"The Baha’i Faith is an independent religion that originated in Iran about a hundred and sixty years ago, very widespread; we believe in the equality of the human race, and trying to bring about peace, harmony.
I was born in Iran and I lived there until I was nine years old. I was born in 1977... Due to the religious persecution of many Baha’is in Iran, it’s not a very great lifestyle, you do not have many of the liberties that most of the non-Baha’is have, so it’s quite difficult to live in Iran now and it was quite difficult to live back then. Examples of that are very clear... You’re not allowed to continue your education past high school, you’re not allowed to hold any kind of government job; many of your liberties like even owning a business or a home, aren’t upheld by the courts.
My mom was fired from her job of many years, as a teacher; my brothers, who were in high school, were actually either beaten or followed home and threatened, many times; my father had to quit his job working for the government, and opened his own business.
I have two older brothers, and my parents valued education of their children at a high level, and my eldest brother, when he became of age, at 17 years old, my parents knew he would not be able to continue his education past high school; furthermore, at that time, Iran was in a war with Iraq, and Baha’is who at that point had to be drafted automatically into the military were sent to the front lines, to be killed. It was another way of trying to get rid of the Baha’is. My parents decided to send him out of the country, to get him to be able to be educated. A couple years passed by, and my middle brother was graduating high school and the same thing was occurring; my parents decided that instead of sending another child away they would uproot their entire lives and try to take a risk and see if they could allow their kids an opportunity to be educated...
You are not allowed, if you are Baha’i, (and they know it, because Baha’is proclaim that they are Baha’i, they do not try and hide that fact), to have a passport, and to leave the country for any reason. Therefore, we had to illegally leave the country, and we had to pay many people... It was a very arduous task, and it was very dangerous, it took multiple days, and even after you escaped you had to ask permission to be a refugee in another country...
The escape route at that point was too actually use the desert that is shared between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of us escaped there... Essentially, we spent the first night getting very close to the border, and then they took us, brought us to the middle of the desert, and then we spent one night on the back of camels through the desert, then we spent the next two days being behind a pickup truck, driving through the desert, trying to finally get to a destination where we could actually enter into Pakistan. You could not enter into Afghanistan, they did not accept you as refugees, so you had to go to Pakistan.
There was a lot of policing of the desert, you had to constantly dodge left and right where the police checkpoints would be, many people did get caught, many people did die, not only because of the policing of the borders but also the harsh conditions.
My family and I, day 2 of our escape, we didn’t have any water. Any water that they had for us was in a big jug that was previously filled with gasoline. Anytime anybody would drink the water, they would have to throw it up, because it was mixed with gasoline...
There were multiple occasions when we thought we were not gonna make it, there were occasions when we were caught inside of Pakistan, before we got to the U.N, when the police boarded our train and asked for identification, we didn’t have any, we had to try and bribe them; we did finally get to a safe haven at the U.N... but those stories are quite rare, it happens quite often that you get shot at by the police if you run away, so, you know, we were lucky to make it.
We were in Pakistan for eighteen months. The entire time we lived in one room, me and my brother, and my parents, we had one bathroom, and so we lived a very modest life as you have to, since you cannot work because you are a refugee... so my parents used all the savings they had... Pakistan did not have any persecution of Baha’is, and we were lucky from that standpoint, and there were multiple Baha’is who are Pakistani who would basically put us under their care... We tried to keep a low profile, stay to ourselves, stay with the Baha’i community. We tried to engage as much as we could with the community as possible.
As far as the waiting period, we did not plan, originally, to come to the United States... we were trying to meet my brother who had left earlier from Iran on his own, he was at that that point in Belgium. So we tried to get to Belgium, but they would not allow immigration at that time; we tried to go to Germany, they were not open to immigration either, so the only country that at that point was allowing immigration was the United States, and we thought that would be the best opportunity for us to go somewhere; Living in Pakistan was not very easy, there were lots of diseases that could easily be transmitted as their sanitation was not very good; we were ready to get out as soon as possible, and we were fortunate to be able to get out at the time that we did.
Our route to the US was actually much better than anything else, we came in legally, we got on a plane, and got to the US; we were fortunate that a Baha’i family in Washington DC had sponsored us and through their sponsorship they paid for our plane tickets, and they even housed us for up to a week until we were able to get our ID.
We were lucky enough that we did have some relatives in Texas, who were able to help us out also, essentially after we came to the states we came to Texas because we had some relatives there who were able to help us with finding jobs, and housing us for a long period of time.
My parents did not speak English at all. I did not speak English, I just started off at seventh grade just without knowing anything. My brother did study some English, so he was the one who was the most proficient in speaking it and he actually- well, he was the first one in our family to get a job, he supported us, continuing his education, before we could get on our feet. He was a big factor in us being where we are today.
Transitioning from Iran to the US is difficult to explain to someone unless you’ve experienced it, it’s a cultural shock, there’s the whole language barrier, there’s all these traditions; not only that you’re unfamiliar with but ,you don’t how to interact with people; so those first sixth to eight months, I would say, for me, were really difficult, to try to get acclimated to the environment; I think for my parents it was much more difficult, because they’d spent 45 years of their life in a culture where, well, in culture there’s not many similarities between the Iranian culture and the American culture. So for them, it was by far the most difficult and even today there’s still some cultural things that they still struggle with. They’ve done a great job, but, you know, it’s difficult to adapt to that as an adult.
We were very blessed to have great friends in the Baha’i community, since the beginning, and through them, we’ve been able to get on our feet. We started just like anyone else you would think that was in this country as immigrants, we started off with food stamps, housing that was made specially for us, we worked very hard, my parents worked very hard and we slowly moved our way up in the socio-economic status to where we are today.
There are still Baha’is coming in from Iran, some of them my family members. The situation in Iran has definitely worsened since we left. Everything that I told you about from education, and jobs, is still the same, yet now, the entire country is under great economic stress. The government in Iran finds multiple new ways to try and oppress the Baha’is and try to eradicate them out of their homeland. This problem is not going to go away, with the current regime of Iranian government."
