One day, Ahmad* will tell his son the story that he was never told.
Not the wanderer’s tale that he knows so well, the one marred by hopes
dashed on foreign shores and an endless search for belonging. Ahmad will
not dread the end of this story because borders, papers, and prisons
will not extinguish its light. One day, Ahmad will sit down with his
son, look into those expectant eyes, and smile. Because on that day,
Ahmad will tell his son the story of how they came home.
It has been eight months since Ahmad last saw his wife and son. 1,806
miles stand between them, but on May 5, 2012 it must have felt like
light years. Standing at the front of a small church in the middle of
Athens, Greece, Ahmad was further away from his family than ever before.
A distance measured not by miles but understanding. His wife, Najla,
had understood, even encouraged him when he left Iran seven months
earlier. With nothing more than a backpack, Ahmad had escaped those
borders in search of a foreign land where his son might be more than
just another Afghan refugee. A land that he and his family might call
home. But this was something altogether different. The ground he stood
upon that afternoon was not just foreign. It was forbidden.
Ahmad stepped into the water-filled basin at the front of the dim
sanctuary and it seemed to carry him an ocean away from his family and
the Islamic heritage he had always known. The man awaiting him in the
water smiled warmly as he reached out and clasped Ahmad’s hand. In a
room filled with stillness, the two exchanged soft words and nods with
the water around their waists. And then the stillness was broken as the
man looked at Ahmad and announced to the small group gathered, “Because
of this, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.” As Ahmad’s head slipped beneath the surface, so too did the
small silver necklace he has worn for years, bearing his wife’s
initials. And Ahmad felt the cool water washing away 30 years of a
painful and broken past.
* * *
An
expression of sadness crosses Ahmad’s face as he closes his eyes and
takes a deep breath. That’s how you know he is remembering, sifting
through his past as if dredging polluted waters in search of a few,
precious items. People tend to tie their memories to the anchors of
familiarity and belonging that ground their sundry experiences. But
Ahmad has no such anchors. Ahmad has never known what it feels like to
belong.
“There is this feeling of identity crisis,” explains Ahmad, a solemn
look on his face. “Somehow, I think it will last forever for me.”
Ahmad was just one year old in 1983 when his parents fled the growing
violence in Kabul and resettled in Mashhad, Iran. The Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan created a flood of refugees in the early 1980’s that
filled the dusty roads leading to the borders of Pakistan and Iran.
Ahmad’s parents hoped that Iran might be a sanctuary for all Muslims,
given the country’s recent Islamic revolution. But they were bitterly
disappointed.
With his head held high, Ahmad will tell you today that he is Afghan,
not Iranian. And yet, he has spent less than five of his 30 years
there. Mashhad was no home for Ahmad’s family because the colors of
racial stigma painted a bleak backdrop to that stage of their lives.
They did not belong, the Afghan refugees, and with caustic sneers, the
Iranians would never let them forget it.
“‘Oh look at those Afghans,’ they would say. ‘They stink.’ They would
call us dogs. They still call Afghans that today…that was the identity
they gave us.”
Ahmad cried for two hours on the day his mother was forced to pull
him out of the third grade. It was the day the government cracked down
on immigrants throughout the country, but 8-year-old Ahmad struggled to
understand, watching through windows that seemed like jail bars as
smiling Iranian children walked to class. The blood that made his crying
eyes red also made Ahmad and his family worthless in the eyes of the
Iranian government. It would be years later before he understood that.
But on that day, little Ahmad began to understand the feeling of
inferiority.
Those ten years in the slums of Mashhad left Ahmad anchorless and
adrift. A budding tree with no roots. For a brief time his family moved
back to Afghanistan, but the shadow of violence and ethnic strife
followed them. By the time Ahmad was 13 his family had resettled in the
ghetto of Qom, Iran, a desert city south of Tehran where his family
still lives today.
