From Iran to Canada: My quest for belonging
I was walking down 23 Avenue in Edmonton, listening to music and holding my head up, just the way I used to do in Kabul. A police car passed by but I didn’t shiver. I didn’t care. I was not scared.
I looked up and saw the grey sky, the horizon and the last remaining splendour of the sun. “Do I belong here?” I asked myself. My answer was “Yes.” There was nothing to say otherwise. I was walking alone at 9:30 p.m. No one was calling my name out loud. No one was demanding that I go back to my country. I was free.
This is how belonging feels. It is having a roof over your head, a job that pays your bills, the freedom to walk down streets at any moment without fear of being called out, or being detained and deported. Belonging means knowing your presence will not be questioned.
I have been living in Canada for eight years and have grown comfortable here. It is a country where my rights are protected, where I am treated the same as any Canadian citizen. I became a Canadian citizen in 2022. That year, while my heart ached for Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban, I was also discovering what it meant to have rights and to have safety.
For the past three years, I have travelled with a Canadian passport, never worrying about visas. I realize now that I have taken this freedom for granted. And for Canada Day on July 1, I want to honour what this country has given me.
Being a refugee is never easy. Sometimes it takes decades, even generations, to feel like you truly belong in a new country. I’ve been a refugee twice. Today, I can say with pride that Canada is my country. It is where I belong.
That pride came into sharp focus during the recent national election, when Canadians had the chance to vote for a party headed by a Donald Trump-esque leader. But they said, “No, merci,” borrowing the words of former prime minister Jean Chrétien who spoke at the Liberal Party convention in March 2025. He said “Canada is the land of freedom, the land of opportunity, the land of generosity, the land of tolerance, the land of stability, the land of rule of law.” I can attest to that as an Afghan refugee who is now Canadian, truly Canadian.
Canada is my home, my country, it is where I now belong and I work every day to contribute to it.
As an Afghan refugee, I know what Canada has given me because I have previously lived as a refugee in Iran and I know very well what it means not to belong, what it means to be unwanted, what it means to be labelled as “illegal alien.”
I was only six years old when my parents fled Afghanistan for Iran. We lived there for almost eight years. Those were the hardest years of my life. I grew up believing I didn’t deserve even the air I breathed. I was made to feel ashamed of who I was. I would be humiliated in the bakery line, waiting to buy barbari bread. Strangers told me I didn’t belong, that I was “nasty,” undeserving of human treatment, and that I should be thankful just to live there.
Eventually, I began to believe them. I internalized humiliation. I believed that shame was part of my identity. I thought of myself as someone who didn’t deserve to live in Iran — a child without a country, without dignity. I was constantly afraid: of being beaten, and of being deported back to a land I didn’t know, a land my parents had escaped.
When my father traveled to visit relatives, he took me with him especially if he thought we might encounter a police checkpoint. “Afghani begir” (catch the Afghan) was a terrifying reality in the late 1990s. My job was to cry if he was arrested, to make the officers pity him. “Cry hard,” he instructed me. And I did. I shivered with fear at every checkpoint.
One day, after visiting my father, who worked as a guard in a fruit garden, my brother and I were walking home. Three young Iranian men stopped us. They slapped my brother across the face. I was shaking, crying, begging for mercy. One of them said, “God had mercy on you because your sister is with you. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have let you go.”
I had just heard about an Afghan boy murdered and burned by Iranian men in the same construction site where he worked. For months, I couldn’t sleep. What if they came for my brother again? At the time, he was my parents’ only son, their only hope. I had nightmares about what might happen to him, to my father, and to me.
I was often chased and harassed by twin boys in our neighbourhood. They were my age, but they wanted to beat me whenever they caught me alone. I was always running, always trying to pass as Iranian. I spoke fluent Persian. I danced to Iranian songs and watched Amoo Pourang. Still, the women at the bakery always knew I was Afghan.
