Cruelty Runs the Register, Civilization Stocks the Shelves

How I rediscovered my love of civilization and industry when I was a victim of injustice

I woke up. The tattered Persian carpet scratched against my bare feet. Through the narrow window, I saw the familiar gray cement houses and the weathered brick dome of the local mosque. I felt nothing—no panic, no despair. Just resignation. This nightmare had become an old routine.

"Yeah, I’m dreaming again," I whispered to the stale air. The dream followed its familiar script. My fingers traced the rough wooden edges of my childhood desk as I rummaged through its drawers, searching for what I knew wouldn't be there. I upended my bag, scattering its contents across the floor, then dropped to my knees to peer beneath the carpet's frayed edges. The dust made my nose itch.

"Mom," I called out, my voice deliberately flat, "I need to go. Have you seen my EU residence permit?"

She appeared in the doorway like a ghost. Her hair looked sparse and frizzy as usual around her hollowed face, making her look decades older than her thirty-nine years. Deep lines of depression etched the corners of her eyes and mouth.

"I don't know..." Her voice trailed off, threaded with that familiar sadness. "You just came back to Iran last night and didn't say anything."

I closed my eyes, pressing my palms against my temples. "Don't be fooled," I whispered to myself. "You've seen this a thousand times. It's just a dream."

The air of years of domestic violence hung heavy in my parent’s apartment. I felt the need to get out. I started walking the familiar streets of my hometown. Each corner held a memory that seemed to come from a much darker universe. In this narrow alley, I once watched a man slash a younger man’s chest after a traffic accident, the victim’s blood flowing into the cracks of the neglected asphalt. At the intersection stood the police kiosk, with its green and white sign reading “Moral Safety Police.” I remembered how my friend had been detained here for the crime of wearing a denim jacket.

"My friends!" I thought bitterly, "Now that I’m here, I should at least call my friends." But when I dialed their numbers, only silence answered. I started walking to one of my friends’ homes. But before I could knock on the door and announce my return, something cold held me back. Four years had passed since I'd last seen their faces. I didn't want to learn whether they'd been smuggled out of Iran or had chosen a more permanent escape.

“Khashi! Ayda! Bita! Where are they now? How can I survive a day in Iran without them?!” I started to shake. The panic, when it finally came, crashed over me like a wave.

I woke again, this time truly awake, my body drenched in cold sweat that made my thin t-shirt cling to my skin. My eyes darted frantically around the unfamiliar room—barely four by ten feet, with walls so close I could touch both sides if I stretched out my arms. A small wooden table. A flimsy plastic chair. A green suitcase propped against the wall. A tall window that let in a sliver of gray winter light.

Nothing familiar. Nothing to reassure me.

I leapt from the bed, my bare feet slapping against the cold floor as I rushed to the window. The architecture outside was different—the roofs were brown, and windows looked gothic. But this didn't console me. I threw the window open, held the ledge, and extended my torso outside, searching for more signs–anything that would tell me where I was.

Then I saw it. A billboard across the street. The image hit my head before the words could: a woman without a hijab, her hair neatly falling around her smiling face. I exhaled a shuddering breath, my head slumping.

"Poland," I whispered. "I'm still in Poland."

I looked at my phone: January 5th, 2022. Five days since my legal status had evaporated, turning my residence permit from a shield into a worthless piece of plastic. For two months, I'd been suspended in limbo, waiting for the US Embassy in Warsaw to approve my exchange visa. The visa for which I had fought so hard. Now it was a race against time—would the US Embassy process my papers before the Polish immigration would order the police to find me? My future balanced on a knife's edge between America and Iran—between life in America and death in Iran… I couldn't bring myself to continue the thought.

Just a week ago, on Christmas Eve, I had been thrown out of my previous apartment. The memory clouded my mind like an irritating kind of smoke: my Polish roommates, a girl and a boy, in their early twenties. The boy’s face twisting with undisguised disgust that night when he first saw me. Hatred had radiated from him like heat from a furnace. From day one, he'd refused to shake my hand or acknowledge my greetings, treating me as though I carried a virus.

One morning, I'd walked out of my room to find soil scattered across the bathroom. Soil, as in dirt from the nearby park, was scattered inside. A minute later, a text from my landlord with the picture of the mess, forwarded to him by my roommate. He said that I needed to vacate the apartment immediately.

"It wasn't me!" I'd protested, incredulous. “Why do you think it was me?”

"Who else?" he'd replied in an instant. "You're the only Muslim in this apartment."

I had been an atheist for 12 years, but I’d long ago given up correcting people when they called me a Muslim. To the Poles (just as to the Iranians), Islam wasn't just a religion—it was something written in my genes, stamped on my face, woven into my very existence.

