The Ungrateful Refugee Page 6

  ‘It’s the law,’ said his mother, kicking a fallen walnut and stretching her back. ‘He doesn’t want trouble.’

  When they had filled two baskets of ripe apples and autumn vegetables, Kaweh asked, ‘Daye, can I have some money?’

  ‘What for?’ she said, already reaching into her skirt pocket.

  ‘There’s a new thing people are drinking in the square. It makes them burp and say, That’s delicious.’

  ‘Disgusting, Kaweh.’ She laughed and gave him the money.

  That afternoon Kaweh tasted his first Coca-Cola, a brief joy since most of it came out of his nose a few seconds later. ‘It’s like needles,’ he said.

  That was the year the family got their television and discovered Poirot and other dubbed shows on two channels. Every night, villagers knocked on their door to congratulate the family on their acquisition. The congratulations were heartier when there was a football match on. Soon the first washing machine came to the village and fridges began to pop up through the town. The family acquired these things slowly and faithfully and life became more varied and enjoyable. There was time for river hikes and snowy mountain games in their four-season village and Kaweh began to travel to competitions for table tennis and football.

  The prohibition on Kurdish continued to baffle him. He wanted to read the magazines his brothers read. He didn’t want to speak to his teachers in Farsi. Every morning he woke to his father listening to the BBC and Voice of America for the news. That’s how he learned of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), the progressive rebels operating just outside Iran, beyond the Iraqi border, who fought for Kurdish rights and self-rule and whose leaders were regularly hanged in town squares. He had seen preparations of the crane and the gallows, the public announcement: ‘We have arrested so-and-so, a traitor. He will be executed today.’ The regime had declared holy war on KDPI and thousands were slaughtered. Once, a local man was hanged, his feet tied with rope and his body dragged by a car through the town, as a warning against joining the party.

  When Kaweh was eleven, KDPI leader Sadegh Sharafkandi was famously assassinated by Iranian operatives in the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin. Sharafkandi’s predecessor, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, a hero for Kurdish autonomy, had been murdered in 1989 in Vienna. Both men were buried at Père Lachaise in Paris. This second assassination created much noise in Paveh and greater Kurdistan. Did the Iranian authorities carry it out? For years, the story sat heavily on Kurdish hearts until, in 1997, a German court issued an international arrest warrant for the Iranian intelligence minister responsible.

  By the time Kaweh was seventeen, his private anger at the treatment of the Kurds had peaked and he found inspiration and purpose in the stories of his political heroes. One day, Kaweh’s cousin Sattar, a studious boy his age and a known prodigy in math, physics and the Koran, suggested that they run away to join the party and fight for Kurdish rights. ‘Let’s present ourselves. If we’re good, they will send us to Europe to study. We can fight for something good.’ Kaweh agreed. At home, tensions were high. He told his parents he was going away for a week to compete in table tennis and his cousin was going for an academic competition.

  ‘Where is the competition?’ his mother asked at dinner. The boys had agreed that they couldn’t cross into Iraq from Paveh, since everyone knew them there. They chose another border town.

  ‘Marivan,’ said Kaweh, thinking of how little he could carry in an overnight bag and what he’d have to leave behind. ‘I’ll be gone for a week.’

  Kambiz lived in a northern Iranian province close to Kaweh’s. If Kaweh was in the front part of a west-facing cat’s neck, then Kambiz was on its back, due east, in Shomal where people came to hike and ski the Alborz, or swim and eat fish from the Caspian Sea. His mother had spent her life competing with her sister-in-law. Every time that sister’s children brought home an honour or a good grade or a sports win, Kambiz’s mother said, ‘Kambiz jan, you must get into university and make your mother proud. Show us some talent. Don’t shame me in front of my sister-in-law.’

  Kambiz thought maybe he’d become an electrical engineer. He sat in his room and tinkered with gadgets, old phones and radios. He was decent at math, physics. But his mother’s daily pleas exhausted him. Sometimes, he stared at his mother’s spices and thought, ‘Why is it so low a calling to create pleasure out of chicken thighs and a basketful of ground-up roots?’

  At the border, a man told Kaweh and Sattar where to go, what Iraqi village to aim for and where to find the KDPI (they were headquartered in Koy Sanjaq). ‘If you cross tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I can meet you on the other side, in Penjwen.’

  But later that day at the border guards stopped and questioned them. Sattar told them that they were visiting family for a day. When they asked for ‘a sweet’ to wave them through, Sattar pulled out their money. ‘We have to forget about our bags and cross now,’ he whispered to Kaweh. ‘People on day visits don’t bring bags.’

  They crossed into Penjwen. They had only enough to pay for one boy’s travel permits. Since Kaweh looked young, they bought one for Sattar. At the first stop their bus was boarded by Peshmerga officers and Kaweh was arrested. Vowing to find each other, Sattar continued on to Koy Sanjaq. Kaweh spent the next hour convincing the officers that he was just a boy visiting his uncle. He had nothing with him, no money, no clothes. A young Peshmerga said, ‘Come on, he’s a poor kid going to see his family for Nowruz.’

