I Spent Seven Years in Search of Freedom

My life's story, condensed in one article

Outliving Iran’s new logo. Courtesy of Joey, my husband.

My name is Pouya. I’m twenty-five years old, and I live in Austin, Texas. I escaped Iran by myself when I was eighteen. It took me seven years to reach freedom, four of which I spent being forced to live as a slave.

Part I: The Motherland

My mother entered the apartment. “Damn how hot it is!” She said as she threw her belongings on the floor, and started unwrapping the layers of black cloth she was wearing, fanning herself with a file in process. When she was done, I picked it up. It was from an Obstetrician. A pregnancy report. The moment I read it my heart dropped and my tongue became heavy.

“Wha… What have you done? This is Iran!”

There are not many places on earth worse for living than Iran. Iran has been a war zone since 1979. Anyone born in it is cut off from the entire world. The Islamic militias have been taking over everything, building after building, industry after industry, and turning them into weapons for war. For ordinary people, just having enough to eat was a constant challenge.

The problem in Iran was not poverty; it was that everyone was forced to live traditionally, according to the Islamic way of life. Everything new was hated, villainized, and criminalized. Be it a new idea, or a new shirt. Everything old and rooted in our Islamic tradition was deified.

We had detailed traditions about everything: from exactly how to dress, to how to parent, to how to enter a bathroom. They weren’t mere ceremonies to us; anything that clashed with tradition had to go. Anyone who violated tradition had to be punished. Every aspect of our lives was dominated by our Islamic tradition.

Western technology, art, fashion… anything that clashed with our Islamic identity was forbidden. “You are a Muslim. Muslims live by Islam, Christians live by Christianity.” That was said to me many times by my parents, teachers, and Mullahs.

But I always felt that they were wrong. To me and my friends, the West felt different in a fundamental way: Westerners did not live for their traditions; they lived for themselves. They shaped their lives themselves. They weren’t afraid to be different. They wanted to take risks, experience joy, and make something of themselves.

Since watching Ratatouille at the age of nine, I wanted to break away from my country and shape my own life.

I wanted to escape more than anything else in this world. But the visa laws were such that escape was impossible but for the top 1% richest Iranians.

I was worried about the soon-to-be-born baby’s future.

I was fourteen when he was born. I fell in love with him the moment he held my finger with his little hand. According to family traditions, my parents regularly deprived me of food and belongings, neglected my needs, and punched me for looking at them, calling it “discipline.” I couldn’t let them do the same to my little brother. I stepped in and raised him in their place. Our bond deepened. I cared for him like a father, made him a hammock to help him sleep, prepared his food, and played with him for years. In his behavior, in his big innocent eyes, I could tell that he loved me more than his real parents. He saw me as his hero. And I still think he was the most beautiful child in the world.

No one else around me read books, tinkered with computers, and could speak English. The more I grew up, the more I felt the need to escape Iran’s crushing atmosphere. I didn’t care to spend my whole life in Iran. I decided that I was going to escape, or die trying. I insisted, begged, and bribed my way into being allowed a passport, and a visa. I was both very invested and extraordinarily lucky; the visa officer took pity on me. Despite not being financially qualified, she allowed me to slip through the cracks. I got a visa. I was the only one I knew who was able to do so.

I didn’t want to leave my little brother in a sinking ship of a country named Iran. My parents didn’t want him. I wanted to give him a chance at life, to carry him to safety with me. I wanted to be the eighteen-year-old boy escaping a war zone with his four-year-old brother on his shoulder. But there was no visa for him. He felt like my own child. Saying goodbye to him was the hardest thing I have done in my life.

Part II: I Escaped

I escaped Iran. My first and only legal option was South Korea. My plan was to move to the US or Europe after graduating from a Korean university. I sold everything I had and left Iran with $500 in my pockets. I was awestruck by how good life outside Iran was. I felt myself on a different, futuristic planet. I was ready to start a new life, to work and study, to fulfill my ambition, to become an inventor.

Very soon, I realized that legally, I wasn’t allowed to work or study because of my place of birth. I could not believe that my dream was over. People were so rich. There was so much food in the restaurants. But my money was spent, and barred from finding a job, I began eating once every two days.