When I pointed out that his demand was illegal, he laughed—a smug, knowing sound that made my stomach clench. "Go ahead," he said, "you really think Polish courts will side with a foreigner over a Pole?"

The next morning, when he broke into my room and began hurling my clothes out, I couldn't risk calling the police. I only had five days left on my residence permit, and couldn’t risk involving the authorities. I just packed my things and sought refuge in the train station. The snow on the pavements outside came up to my knees.

What surprised me most was how empty that memory left me now. I had spent a week sleeping in the maintenance room of my former university’s dorm, cockroaches and rats touching my skin in the darkness. I had become a mug filled to the brim with trauma, so full of fear that nothing seemed to scare me anymore. Dark thoughts washed over me without any reaction from me.

I shook my head, forcing myself back to the present. Despite everything, I had something to celebrate. After days of homelessness, I now had a roof over my head. It was a small miracle borne of a rare act of humanity. Yesterday, I'd found a landlord who had signed a lease with me even after I showed him my passport, tiredly telling him: "I’m from Iran. Are you still going to sign the lease?"

He had looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen in months. An expression that suggested my origin was as irrelevant to him as the color of my socks.

"Are you a student?" he'd asked simply.

"Yes. I have a bachelor's in Economics from a university here,” I’d replied, hurriedly showing him a picture of my diploma.

He'd nodded once. "Okay. That's all I need to know."

In that moment, I would have wept if I'd had any tears left to shed. After seeing hundreds of rejections from landlords the moment I revealed my nationality, I'd found one who didn't care where I was from—who saw me as a person rather than a nation. It was a small act, but in my current state, it felt monumental.

He was the kind of person I’d imagined I would find everywhere in Europe. Why were people like him so rare?

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the small shared bathroom. My shoulders were coiled with tension, facial muscles sagging, dark circles beneath my eyes, bruise-like signs caused by stress and fatigue.

This wasn't the life I had envisioned when I escaped Iran five years ago. At fifteen, living under a religious dictatorship, foreign countries—especially Europe and America—had shimmered in my imagination like cities made out of light. I thought they were bastions of benevolence and civilization, places where freedom wasn't a luxury but a birthright.

I remembered the infinite power the enthusiastic 18 year old me had. I had escaped Iran by myself, carrying nothing but determination and an unshakeable belief that freedom was possible. They didn't allow Iranians into America and Europe? I didn’t accept no for an answer—I took the only path available and reached East Asia. Labor laws made it illegal for me to work? It is what it is—I sold myself to a human trafficker to get to Europe. EU laws didn't permit me to move to Western Europe? No problem—I stayed in Poland. They would deport me if I didn't pay my tuition? I’ll stay out of Iran by any means necessary—I did everything my trafficker demanded to earn that money. For four years, I had been a sex slave, enduring horrors I still couldn't fully process. I had done it all like a soldier following orders, yielding to anything—just a chance to live free.

Six months ago, I had thought I finally had that chance. Some like-minded Americans I had made a connection with online had helped me secure an invitation to the University of Texas—a golden opportunity to escape Poland and build the future I had dreamed of. But even that had been snatched away. Because of my Iranian passport, the US Embassy moved with glacial slowness, processing my visa application at a pace that seemed designed to crush hope. There was nothing anyone could do to accelerate the process. I probably wouldn't be alive long enough to receive the visa when it was finally ready. It was a tragic comedy—like a soldier winning a battle only to trip on his own sword and die on the way home.

Did life have to be this impossibly hard? Why couldn't the world be a better place? It seemed I had been fundamentally mistaken about the nature of the Western countries—the world of my childhood imagination simply didn't exist.

My brain started drawing blanks. “I will just relax today,” I decided, I would snatch a small pleasure from the jaws of despair. I would treat myself to a chocolate muffin.

I ventured out into the unfamiliar neighborhood, the fourth I'd called "home" since arriving in Warsaw. In each, the reception had been the same: pursed lips and hostile stares that followed me down streets and into shops. Poland's message to foreigners like me was abundantly clear: we were not welcome. Each year, demonstrations filled Warsaw's streets with chants of "Clean blood" and "Europe will stay white." I still remembered seeing the banner that had greeted me shortly after my arrival in 2018, stretched across a bridge in Poznan: "Pray for Islamic H*locaust."

In 2015, Germany responded to the Syrian civil war by opening its doors to over a million refugees. Chancellor Angela Merkel declared, “Wir schaffen das”—we can do this. But the backlash was swift, especially in Hungary and Poland. Poland, with hardly any non-white immigrants, positioned itself as the anti-Germany—a Christian, right-wing stronghold. The country’s leaders refused to accept even a single “Muslim” refugee. Many Poles reacted with fear and hostility to the presence of the new. That same unjustified hatred extended to me, even though I wasn’t Syrian, wasn’t Muslim, and wasn’t asking for anything. I was simply there—and that, to them, was too much.