Ahmad frowns as he remembers his early years in Qom. Those were dark
years, defined by uncertainty. “We never knew what was going to happen,”
Ahmad says with a shrug. “There was no clear policy. We never knew if
or when we would get kicked out.” What Ahmad did know was the feeling of
injustice. Every day, he would pass seemingly carefree Iranian
teenagers as he sprinted to work at the nearby carpentry shop, clutching
his small lunch in a brown paper bag. “Why am I not like them?” he
would ask. “Why me? Why us?” Those were the answerless questions that
weighed on Ahmad every day. “It all felt so unjust. Some Afghan refugees
got used to it, but I never did.”
As a teenager, Ahmad found studying English to be an escape from the
pain of every day life. Perhaps those days and nights he spent studying
were a silent rebellion of sorts, a way to spite the inequitable system
that declared him unworthy of education. But practicing English became
more than just an escape on the day that it led Ahmad to a Christian
chat room online. It was the first time he had ever heard of someone
named Jesus Christ, and Ahmad was intrigued. At the end of the
conversation, the people in the chat room, people on the other side of
the world whom he had never met, prayed for him. That was the first time
anyone had prayed for Ahmad and he never forgot it.
Islam was all Ahmad had ever known; yet somehow, all he knew seemed
wrong. “Muhammad said there is no such things as borders. That we are
all Muslim brothers. But I saw borders. I saw my Muslim ‘brothers’ call
us Afghans dogs.” Ahmad shakes his head with disgust. “By the time I
was 16 I was sure this was all wrong.”
There are many days Ahmad wishes he could forget, but one most of
all. He wishes he had never stepped into that taxi with four Iranian
soldiers back in 2004. He wishes they had never asked him where he was
from as they drove the hour from Tehran to Qom. He wishes he could
forget the terrible things they said to him; the mordant jokes and the
cruel stories. “That drive, it felt like a year to me. They did things I
just can’t tell you about.”
If Ahmad ever had a ‘normal life’ in Iran, it all came to an end in
2006 on the road from Qom to Mashhad. Police checkpoints were common
enough, but they were also dangerous for Afghan refugees, especially
those with no identification. Over and over Ahmad told the police that
he was a legal refugee, but they didn’t listen as they dragged him
toward the vehicle that would carry him to an infamous refugee camp near
the border. “I spent two days and nights there,” Ahmad remembers,
almost as if the thought itself is a bitter taste. “During those two
days and nights I thought a lot about my life in Iran. And I knew I had
to put an end to it. It felt like hell to me.”
When Ahmad was finally able to return home, he knew it was not for
good. But leaving would be costly and for six months he worked to earn
the two million Toman necessary to procure fake documents that would
take him to Turkey, and hopefully beyond. The journey to Turkey was
simple enough, but entering Europe proved a more difficult feat. Three
times, Ahmad tried to pass into Greece, paddling a small raft in the
dead of night toward the nearest Grecian island. And three times he was
caught. The last of which landed him in a Turkish prison for over one
month.
Two options for deportation, that was all the Turkish government gave
Ahmad. And both ended in Afghanistan. Rather than to be left at the
border, Ahmad chose to be flown into Kabul where he knew family and
friends that could help. But it was not family or friends that greeted
Ahmad as he stepped off the plane. It was chaos. A massive explosion
shook the ground before Ahmad had even touched Afghan soil. An explosion
he later found had been a suicide attack that killed 35 people. “I
lived in constant fear of being killed during those two months,”
remembers Ahmad.
But amid the chaos, Ahmad found something else: the love of his life.
He had met Najla once before, but this time was different. Something
blossomed as they stole time together, talking eagerly for hours on end
in her parents’ kitchen. Under Islamic law, it is forbidden for
unmarried males and females to spend time together alone, but that was
of little consequence to Ahmad. “Come what may, I told her. I wanted to
talk to her because I liked her. But she was so scared.” Ahmad
eventually left Afghanistan to return to Iran, but not before Najla
looked into his eyes and promised him that she would wait, no matter how
long it took. Just one year later, Ahmad’s parents traveled to Kabul
according to Islamic tradition, and returned to Qom with the glowing
Najla, who soon after became Ahmad’s wife. The happiness Ahmad felt that
day could only have been surpassed three years later when he held his
newborn son for the first time. Ahmad smiles as he remembers. These are
his treasures.
