“I Wish I Could See my Family Again”

I knew Sohrab even before I started my series on human trafficking and Iranian refugees and asylum seekers. He had studied journalism back in Iran and used to write for a number of outlets, which eventually led the authorities to pursue him for various crimes. He was forced to leave the country and began his asylum-seeking life with a pseudonym in order not to cause his family any trouble. In fact, he did not even let them know where he was, or that he was even alive.

Sohrab was trapped at human traffickers’ places in Greece and Turkey while his family bought him an empty grave in Iran, mourning his death. Even after living the refugee life for seven years, whenever he remembered his family, he cried and would say he had nothing to lose anymore.

He started his journey from Iran alone and when I met him again he was still on his own in a small apartment far away from downtown with his laptop and almost nothing else. His communication was also limited to a few virtual relationships with people who might see his face but didn't know his real identity.

When I arrived at his apartment, he welcomed me warmly, and I spent a few nights at his place. During those nights we usually talked about the asylum-seeking life in Greece until he went to sleep. While sleeping, his hands would type in the air and he whispered unclear phrases I couldn’t quite understand. As I dug deeper into the asylum-seeking world of Greece, I never found anyone lonelier than single men, men like Sohrab. Usually, the priority for handling refugee cases is first with families with children, then married and single women, and at the very end of the list, single men.   

“Write down my age as 30, which is what they have on my documents here,” he told me. “Who cares how old I am? 30 or 33? You can even write 28 years old. During the asylum-seeking life, my body weight decreased to 47 kg from 80. People thought I was a junkie. I lost my health on top of everything else.” I stared into his exhausted eyes. It seemed to me he did not love himself anymore.

Sohrab told me his story. One day in 2011, he was coming back from Isfahan to Tehran. He went to his office, where the doorman informed him that security agents were looking for him. “My life of hell began that day. I got rid of my phone SIM card and the battery. I couldn’t go to my mom’s, since when I called my boss, he told me they would find me wherever I was. So, I decided to live low-key. My first stupid decision was to buy a wig to remain unidentified. I was so concerned about the safety of my family and friends that the same night, I decided to disappear forever.”

For the first few days, Sohrab’s family searched all the hospitals in Tehran. His brother even took a photograph of him to the border and asked everyone if they had seen him. They went to different police stations and courthouses for an update on him and hoped he had been arrested so they could at least know he was alive. After long searches and out of complete desperation, his family then bought an empty grave for him and has mourned his death since. 

Before leaving the country, he lived in Iran, staying hidden away, without notifying anyone of his whereabouts. He had an old friend who was not involved in politics as he had been, and who helped him hide, letting him stay at his place for six months. “I disappeared. No one knew about or had an update on me. I can even go completely dark now just by turning off my phone. I learned how to make myself fully disappear.”

The first 10 days of his disappearance were spent at his friend’s place in a small village north of Iran. “Ten days that I slept with a knife in my hand,” he told me. “I was afraid that they wanted to charge me with espionage and everyone, including my family, would believe them. I did not do anything wrong, but they had already built a case against me. So, I kept a knife with me at nights in order to kill myself if they raided and wanted to arrest me. Dying was better than the scenario they had in mind for me.”

On the twentieth day, he decided to go back to Tehran, but his bank account was frozen, and the ATM took his debit card. He only had $700 and no option but to stay with his friend. Six months passed and, exhausted of hiding, he consulted a lawyer about his situation. The lawyer told him if he got caught, he should expect around 10 years' imprisonment, advising him that it would be better for him to leave the country.

 

The Decision to Leave 

He had no money to hire a human trafficker, so he decided to hit the road on his own. He took his backpack and went to the border at Urmia. He got rid of the wig and shaved his head thinking, “If I get caught at the border, I’ll tell them I’m an Afghan worker, so they will deport me to Afghanistan at least. I had an old friend who had family living close to the border and who were involved in human trafficking. My friend came for me at the bus terminal and sheltered me in his relatives’ place.”

The friend helped Sohrab secure a trip to Turkey with other illegal immigrants five days after his arrival in Urmia. “It was early summer, we walked through many hills and valleys for a few hours, then a van came for us and took us to a Turkish village at the border and took us to a stable. I was there for two days until they sent me on my way to Istanbul.”