  Hours later, Kaweh arrived at the headquarters. ‘I’m here to join the party,’ he said. Just as he was asking if Sattar had arrived, a car pulled up and out came his cousin. The boys rushed at each other, laughing and hugging. And the man in front said, ‘You are very welcome here.’

  Their early days were spent in screenings and interviews – were these boys sent by Iranian intelligence? Had they thought this decision through? The party members were surprised by Kaweh’s knowledge of Kurdish literature and history, despite his near illiteracy in Kurdish. When the party members were satisfied, the boys spent a month in Acceptance, a room of beds for forty men waiting to enter a two-month course.

  One day, during the waiting period, their mothers arrived and were given ten minutes in a visitors’ room with their sons. They wore black chadors, their faces tear-streaked and flushed. They kissed both boys and listened as two young party members accustomed to the arrival of frantic mothers gave instructions and sat in the corner of the room. ‘We are only present to ensure no party information is exchanged,’ they said – but the boys could decide for themselves. No one was forcing them to leave or stay.

  ‘We looked in all the hospitals in Iran,’ said Kaweh’s mother, wiping her face with her chador. ‘Someone saw you at the border and told us you had probably done this. Just tell them you’re going home.’

  Kaweh shook his head. ‘I’m not going home.’

  Hands shaking, she pinched his leg, squeezing so hard it bruised. No one spoke for a while; they listened as Kaweh’s mother cried, as Sattar’s mother made rational speeches about the good they could do for the party if they had university degrees. After ten minutes, the mothers were escorted out. They telephoned again, demanding to speak to the boys since they were underage. When Sattar took a long call from his father, Kaweh knew his cousin’s resolve was weakening, but he couldn’t go with him. He had political dreams, a drive to be part of something important.

  Sattar returned with the family, crying all the way home. He was accepted for Physics at Kermanshah University. He finished his degree, began his masters, then gave up science to start a chicken factory. He blamed the rigour, claimed he couldn’t keep up, but rumours spread that he had been frightened by assassinations of top scientists working on Iran’s nuclear programme. 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.

  Kambiz met a woman. He met her for tea and thought, maybe some good wi
ll 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. Aubergine and whey. Walnut and pomegranate with chicken. One day, as he cooked, plain-clothed Basijis arrived at his door, accusing him of adultery.

  After a year as errand-boy, Kaweh became a party teacher. His Kurdish improving, he wrote for a newspaper. His first publication, a Chekhov story, was a translation from Farsi to Kurdish. Then he was assigned to a big project, the immortalisation 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 on the mountain. 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 recognise him or to honour 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, handed them to Iranian authorities or 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 tried to sleep away the days. After two years of agonising 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 halfhearted 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, 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 lorries. 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.

  Kambiz ran. His studies would wait. One day, maybe he’d be an electrical engineer. He was good with his hands and this wouldn’t change in a year or two. But for now, he’d be damned if he let them hang him from a crane to soothe a vengeful husband. In the early 2000s, crossing into Turkey was simple enough. A few nights i
n the mountains, or if you’re lucky, a tourist visa. You didn’t take your life truly in your hands until you made that second choice: enter Europe by land or sea?

  At night, the smuggler packed twenty-one adults into the first lorry. The driver gave them instructions for the road, ‘Remain silent. At stops, don’t breathe unless I open the door to give you food.’ Toilet stops were thirty seconds on the side of the roads every ten or twelve hours. Nights passed in silence. Now and then, when they were on a quiet stretch of highway, they could hear the driver talking on the phone with a smuggler.

  They slept for two nights in a destroyed factory, a big, musty ramshackle space. A smuggler brought food enough to survive and new refugees. After two days, the original group walked to a caravan. They rode for a long time, twenty-one squeezing in, filling every foot-space and armrest with their bodies. It was risky riding in a van and they had no idea where they were now – but they were on a quiet road and had no other option. By the next stop, they had been travelling for six days. They hadn’t bathed or changed their clothes and had only been outside at nighttime. They had no papers and they still had no idea where they were.

  Another lorry unloaded them onto a road in a wooded area behind a petrol station. They hid among tall, thin trees that would have given them away in daytime and they waited for the smuggler to call them. They were Iranians, Afghans, Kurds, Pakistanis, even African refugees. Kaweh heard the chatter of other drivers going in and out of the station, saw the signs and the advertisements and decided they were in France or Belgium. Before this stop, the smuggler had always spoken to the driver and the driver always offered his own instructions. ‘You must be silent,’ he would say. ‘If you say anything, we could be discovered.’ But this time, the smugglers were watching the station from a distance, sneaking between trucks and waiting for the drivers to leave their lorries. They signalled each other from the lorry park and the trees, but neither entered the station. Now Kaweh realised that they would attempt this final leg of the journey without the knowledge of the drivers. A single word could give them away.