I roamed the streets and asked people for help; for food, for a coat to keep me warm from the blowing Siberian winds. Almost no one helped. I couldn't beg. I could be deported if seen begging. I became thin and sickly, caught the flu, and was coughing up blood. I had nothing and could not go to a hospital without being identified as a welfare recipient and sent back to Iran.

I lived in a 6x6 feet cubicle room. I was about to be evicted soon. I had to do something, I thought. But I couldn’t lift my legs. I must yell for help, I thought, but couldn’t make a single sound. I must call 911 (119 in Korea), I thought, but I did not have a sim card in my phone.

"This is it,” I thought. “I'm going to die in this cubicle.” But I remembered my dream, why I escaped Iran in the first place, the life I wanted to live. I had to move. With excruciating effort, I got myself to the nearest pharmacy. The pharmacist was a middle-aged Korean lady. She told me that I needed to go to the hospital now, but I insisted not to. The medicine she gave me was $30, but I only had $10 in my pocket. She looked at my eyes and understood. She gave me the medicine for free. I bought my last food with that $10.

Noticing my poor condition, a European man approached me on the streets. He started touching me inappropriately. He called himself a philanthropist. He bought me food. Expecting to find a bum, he was surprised by my intelligence. He offered to help me. His plan was to enroll me in a university in Poland and arrange a visa through his connections at the embassy.

I did not know what he wanted in return. I thought he wanted sexual favors. I was worried that he might also want to harvest my organs.

I thought of seeking asylum in Korea, but learned that they don’t give work permits to asylees. I thought of staying and working illegally, but I learned about the horrific conditions of illegal workers. I met a 23-year-old who had been staying illegally. His name was Ismail, and he had come from Malaysia at 18 after his parents died. His life was not easy. He was regularly trapped by his employer in the illegal factory, where he worked. His hand was broken, and he had a herniated disc from moving heavy objects, but he could not legally go to a doctor.

I knew that if I were sent back to Iran, I would have no chance of escaping again. After a few weeks, it became clear that it was either Poland or starvation for me. Out of desperation, I accepted the philanthropist's offer, and hoped for a better future.

Part III: Hands Tied

I made it to Poland. I was in the European Union. “There’s nothing stopping me from running away from that creep now!” I thought. I considered Germany, France, or the Netherlands. The philanthropist told me that escape wasn’t an option. I wasn’t inclined to believe him, until I Googled the laws myself: The deportation laws… the Dublin convention… The crushing realization hit me: he had calculated this. And I had no choice but to do what my captor wanted.

He was a 48-year-old wealthy businessman with a wife and many children. Since he was paying for my student visa, he could send me back to Iran anytime he wanted by refusing to pay my semester's tuition. I wasn't legally allowed to work, and he was my only source of food. He had me cornered and grabbed me in a chokehold. I had to do whatever he said.

He started with a simple request: lie still on the bed. I was hurt; I was bleeding. It was my first time, and I didn’t know what was happening. He kept asking for more and more, day after day. I became numb. Soon he rented a separate apartment and asked me to move in with him as a maid. Then he made me pretend like I enjoyed it. He treated me like his chattel. He got rid of my belongings and made me use his. Then he increasingly resented me for taking his money and got violent.

A few months in, I wasn’t able to recognize myself in the mirror anymore. My bones were protruding. My cheeks were hollowed. My limbs jittered. My voice was nervous, and my posture was curved and broken. My body was perpetually ready for a blow. I always imagined myself abroad with a confident posture, a lab coat, or a tailored suit. Not this! I did not escape Iran to be enslaved by an old European man.

He had a logic behind his actions. He said that I don’t belong in Europe, that my being there was a privilege that he had afforded me. Therefore, he felt justified in treating me anyway he wished.

He yelled and kicked me to the ground anytime he saw a crumb of bread on the floor. I was shaking in fear when the clock got close to 6, frantically double-checking for the smallest speck of dirt on his spotless bathroom. I used to eat multiple times a day on a table, but now ingested one meal a day on the balcony like a rat. If I failed a class, he got angry like a beast. I used to be interested in my major, but I studied because I was afraid. Fear had seeped into my bones.