In all the years that I lived in Iran, there was only one person who was kind to me, and that was my literacy class teacher. As an Afghan refugee, I didn’t have the right to go to school, no matter how hard my mother tried and how much tears she shed, or how she begged the school principals to let me sit in a class to just learn how to read and write. They always said no. But finally, my mother found a literacy class that was meant for adult Iranian women. The teacher allowed me and my sister to sit in her class and learn how to read and write. I still remember her skinny, tall face and her black Maghana. Her name was Freshta Arabpoor. She had a daughter named Sepida, who was on the autism spectrum. Sometimes she brought her to class, and I did everything I could to make her happy.
It was in that class I learned to read and write Farsi. I wrote my first piece there: “My Mother, My Country.” It was about my longing for Afghanistan. When I read it aloud, Azam Khanom, Masoma Khanom, and my teacher all cried.
That classroom changed me. For the first time, I felt I deserved to be treated as human. Freshta Arabpoor saw me as a student, not as an Afghan refugee. I dreamed of becoming someone—someone who could one day write to her, tell her how much she mattered in my life.
She never said, “See Afghani, how kind we are to you!” Her classroom was the only place in all of Iran where I was treated like everyone else.
I’ve written letters to her that I never sent. I don’t know her address. I don’t know if she’s still alive. But if she is, I hope this writing reaches her. I want her to know she changed my life and that her kindness helped me envision a future where being an Afghan means being human.
Even now, I feel the trauma of those years in Iran. Whenever I hear news about Afghan refugees in Iran, those memories come rushing back, reopening those still fresh scars.
Since the war between Iran and Israel began, I’ve been glued to the news. One question won’t leave me: What will happen to Afghan refugees in Iran, who are already living at the bottom of society?
The war may have ended, but not for Afghan refugees in Iran. For them, there is always a war. It is not the bombs and shells that destroy their buildings, but the daily erosion of human dignity. It makes you see yourself as undeserving. It makes you justify your oppression. It makes you believe that “Afghan is not human.”
And now, that war has taken a new shape: Afghans being accused of espionage, accused of spying for Israel. Some have been arrested, stripped, beaten, and forced to confess. One student posted a warning on Facebook: Be ready. He and a friend were arrested for simply trying to fix a keyboard. They were accused of working for Mossad.
Another refugee posted that his gym instructor told him, “All Afghans are spies and should be arrested.” An Iranian journalist allegedly claimed there are two million spies among undocumented Afghan refugees in Iran.
The racism is systemic and deep. Even intellectuals, filmmakers, professors, and journalists participate in it. In recent years, I’ve watched as Iranian society mobilizes against Afghan refugees. I fear the worst.
I’ve read pieces calling parts of Tehran “occupied” by Afghans. I’ve read Western-based Iranians who are critical of the Islamic regime yet also claim that Afghan refugees are helping the regime to stay in power and thus are working against the Iranian nation. Do you remember Kobra Rezai, the 26-year-old Afghan woman who was brutally killed and dismembered by an Iranian man? Do you remember Sangali, the day labourer who was picked up by an Iranian man posing as an employer and never returned home? He was killed with stones to the head.
We know these two names because their families had documents and could at least go to the police. But there are untold thousands of undocumented Afghan refugees living in the shadows. Even if they disappear or are killed, their families don’t feel they have the right to report it to the police. They fear arrest. They fear deportation.
I just spoke with my relatives in Iran. I heard the fear in their voices. They feel like every word they say is being listened to. They don’t want to talk. They don’t want to get in trouble. Even the Afghan man whose shop was vandalized, who was beaten with a knife, refused to speak. He said it was too risky. If he talks, they might come for him. They might deport him.
In many parts of Iran, Afghan refugees are banned from renting homes, or even from buying dry bread at bakeries. Businesses display banners saying: “No Afghans allowed.” Yesterday, Iranian authorities announced that all “illegal” Afghan refugees will be deported back to Afghanistan.
It is the Iranian version of a Jim Crow law, implemented by the Iranian government and enforced by ordinary citizens.
I fear the accusations of espionage could be the final sparks to ignite a perfect storm of mass deportation and starvation.
I don’t know where my teacher, Freshta Arabpoor is. But I know that today, she would likely be punished for allowing an Afghan girl into her classroom. Still, I believe there are others like her in Iran, people who risk everything to stand up for human rights and dignity. I hope they survive, and that through their kindness and compassion, they help transform the racist face of Iran.
Zahra Nader is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times.