His son was nearly one year old when Ahmad thought again of leaving
Iran. The notion of his boy living the restless, inferior life of an
Afghan refugee was simply more than Ahmad could bear. “His father grew
up an illegal refugee, his grandfather worked as an illegal refugee and
now he was born an illegal refugee,” says Ahmad, the pain of those words
more than evident. “That was tearing me apart.”
Eight months ago, Ahmad again set his sights on the shores of Greece.
And this time, he found them. The system had changed since 2006, and
rather than deportation, this journey ended on the streets of Athens.
But those streets were not the place of hope and promise that he had
imagined. The illusion of endless opportunity died a quick death upon
the cold, hard ground of Alexander Park, where Ahmad was forced to sleep
for one week. Greece was never meant to be the final destination, but
Ahmad quickly found himself ensnared in a broken system like so many
other refugees. With no papers and no money, the borders of Greece
loomed large.
But Ahmad doesn’t believe it was chance that brought him to Greece.
Nor was it chance that brought him to the doors of the Helping Hands
refugee ministry one day. A hot meal, that was all Ahmad was looking for
the morning he turned into the alleyway in the district of Omonia and
up a flight of concrete stairs that lead to the Christian ministry. Yet
in the small, white-walled entry room at the top of the stairs, he found
something else: a table full of Bibles.
“It was the first time I had been able to just read a Bible without
fearing for my life.” That was when Ahmad began asking questions,
something he had never been able to do within the walls of Islam. And
with joy, the team at Helping Hands answered those questions.
For months, Ahmad kept his new Bible tucked safely away inside his
backpack; a treasure that was still dangerous for him to carry, even in
Greece. During that time, he lived in a crowded flat downtown with other
Afghan refugees. Shaking his head, Ahmad remembers trying to fall
asleep many nights as his radical Islamist roommates talked together
about their hatred for Christians. Little did they know that the sacred
object of their hatred rested mere feet away, beside Ahmad’s head and
pounding heart.
Ahmad continued to study, to search, and to learn. And slowly, he
felt his heart changing, or perhaps coming alive. “The thing that
touched me deeply was when I heard that Christianity was not about a
long list of rules, but about a relationship.” For months, Ahmad
wrestled with the idea and the significance of that relationship. But
one day, he knew he had wrestled enough. It was the day he eagerly
called two of his mentors from Helping Hands to tell them one simple,
beautiful thing: “I decided to put my faith in Jesus Christ.”
* * *
Ahmad emerged from the water with a smile on his face, the small
sanctuary coming alive with cheers and clapping. But they were not the
cheers of his wife and son. As Ahmad stepped out of the large water
basin, he was handed a towel. Not papers of documentation. And after
scores of hugs and handshakes, he stepped back onto the streets of a
foreign city that will never be home.
Ahmad’s journey is far from over. And yet, he smiles now. Because
after 30 long years, Ahmad finally knows who he is and where he truly
belongs. It is a place far beyond the reach of borders, papers, and
laws. A home that no capricious earthly entity can snatch from him; a
treasure of eternal citizenship that he holds with his heart.
But the water in that basin did not change the fact that Ahmad
remains an Afghan refugee; his needs remain real and the road ahead,
uncertain. Ahmad still longs for a country of his own. A flag to wave
with pride and a land that his son can call home. He prays for
discernment as he considers his next steps. He fights for papers that
will validate his name. He clings to the hope that one day his wife and
son will know the joy that he has found in Christ. And above all, he
fights for the day he will see them again.
Because on that day, Ahmad will tell his son the story of how they came home. And with that hope, he presses on. -Ryan
Please pray for Ahmad, that he would cling to Christ and grow in his
faith during this time. Also, pray that Ahmad would have wisdom and
discernment as he prepares for the day when he will tell his wife about
the Lord, that she would have ears to hear and a heart to receive. And
pray that they will be together again soon, in a place they can call
home.
*
For security purposes, the names in this post have been changed