The Iranian trafficker introduced him to another trafficker in Istanbul. “In the asylum-seeking interview in Greece, they asked me why I had not stayed in Turkey. I could not [stay] because Turkey felt like Iran. It is also a neighbor country with friendly relations with Iran’s government. I heard that Iranian refugees are not safe in Turkey, so I decided to escape from this feeling of insecurity and headed for Greece by land. I found a group of immigrants who were heading there, and I tagged along.”

People making their way from Turkey to Greece by land must cross a river to get to their destination. Human traffickers take their clients by boat from one side to the other, but Sohrab did not have any money to pay for a boat ride. He hid in a canal close to the river waiting for an opportunity. While he waited, his face and body were constantly bitten by bugs and mosquitos. Since he had heard that it would only take two hours to get to Greece, he only had a bottle of water and two pieces of chocolate. When he saw his opportunity, he hopped on a boat and began to row. “It was a strange moment, I was in the middle of the river sculling as fast as I could, running for my life.”

He had printed out the map of the area in advance of his trip. After 12 hours, he arrived on Greek soil. “I was stranded in Greece for four hellish days,” he said. “I had no water or food. On the third night, I almost died of thirst. I would look for leftovers and rotten fruit near farms. I found a tub full of water and without even thinking dipped my head in and began drinking as much as I could. It was only when I finished that I found out I had drunk water from a cows’ watering place. But I did not care and even filled up my water bottle. Getting ill was better than dying of thirst.”

 

Life in Greece

On the fourth day, he finally reached a small city in Greece, with warm, welcoming people. He said it was if they always expected an asylum seeker to come their way. They fed him and give him a place to rest. After a few hours, he hit the road again, this time getting on a bus to Athens.

Athens was full of immigrants and police officers, and Sohrab was there without any ID or documents. Police sirens are a constant fear for illegal immigrants.“They are just doing their job, they’re police after all. I learned how to deal with them, I asked every single one of them [to show me how to get to an address]. If you avoid them, they’ll suspect you, but if you approach them it will be fine. It does not mean that I did not get scared, you are scared even when you are in your motel room. Sometimes people would rat an illegal immigrant out. So when you hear the police siren in your street, you fear there is a chance they are coming for you.”

Athens is full of stranded immigrants — and hungry human traffickers. After a brief walk in the city. Sohrab found a place for himself, rooming with some Kurd and Arab immigrants. He passed his first six months in Greece in this way, without money or help from a trafficker. But one out of those six months was the worst. “That month destroyed me,” he said. “Since I did not have the full rent, I had to spend a few nights on the streets. Ten euros would have saved me, but I could not ask anyone for that. Even in the place, we had no electricity, no food, no nothing. Everything was solid and dark, like the asylum-seeking life itself. I did not even have a piece of proper clothing to keep myself warm. My food for that month was nothing but bread and water.”

Stress and fear are always with asylum seekers. They are afraid of everything — afraid of losing their place, or of losing food. “If you have nothing else but the ground under your feet, you better to hold on to it tight. You always fear that you might even lose those few inches that you had. Of course there are refugees with decent finances and people who are expecting [to hear from] them, but the majority have lost whatever they had, and no one even cares about them.”

 

Zombie Land

That awful month passed, and Sohrab’s friend sent him 200 euros, which helped him move out of the place without electricity. His friend also introduced him to a human trafficker who was supposed to send him to Italy via sea for 1000 euros. Sohrab, along with 60 other immigrants, stood side by side in a van headed for the port of Igoumenitsa. It was winter and during that season, traffickers charge less. But they didn’t reach the port because police stopped them halfway through their journey. “It was at night They laid us on the ground and handcuffed us behind our backs. They treated us in a way that they treat dangerous criminals, not poor refugees. They kept us on the ground in that cold for more than two hours, I could hear their disgusting insults, which I felt with every cell of my body. They took all 60 of us to a room six meters in size. They gave us 20 servings of food for that many people, which led to a fight breaking out in the tiny room. I immediately went to the door and stood next to it, thinking to myself that if I stayed calm and away from the fight, they wouldn’t touch me and I’d be fine. But as soon as the guards rushed into the cell, they began to hit everyone with their batons — including me. The first guard shoved my face to the concrete wall, which led to a bone in my eyebrow being broken and skin from my face being pulled off.”