I feared him with every cell in my body. He started enjoying it. He punished me for no reason. I dread that dark bedroom, but I had to enter it with a smile. We both knew what was happening, but I had to pretend as if I was in love with my master. Sometimes when he got drunk, he would tell me: “Pouya… I’m raping you. The door is open. I would escape if I were you.” But I had nowhere to go. It was not him who had tied my hands and kept me there against my will, it was the laws.

Part IV: “Be grateful”

After two years of abuse and dependence, the government produced a card allowing me to work. I secured a job in Europe's 2nd largest bank. That was the only job offer I got. With the skills I learned at the university, I worked as an accountant for the bank’s derivative trades in the stock market. I worked in a high-rise in the city's financial district. I was the only non-white person in that building. I learned that I was paid a fraction of what my coworkers earned. After months of working, I asked my manager for a raise. He raised my $3/hour salary to a $4/hour one. When I objected that my peers were making ten times as much, he sneered and said: “If I were you, I'd take the raise and be grateful. It's not as if someone like you can get another job in this country.”

I tried finding other jobs and realized that my boss was right; no one wanted to hire a “Muslim” in Poland. My job involved complicated accounting of millions of euros, but I was paid less than a white waiter in a local restaurant. I worked 50 hours a week, but it was not enough to pay my university's 2000-euro tuition. If I were living in a less prejudiced society, I would have been paid enough to escape and pay for my visa myself.

Part V: Pushback

I rented a small room, scarcely large enough to fit a bed, and after months of begging, I convinced my master to allow me to spend some days away. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe, and I lost my job. But I was determined not to go back. I found an online remote job for $200/month, which allowed me to survive on a $2.5 a day budget.

My master summoned me to his apartment. He was really angry and told me he had decided to stop paying my tuition, so his government would deport me back to Iran. What aggrieved him was that I waited for him to call me.

From that day on, to keep my visa, I had to explicitly beg him to rape me in his apartment. I was able to please and pacify him enough to never carry his threat through.

Things were getting worse. My graduation was nearing, and my future was more uncertain than ever before.

I had been participating in online economics and philosophy reading groups. Some of the participants were surprised by my intelligence. They were moved when they heard that I was from Iran. Through one of the connections I made there, I was invited to the university of Texas, to do a philosophy research project on the nature and value of freedom. I couldn’t believe that there were people out there who saw me as one of their own and wanted to help me. I had never even told anyone that I was a slave.

Finally, the graduation day arrives. I break with my master, and head to the American embassy to pick up a visa, allowing me to escape.

Part VI: Doors closed

The American visa officer denied my application in thirty seconds without listening to me. He didn’t tell me why; he just pulled down his shutters. I couldn’t believe that this door was closed, too.

I tried again, and this time, the new visa officer listened to me. After a few minutes, she told me that my university position qualifies me for a visa, but because of my Iranian origin, she will send my information for a “quick background check.” My application was lost in their bureaucracy, and I received no response. I had nothing to fear, I thought, since I never did anything wrong, escaped Iran at 18, and have a unique name that can’t be mistaken with anyone else. But time was running short. Having graduated and finished my student visa, I had only two months to leave European soil.

Two months passed, and despite all of my efforts, I became illegal in Europe. My lease expired, and I had to find a new room. But the anti-Muslim sentiments in the country had gotten worse since I first entered Poland. I contacted more than a hundred landlords, but as soon as I told them where I’m from, they closed their doors on me.

I tried not telling one where I was from and insisted on viewing the room first. We talked in English. She showed me the house, full of international students. I offered to pay her on the spot. The moment she saw the emblem on my passport, she refused.

Another landlord, without irony, tells me that I sound like a trustworthy person, but that she does not rent to Muslims, because she once had two dirty tenants from Azerbaijan. Telling her that I had quit Islam at nine had no effect on her.

My lease expired, and my current landlord kicked me out. With all my belongings in my suitcase, I had no choice but to knock on the door of my captor. I felt so helpless. I had fought tooth-and-nail to avoid moving back to that apartment.

He was furious and made that night one of the worst nights of my life. He found a landlord willing to take me. The landlord’s name was Maciej. He accepted my money, and two weeks later, unlawfully kicked me out. I beg him to give me more time, but he threatens to call the police if I don’t leave. And being in Poland unlawfully, I had no choice but to obey.

