My life as a journalist in Afghanistan became impossible due to the threats I received from the Taliban. In the spring of 2022, I sought refuge in Iran. Despite being searched multiple times by the Taliban after their return to power, the horror of their last search at the Islam Qala border crossing is still vivid in my mind. They meticulously searched all my belongings, looking for incriminatory documents by which they could arrest me. However, I had lost all my essential documents, even my laptop, during the Kabul airport explosion in August 2021 when thousands were trying to flee the country. The Taliban inspector carefully examined my voice recorder, the only souvenir from my journalism days, and asked, “What is this?” I replied it was just a simple recorder gifted to me by a friend. I am taking it with me as a memory of him.
After two intense hours of inspection, I managed to free myself from the clutches of the Taliban officials. I took a deep breath. My wife was terrified and trembling. Later, she told me that if I had fallen into the hands of the Taliban, she wouldn’t have known how to cope with such a dire situation. The queue and document verification on the Iranian side of the border wasn’t as challenging. Even looking back at the direction of my own country was terrifying for me.
Actually being a refugee is the most challenging part of a refugee’s life, and it is even more challenging if the sanctuary is in Iran or Pakistan. Seeking refuge from the threats of the Taliban and other extremist groups is like moving from the rain, only to find oneself under the shelter of a leaky gutter in a neighbouring country. While attempting to escape one set of dangers, a new set of harassment and humiliation emerges in the unfamiliar territory.
I have attempted to report on the situation of Afghanistan’s refugees and migrants living in Iran several times but haven’t succeeded due to the unwillingness of anyone to be interviewed. The environment of repression in Iran, they fear what could happen if they were identified. On October 7, 2023, 60-year-old Sang Ali walked toward a crossroads near his home in Golshahr, Mashhad, and then vanished. The refugee from Afghanistan was last seen carrying a pickaxe and shovel. Though an Iranian man had taken him to work that day, Sang Ali never returned home. Two days later, Ali’s anxious family goes to the Golshahr police for assistance. They ask the police to investigate Ali’s disappearance, but are told that he may have gone to work in a distant place. The police advise them not to worry.
The old man’s son receives a photo of his father and a person who hired him from surveillance cameras and shares those images on his Instagram profile with a request for any information on his father’s whereabouts. He hears nothing for 20 days until he learns through social media that his father has been murdered.
Mashhad police had used surveillance footage to discover Sang Ali’s body in a ruin near a vineyard. They arrest a man for his murder. Still, Ali’s son either doesn’t want to or cannot speak to the media, which means that the truth effectively stays hidden.
Last fall, I witnessed a muscular man aggressively bothering a refugee boy when I went to a nearby store to buy groceries. “Why did you park your car in front of my store?” the store owner raged, even after the boy politely apologized. The relentless curses of the Iranian left the boy upset. With sorrow-filled eyes, the boy lowered his head and moved his car away from the man’s store.
Even after the store owner slapped the poor boy, no one dared to stop him from venting his anger. It seemed that such incidents had become commonplace for the migrants and refugees. They are insulted and abused everywhere: on buses, subways, parks, etc. When I shared this incident with my family, my father said that he had not gone to the park for several days because a few Iranian youths had laughed while they beat an old immigrant man with a stick.
These incidents are not rare. One day, I was talking to a refugee worker in a furniture manufacturing company. I’ll call him Jawad. He told me about a refugee colleague of his who was in prison. His family was trying to raise 330 million tomans in ransom money to get him freed. When I asked why his friend had been imprisoned, he said, “The employer of the place where we were working owed us money: my share was 10-12 million tomans, while my friend was owed four million tomans.” When Jawad and his friend tried to get the money, the conversation turned into an argument and then a fight. “In the end, blows were exchanged, and they beat my colleague, and my colleague also beat one of them. We both filed complaints with the court, but the complaint of the Iranian employer reached the court, and my colleague’s complaint did not,” Jawad said. To pursue the legal proceedings, the lawyer asked for 120 million tomans – 60 million at the beginning of the case and 60 million at the end of the trial. “Unfortunately, we did not have such a sum,” said Jawad.
*Farhad is a pseudonym for a refugee reporter in Iran.