Sohrab showed me his left eyebrow, where the scar of the injury was still clear. After beating the refugees, the police loaded them on to a bus and took them to another detention center, which had 10 cells, two people for each cell. Sohrab’s roommate was a Pakistani man who had also been beaten up and was injured. He told Sohrab that they would be able to get some medicine for their injuries from the prison guards, but when Sohrab asked one of them, the guard only looked at him, insulted him, and then ignored his request.

Sohrab’s misery was not over yet. He had more years of struggle ahead. Another bus picked them up from the detention center and dropped off a group of immigrants in front of a building every few kilometers. The bus windows were blacked out and no one could see outside. Sohrab thought they were transferring him to Athens. Then it was his turn to get out. There was a building. At the entrance, they gave him a blanket, shampoo, toothpaste and a toothbrush. Guards made a tunnel for the new-comers to enter. “It was like a zombie land. People were lying on the ground with blankets over them, and others were slowly chasing each other in a circle. I saw a two-story building in front of me and it was then that I found out that it was an actual prison.”

Sohrab spent 18 months in the prison.

According to the European criminal code, any suspect arrested and incarcerated should be formally charged in the first 24 hours of his detention, but no one answered Sohrab’s questions. After 18 months, he was notified that he was being held there on the grounds that he had illegally entered the country. “It was an awful place. I saw people get sick and die in front of my eyes. Hasan, the boy next to me, overdosed on prescription drugs and his liver failed. He was in a coma, and we went on strike, burned our blankets and broke windows until they finally came and took him to a hospital. After three days, police came for his belongings and said he had passed away in the hospital. I had taught him to read and write. It’s easy to die in a camp or a prison. You just need to climb a wall and throw yourself off — as soon as your face hits the asphalt, your misery is over. Your lifeless body will lie there on the ground for a few hours and other refugees will pass by it apathetically. In asylum-seeking, death walks next to you.”

After 18 months, authorities summoned him to the prison office and interviewed him. After hearing his story, they told him he qualified as a political refugee and that he should not be there. “They told me, go take your things, you’re free to go. It was a painful moment. I did not know why they kept me there for 18 months. When they told me I’m free I asked them: can I stay? Where can I go? I had a blanket there, but nothing outside. I had no hope.”

 

Life After Prison

His days in prison were over. One of the asylum seekers from the prison introduced him to another immigrant outside and Sohrab went to their place. He decided to stop moving and to start settling. He wanted to like Greece and forget all the pain he had had to endure. If nothing else, he was looking forward to sleep. According to him, he did not have one single night of sleep during his time in prison.

But before anything, he had to contact his family. He called his mother online — video as well as audio, so she was not only able to hear, but also see, her son after such a long time. The call was nothing but crying for both of them.

I asked him if he regrets his decision to leave. “I don’t regret fleeing from Iran, but I regret not going to see my family before. I did not say goodbye. I never hugged my mother for the last time. I rushed it, I could have paid them at least one last visit.”

He couldn't speak he was crying so much. He had a sip of water and continued: “After the first time, whenever I called I told them I was fine and that everything was all right. It was a lie but it was better than putting them through my misery. My dad’s hair was completely white. They could also see me losing weight and with a skinny face. I avoided having the light on during my calls so they couldn't see my face clearly. I told them I had gained some weight and was now on a diet to lose it.”

Sohrab stood up and took me to his kitchen, where he showed me the cabinets and his pantry full of food. “I have a phobia of hunger now. Now that I work and have some income again, I constantly buy and save food. I don’t fear imprisonment or detainment anymore. Even in prison, life can go on. I’m not attached to anything anymore. I even lost my girlfriend. I have a few online friends whom I talk to, but they are not that important. I don’t mind them being or not being there. I don’t even care about the type of job I’m doing, I do anything, from handing out flyers to people on the street to hard construction work. I have nothing to lose anymore.”

It was already nighttime. I said, let’s go downtown and have a little walk in the city. There was music everywhere and the restaurants were busy. Some tourists were eating kebabs on one side of the road and homeless people were sleeping on the other side of the square. Sohrab saw the scene before him and said: “Nothing surprises me anymore.” I asked if he has any wish in his life. “To see my family once again,” he replied with tears in his eyes.

 

Also in this series: 

The Story of an Afghan Boy Trying to get to Iran

Prison, Asylum, and a Family Torn Apart

From France to Turkey: Human Trafficking and Asylum Seekers