When I'd worked at a bank in Warsaw's financial district, my Polish colleagues had refused to speak to me or even sit near me. One of my colleagues in particular—a woman named Maya– had complained daily that I smelled of curry—a food I hadn't eaten in years.

The bakery that made my favorite chocolate muffins was a franchise called 'Lubaszka' (pronounced Loo-Bash-Ka). I stood outside the nearest branch, hesitating for a moment. It was my first time entering this store, and I was afraid they wouldn't react well. Customers came and went. My stomach growled with hunger. I squared my shoulders, forced my lips into a smile, and pushed open the door.

Two middle-aged Polish women staffed the store—one heavyset with arms like rising dough, the other thin as a broom. The skinny one leaned against the counter, one hand on her hip, laughing with her colleague. When the bell above the door announced my entrance, her laughter died. She tapped her coworker's shoulder and said something in rapid Polish, jabbing a finger in my direction.

The heavyset woman turned, side eyeing me without bothering to face me directly. I widened my smile, tapping into my carefully practiced Polish: "Good morning. Can I have one chocolate muffin, please?"

She remained frozen, muttering something in Polish that sounded like a protest to her skinny colleague. Then, with deliberate slowness, she shuffled to the sweets section, hesitantly plucked a chocolate muffin with waxed paper, and dropped it into a bag, which she held close to her, as if not wanting to part with it.

"Can I pay with card?" I asked, still in Polish, my voice steady despite the humiliation burning in my chest.

Silence. I stood there, trapped in the excruciating moment, my smile now a grimace. The skinny woman finally stepped forward with an irritated huff, typed it in the register, and pointed at the card reader. After I paid, she grabbed the muffin bag from her colleague's hand and threw it at me with undisguised contempt.

Before I could catch it, the bag tumbled to the floor. The muffin rolled out, coming to rest against the dirty tile.

I bent down slowly, picked up the muffin, and keeping my gaze to the floor, walked out without a word.

Humiliation burned through my body like liquid fire, dissolving my earlier attempts at positivity. I felt like a wounded wolf, teeth bared against a world that seemed determined to bring me to my knees. This incident wasn't even the worst treatment I had received in Poland—not by a long shot. But sometimes a small incident can finish a wounded person, just like a single straw can break a camel's back. It was an embarrassing reminder that the incident with my previous landlord wasn't an anomaly, that I should expect mistreatment in every corner of this country. Every cell in my body screamed that I couldn't deal with people anymore, that the entire world had conspired against me, that life was impossible in a place where even the air seemed hostile to my breathing.

My mind tallied every grievance against this society—from seismic to microscopic. Not even the decimal points were neglected in this brutal accounting.

That day on the bus when a mother had physically placed herself between me and her toddler to block our innocent exchange of smiles and waves. The afternoon a bald Polish man had charged at me in a crowded intersection, throwing me to the ground while passersby simply diverted their paths around my sprawled body, not one stopping to help or even acknowledge my existence. The countless times cashiers had abandoned their posts the moment it became my turn in line. The humiliating memory of having my pockets searched before being ejected from a small grocery store. The night a security guard had called the police because I'd been walking in a park at 10 PM, seeking air and space after yet another assault from the politically-connected businessman.

And the sum grew so enormous that hatred ignited in my blood, a flame that started to consume everyone, starting from that bakery.

I started putting the puzzle pieces together. The "West" I had idealized for so long was nothing but a carefully constructed lie, built on cruelty, exclusion, and exploitation—a Christian equivalent of Iran.

Yes–there were better people. Not everyone was okay with the injustices perpetrated against me. I had met some of them. But they were a hopeless minority—a diminishingly rare species—with no power to stop injustice.

My body was filled with disgust and loathing. Feeling myself pitted against great unjust powers, I wished the whole earth would burn down to ashes.

Deep in this whirlwind of doom, my stomach growled again. I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning. I looked down at the muffin clutched in my hand. I wanted to throw it away, but I was too poor and hungry to do that. I angrily tore off the top part where it had touched the floor, and took a wild, angry bite into its center.

The complexity of flavors stopped me in my tracks. The muffin's exterior was perfectly toasted, creating a delightful contrast with the moist interior. At its heart lay chocolate goo, balanced between sweetness and bitterness with mathematical precision. Every element was calibrated for pleasure—a small bit of beauty in an ugly world.

The sensation of taste overwhelmed my fury. "This muffin's really delicious!" I admitted to myself with incredulity.

When I tried to imagine the recipe's creator, the image of Remy from (my favorite movie) "Ratatouille" appeared in my mind. In an instant, it reminded me of the genuine love and the messy experimentation it takes to create good food. The countless hours of trial and error, the passionate dedication to the craft.

