The Ungrateful Refugee. Dina Nayeri
of top scientists working on Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian physicists were targets for Israeli assassins and Iranian intelligence; how long would a top scientist with a history of joining a dissident group last? In the end, Sattar chose peace, safety, and family.
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Kambiz met a woman. He met her for tea and thought, maybe some good will come of this. He had no desire to compete with his cousins. He would start a business, have a family, make his own happiness. He hated the war and the excesses of the revolution. He wrote two articles under an assumed name, both for small local publications. His mother kept digging in about his cousins’ accomplishments, asking about Kambiz’s plans. The only way to quiet her was distraction. “Maman, will you teach me to cook ghorme sabzi?” “Why should you need that?” she’d say. “You’ll marry and your wife will cook for you.” “But till then . . .” Slowly Kambiz found he had a delicious hand. He learned all the best recipes—lamb and fenugreek. Eggplant and whey. Walnut and pomegranate with chicken. One day as he cooked, plainclothes Basijis arrived at his door, accusing him of adultery.
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After a year as errand-boy, Kaweh became a party teacher. His Kurdish improving, he wrote for a newspaper. His first publication, a Chekov story, was a translation from Farsi to Kurdish. Then he was assigned to a big project, the immortalization of the people’s hero, KDPI founder Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou. He was to collect every speech, article, and transcript written or recorded by the great man into an archive. Kaweh was transported—how visionary and good-hearted Ghassemlou was. How hard he fought for democracy, rule of law, and self-determination for Kurdistan, growing a tiny opposition party into a true political threat to the establishment. Those hours with Ghassemlou ushered Kaweh into adulthood, teaching him how to speak and to reason and to persuade.
It didn’t take long for the Iranian authorities to find Kaweh and to discover that he worked within party archives. They visited his family, making strange threats and promises: “We can cut your pension. You must see the futility of his cause. He has only two choices: return or provide information. If he works with us, we can send him to Europe to study.”
One day, an older cousin called to invite Kaweh to lunch at a restaurant in nearby Arbil. He sounded nervous. “I’m visiting a friend,” he said. When Kaweh arrived, two men were waiting with his cousin. They claimed to be friends from Halabja, but they spoke with Kermanshah accents. “These friends want to help you,” said the cousin, “They want you to go to Europe and study. You’re so bright.”
“You bloody are not from Halabja,” said Kaweh. “I have ears.”
His cousin took Kaweh’s hand. Finally he said, “These are Iranian intelligence officers. They just want to have a friendly talk with you.”
“We could have killed you on a number of occasions,” said one of the men, “if that’s what we wanted. Your father worked for the revolutionary army. Your brothers are civil servants. You belong to the revolution, and we want to help you.” The men went on to explain the kinds of information they wanted, how Kaweh could get it to them. One of them took out two hundred American dollars, more than three years of salary from the party.
Kaweh took it, thinking, The Islamic Republic has given me nothing. He recalled Ghassemlou’s calmness under pressure, his resolve. Kaweh wanted to be like him. “You can’t expect me to make this decision now.”
“How about a month?” said one of the men. As he put his wallet away, Kaweh glimpsed a gun in a holster. “Is that good enough?”
Kaweh agreed, refused a ride back, and left the restaurant.
A month later, they called. “Have you thought about it?” Kaweh said he had decided against it. The conversation took less than thirty seconds.
The pressure increased. Now and then they threw his mother in a car and dropped her off outside the compound. “Go get your son,” they’d say, and they’d abandon her in the street like a living symbol. Someone would let her in and arrange for her to be taken back. How she had aged, Kaweh thought.
In 2002, with the pressure peaking and America’s war with Iraq inevitable, Kaweh decided to confess to the party and escape. He returned his card, shook the leaders’ hands, and set off. He walked to Turkey with a fellow defector. It took them seven days through mountains, past rivers, from the Iraqi border to reach Turkey. Some days they walked fifteen hours. Some days they had a guide. They carried packs and slept in the mountains. Smugglers brought food—tea for breakfast, a cucumber for lunch, a piece of bread and cheese for dinner.
The mountain was a dangerous route. PKK fighters (the Kurdish workers’ party based in Turkey) were stationed there, along with the Iranian army and south Iraqi Peshmerga. It was entirely possible to be shot dead in the night. And yet, staying in Iraq was riskier.
Once in Turkey, they walked to a city called Van and claimed asylum. Kaweh had collected his writings, legal papers, photos, and letters from his years at KDPI. He was granted refugee status by UNHCR, who believed that, while Iraqi Kurdistan was safe, Iranian authorities wanted Kaweh. But the Turkish authority refused to recognize him or to honor UNHCR’s decision. So, when UNHCR arranged an interview at the Finnish embassy, Kaweh had no permits to pass the checkpoints to Ankara and he missed his chance.
Then one day, the Iranian authorities called him in Turkey. “We know where you are,” they said. He began to fear kidnapping, or deportation. Police often arrested asylum seekers on the streets and handed them to Iranian authorities, or they left them on the mountain at the mercy of smugglers, stray bullets, and the elements. Waiting to be captured or freed was torture on the mind. Kaweh ate only twice a day, and he tried to sleep away the days. After two years of agonizing limbo, teaching himself Turkish in a mud hut, Kaweh packed his letter from UNHCR and left.
Days later, he found himself in a smuggler’s boat to Greece. Before setting foot on the boat, he thought, This is like admitting I’ve decided to die. But the boat looked efficient and new and the smugglers made such lofty promises. They pointed to the horizon and said, “You see that light? That’s Greece. You’ll be there in half an hour in this modern boat. It was so expensive. Have trust.” One smuggler controlled the main boat and the other followed in a dilapidated dinghy, promising to follow the fifteen refugees (including two children) the entire way as a safety measure.
Halfway to the island, the boat stopped. “Something is wrong with it,” said the driver. He made a half-hearted attempt to check the controls. Then he said, “Everybody in the other boat. Hurry, we don’t want to get caught.” The rest was so efficient, it was obviously rehearsed. The refugees were loaded into the old dinghy and shown the controls; then both smugglers jumped into the nice boat (now working again) and sped back to Turkey.
Alone on the waters, the refugees tried to head for Greece. It was dark and heavy rains were looming. It didn’t take long for the old boat to sway and fill with water. If the Turkish police hadn’t come to arrest them, they would have died. And yet, it felt like no blessing at the time. The officers took their money, their phones, anything of value. They drove Kaweh to the border and left him there. But Kaweh had clung tightly to his UNHCR letter, the paper verifying that a respected humanitarian watchman believed his story. Now he entrusted it and his other papers to a friend; he would send for it after the journey. He knew that his greatest challenge wasn’t the mountain or the sea or corrupt smugglers or hours of tedium and worry. It was the likelihood that the gatekeepers to safety wouldn’t believe.
The next smuggler said, “I don’t send people to die at sea. I use trucks. You won’t know the driver’s destination, maybe Bulgaria, maybe Greece, or Italy. Then I’ll call my local contact to do the next leg. You will advance into Europe. For you, I want England.” England, of course, was more expensive. Kaweh didn’t care. He would request asylum as soon as his foot hit European soil. Whether he became a Bulgarian or Italian or French, he would learn the language and find his way into public service; he would be a scholar and activist for ordinary people, like his hero Ghassemlou.
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Kambiz ran. His studies would wait. One day,