it’s so hard to deal with all the insecurities and uncertainties about the future. It can make you feel completely numb, and at night my mind runs crazy with thoughts and feelings about everything that has happened in my life, and I imagine all the bad things that might still come. When I hear something about refugees on the news it really affects me, especially if they announce they are making changes to the asylum system. I will be thinking about it for days. I am so tired of my life being on hold, and I’m so tired of rebuilding my life each time. My whole life has been a rollercoaster of feeling hopeful but then eventually being disappointed. In Iran I would hope each year that I would be given an ID card and it never happened, in Greece I had hoped to find stability and safety but the reality was a horrible existence where my rights were stripped away. Now I am here in the UK and I don’t know if they will end up deporting me. Then I brush myself off and start again with the exercising, reading and getting out, it’s a strange circle, and my life is just in a very strange place right now where I don’t feel like I can actually move forward.
But I try to make the best out of my situation. I am volunteering with an organisation that is helping refugees in London. Because of all my experiences in Greece, it has made me really aware about how power relations can make someone else feel. And I always try to treat everybody exactly the same, regardless of their situation or where they are from, I always try to make people feel comfortable with me. I know now how difficult it can be to ask for something when you feel like you don’t belong, so I try to see what people might need and offer it to them with dignity. I also applied to 5 universities in London to continue with my software engineering, but I’m having to find a lot of money to try and get a copy of my diploma from Iran. I am also part of a really cool project which is a collaboration with artists from Portugal who make art out of stories from refugees. They rap, make music, drawings and paintings out of our experiences. The final product will result in an exhibition to travel across Europe. At first I was reluctant to participate, but then I thought about it and I know that a lot of refugees can’t speak English so I decided to try and help tell our story collectively. I want to be a voice for others because I feel responsible to stand up for other refugees now that I am in a safe place. I have some prayer beads that my mother gave me before I left, it’s the only thing I still have from back home so I cherish it so much. One of the artists is making a piece based on the beads. It has been a good way to process everything that has happened to me, especially in Greece. Sometimes I still think about how I felt back there, that feeling of being unwanted. It was very tough, our life there was so difficult, but at the same time I also have a lot of good memories with Nima as well. He has been there for me through everything. He has also helped me to deal with my breakup which I’m only now starting to get used to a little bit. Actually, when you have been through so much in life at some point you become your own psychologist. So we kind of know how to get ourselves out of the low points, and we also know what to say to each other to bring the other one back up. The reason we made it through is because we had each other, I was so lucky to find Ruhi and Nima.
A few weeks ago I got an amazing phone call: Amber had a room free up in her house and I was able to move in and be with her and Nima. Finally we are reunited. We tried to study our English together, but we just end up joking and laughing too much so we have to be strict with ourselves and take time apart to devote to our studies. It’s an amazing feeling to be surrounded by people who understand and care so deeply about everything you are going though.
I feel really glad to be able to share my story, because there are so many people who don’t understand where refugees have come from, and what life is like for us. I would encourage anyone who is thinking about volunteering to do it, because for me it was the one redeeming feature of coming to Europe. We don’t care about the aid you give, but more than anything we need your friendship. We don’t want anything special, just some peace and dignity, and most of all a normal life
This is Omid’s story to March 2021.
To be continued.
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