Armin’s story
I was out on my morning bike ride when they came to my house. I had left as usual about 6.30 to have a bike ride before I left for my work as a teacher. As I approached the house when I came back, I could see three cars outside, and seven or eight people around the door. I hung back, and then my wife text me not to come home. I didn’t know it then, but when I had left home that morning, it was the last time I would see my children. My name is Armn, and I’m …
Zoran’s story
When Zoran was a young boy growing up in Iran, his mum and dad were murdered by the government for their political views. His grandfather raised him in a small, remote village where Zoran got no schooling. Bring Kurdish, Zoran was part of a persecuted minority with little chance of a job. His parents’ deaths marked the start of years of unhappiness and depression for Zoran, and being isolated and persecuted in the village only made things worse. He knew he had to escape. Aged just 16 he left home to search for a safe future with the chance …
Esfandiar’s story
My name is Esfandiar. I’m from Iran, but I’m also a Kurd, so life in Iran was never easy for me. I’m a teacher, but I couldn’t get a regular teaching job in Iran because I didn’t fit the government’s ideas of what a good Iranian should be and do. I wouldn’t spy on my fellow teachers or my students, but the Iranian government tried to pressurise me into doing so by making my life as hard as possible. Because I did not give in, they made it impossible for me to teach in regular schools, so I had to …
Meet Qusay, a student with a bright future
Qusay is a student of Mechanical Engineering at Brunel University in London. He is due to hand in his dissertation this week and hopes to get a First and go on to study for a PHD. The 26-year-old arrived in the UK just over four years ago after a journey from his home in Ahwaz, Iran, which included being shot at, rowing for nine hours across the Aegean, and living in a makeshift tent in Dunkirk for three months. Qusay left Iran at the age of 22 after campaigning for rights for the minority Arab group he belongs to drew …