He gives me two hours to vacate. As a last-ditch effort, I message him: “Please. It’s Christmas, I can’t find anywhere today.” He replies: “Merry Christmas,” followed by a laughing emoji. He was not least bothered by what was going to happen to me in the 4-feet snow outside.

I became homeless on December 25th, 2021. It was cold and the streets were full of snow. I preferred death to going back to my captor. I crawled into our school’s dormitory, where I knew the door wasn’t usually locked, and crouched myself to sleep in the basement, next to rats and cockroaches.

Part VII: Something cracks

I tried everything in my imagination to escape. I applied to universities in other European countries. I received admission letters from reputable universities, but being there illegally, I couldn’t get a visa.

I broke. I gave up. All my life I had been moved by my idealized vision of the West, where you could live according to your own convictions, where you could spend your time building things and becoming somebody. I was brought to desperation by the draconian laws of the same Western countries. I felt that dream was a total lie. In Iran, I rebelled when they told me I’m a Muslim because I’m born in Iran. I thought there was a place where I could go to be recognized as a human being, but the Western countries were singing the same chant as Iranians: you can’t live with us because you’re born a Muslim!

I was ready to give up my dream. I decided to cross the borders and live in Germany illegally, and commit suicide before they could send me back to Iran.

Based on sheer luck, before the police could arrest and deport me, and 366 days after my visa interview, the American embassy produced my visa and I came to the US.

But it was far from over. The immigration laws in America were exactly the same as the laws in Korea and Europe. I was still not legally allowed to stay or work because of where I was born.

Thankfully, I found many good friends here who helped me survive. If not for them, I might have starved or been taken advantage of by another wealthy rapist.

After two more hard years of poverty, fear, and dependency, I finally secured my right to work six months ago. Eight years after escaping Iran, I finally have a normal life.

Part VIII: Redemption

To live with dignity, to be free to live with my husband, to be free to choose my work, and choose such a rewarding thing as writing as my profession. I finally experienced the joy of being, for the first time, in control of my life.

I am incredibly proud of the life I have lived. I could have quit and gone back to Iran at any point, but I decided to achieve my freedom at any price.

The reason why I fought so hard to live among you was that your country allows everyone to freely choose his or her own path in life. Compared to Iran, you are a bastion of freedom and equality. That was what made your life more meaningful than mine. That was the hidden promise that the nine-year-old me found behind your art, your books, and your technology.

But I painfully learned that you are not very consistent on your promise.

I escaped Iran, one of the worst dictatorships in history, believing that I will find a humane society. But what I found was that just like Iran, you take my freedoms away from me. You laws threw me, gagged and helpless, into slavery, assault, and oppression even more terrible than what I would’ve experienced in Iran.

To get out of Iran, my only legal option was to become a slave. And once I made it out, the immigration laws made it impossible for me to run away from the enslaver, or to call the police on him, or escape to any other country—without being sent back to Iran.

Why did that have to happen? What is the logic behind the laws that made my escape so impossible? The visa officers agreed that I wasn’t a criminal. They acknowledged that I wanted to study and work in a skilled profession. They agreed that I had the ability to support myself. So why can’t they agree that I deserve to live among you freely?

Your laws believe that moral character does not matter. That intelligence does not matter. That a life does not matter. You stop intelligent, freedom-loving people at your shores and send them to dictatorships. And anyone like me who makes it in, you starve.

I spent the first seven years of my adult life without the right to work; two of them in America. My dreams were taken away from me. I was starved. I was enslaved and left to be needlessly violated in some of the most gruesome ways, all because I wanted to be your neighbor and friend.

I was there. I lived among you. But your ideals of freedom, humanism, and equality were not extended to me.

Without those ideals, what is the difference between you and Iran?

Iran never made a pretense about being a moral country. Most Iranian citizens never felt bad about their country killing people or enslaving half of the population. It is much harder for Iran to choose to be a good nation.

It is easier for you. Your personal achievements, and your history, they all have shown that you are a more noble people; on many occasions you have cared about justice, you have cared about freedom, you have cared about human life.

What direction do you want to go? And what direction do you want the West to go? Is the West, like Iran, to be tied to a specific religion, race, or class? Or is it to be rooted in a belief in humanity and freedom?