I could almost hear Remy’s words. The words I had listened to hundreds of times since childhood: “I know I’m supposed to hate humans. But there’s something about them… they don’t just survive, they discover, they create. Just look at what they do with food!”

That thought made the muffin feel profoundly human. I couldn't find it in my heart to hate whoever had crafted the recipe. Whoever they were, I was thankful to them for having made such a perfect cake. As if they had personally done me a favor, as if they had made this specifically for me in some parallel universe where kindness was the default.

I looked at the wrapper that was in my hand, swept clean of all signs of the muffin. It read “Lubaszka.” I felt a sense of gratitude to the store. The two racist shopkeepers seemed to me very goofy and small. Even with all their virulent racism, the muffin still had landed in my hands—not even because of any laws, but because the owners of Lubaszka didn’t allow their employees to turn peaceful customers away.

I remembered how in Iran, most shops—from the baker to the butcher—routinely threw customers out of their store based on something as trivial as gossip about them having a girlfriend or a boyfriend. But that wasn’t happening here, despite everything else.

Lost in my thoughts, my body moved on autopilot to my next destination: a chain grocery store called "Biedronka." Inside, I mechanically selected my dinner: a loaf of bread and a pack of boiled potatoes in a salt and rosemary brine. They added up to 1.5 złoty. Approximately thirty cents. That was all I could afford.

I marveled at how cheaply I was surviving, subsisting on such simple food. If this potato had cost even a few cents more, I would have had to grow my own.

How much would it cost if I had to make my own bread and grow my own wheat, rosemary and potatoes from scratch?

I recalled a concept from my first-year economics class: economies of scale. Without the coordinated efforts of hundreds of thousands of people working together to produce this simple potato brine—farmers, truck drivers, factory workers, store clerks—my dinner would have cost far more than I could ever afford.

I felt myself standing at the edge of a tremendous realization. I could either turn away from this uncomfortable truth or face the undeniable fact that the same Polish society that had mistreated me so grievously, had also enabled me to survive and fight another day.

I turned to look at the store again, really seeing it for the first time. The sight genuinely shocked me: water bottles, snacks, fresh produce, medicine—everything necessary for human survival arranged in neat rows, available and affordable. In Iran, most of these items were either unavailable or imported at prices that put them beyond reach of ordinary people. Yet here they were, cheap and accessible to anyone who entered the store—including me, a foreigner whom many wished would simply disappear.

The times before that, I had cursed the country for taking my right to work away, forcing me to survive on a dollar a day. But now, I realized how they were also making it possible for me to survive on so little.

“And that’s supposed to wash away what they’re doing to you?!" the angry voice protested, with another flash of the traumatic memories, feeling the weight of the injustices in my throat.

No. I wasn't going to whitewash or forgive anything. The injustices I was suffering were severe enough that they should have ended my life by now. The system had tied my hands behind my back, kicked the chair out from under my feet, and left me to starve.

But… I was still alive…

I was proud of only myself for surviving it for five years. But then, I realized the fact that I was still breathing—was also evidence of the virtues of civilization.

As monstrous as immigration laws were, I was alive because I made $200 a month on the internet, enabled by tech companies, millions of under-sea cables, global banking networks, and laws that provided enough stability for them to exist. As inhumane as racism was in Poland, I was still alive because millions of Polish people cooperated to make healthcare, purified water, and potato brines cheap enough that even I could afford them. As soul crushing as rape was, I was still inspired to live because of the uplifting choreographed music I listened to, produced and transmitted to me by the work of millions of people in different continents.

In a pre-internet world, or in a society where fertilizers were less abundant, or if prices had remained as expensive as they were during the pandemic, I would have simply died.

No, this wasn't about stopping to "smell the roses" or finding silver linings in suffering. This was the recognition that I wouldn't have survived if the world was even slightly less abundant. I was a marginal survivor, clinging to life by the thinnest of threads. In a world just a little less productive, a little less interconnected, the injustices I was enduring would have successfully claimed my life.

I looked at the people around me with new eyes—individuals going about their daily routines, heading to jobs, contributing to the vast machinery of civilization. I felt an unexpected surge of gratitude toward them, not for any personal kindness, but for their participation in systems that created abundance.

They were countering the evils they’ve done to me by going to work everyday.

They were countering the evils they inflicted on me simply by going to work every day, by being productive members of society, by maintaining the infrastructure that kept me alive despite their conscious or unconscious cruelty.

I was beginning to recognize the strange duality of the world that cushioned the devastating blow of systems as evil as immigration laws and institutional racism.

Which force was more powerful—the things that were broken and evil about Poland and the West, or the things that were functional and life-sustaining? The fact that I was alive proved that good was more powerful in the world than evil.