The Boundaries We Accept

How did I escape Iran, whereas my friends didn't?

In September 2016, we were seniors in an Iranian public high school. Our school consisted of two villas facing each other and a large courtyard with a fence in between. The building facing east was a high school, and the one facing west, a middle school. They likely were someone's residence decades ago. The owners must have either escaped Iran or been executed. The buildings were in dire disrepair. The middle school was abandoned a few years ago after its ceiling collapsed one night. Bricks were falling, and numerous cracks marred the ceilings of our own building, where 300 of us studied. We were not concerned about safety because we were used to living in a depressing environment full of decaying structures. Around 99% of the land in Iran is owned by the state, so people have little incentive to build good structures or maintain the existing ones.

Our school’s external walls were repainted every year to showcase a new revolutionary slogan. “Our martyrs are the shining north stars of world history,” was the slogan in the fall, and when spring came, our building read “America is the enemy of our revolution, ‘death to America’ runs in our blood.” Indoors, we had propaganda banners and two framed pictures of the supreme leaders installed in every room. When we opened our textbooks, Khomeini’s face was the first thing we saw.

We were reserved and somber. The staff worked to instill an atmosphere of terror. We were not allowed to bring anything but textbooks and simple pens, and our bags were randomly checked. Our principal, an Iran-Iraq war veteran, had a keffiyeh on his shoulders. He would barge into our classroom and menacingly check our appearance. He smacked the students whose hair he deemed too long, or whose clothes too tight. And he would threaten to expel the students who refused to pray in public. I had a classmate named Nima whose school experience was particularly nightmarish. He was the staff’s favorite target to be made an example of. Our math teacher slapped him whenever he got an answer wrong, and Nima would protest by failing his subjects, which made him a target of even more physical and verbal abuse by the staff.

Despite all of this, our school experience was better than most. Even though schools were run like prisons, my classmates were good people. We shared a bond. We covered each other's tracks and lied to the staff to protect one another. When problems arose in our classroom, those of us with leadership skills stepped in and resolved our issues without ever involving the staff. I openly argued with classmates against religion and God, yet no one, not even the most religious ones, tried to silence me.

That classroom proved to me, more than anything else, that we Iranians are not inherently violent people. I could not understand the seeming contradiction. If nothing about being born in Iran makes us bad people, then why were so many of us violent? I thought about it often. What made someone my age able to look into the eyes of an innocent girl as he kidnaps her kicking and screaming body off the street only because she showed some hair?

I was Nima's only friend. Others teased him for being emotionless, like a robot, but I knew that outside school, he was actually a sensitive person with a great sense of humor. He was slender and had a round, disarming face. Nima's only love was South Korea. He knew everything about their music, history, smartphones, food, and cars. South Korea, with its cutting-edge technology, its vibrant streets, its attractive celebrities, and its sparkling music industry, stood in stark contrast to Iran. Nima got really excited whenever he talked about them for more than five minutes, as if he had discovered an unknown utopian civilization on Mars.

Living in Iran is hard. Everything is perishing and declining. Sanctions forbid the world from doing business with us. We are not able to build our way out of poverty. And we must spend half of our time pretending to be devoted to Islam. In that environment, those of us who were sane, needed a coping mechanism to retain our sanity. Nima’s way was to tune out of reality and surround himself with everything Korea.

One day, Nima looked ecstatic. He approached me at school and said: "Hey, have you heard that the Korean ambassador is inviting young people to his home in Tehran?”
“Really? That’s amazing! We’re going together, then!” I replied.
“I’ve never been to Tehran before… I don’t know if I can,” he said meekly.
“Stop the nonsense. I regularly go there to meet my friends. I’ll be your guide.”

We took the six-hour bus ride to Tehran. We passed through southern Tehran; houses were missing doors or entire walls, homeless children were rummaging through trash bins in search of food, and the sky looked red-gray from pollution. The more north we travelled, things were getting a little bit better. The northmost point of Tehran, near the former imperial palace, we saw beautiful chateaus that were out of a normal Iranian’s wildest dreams. The neighborhood was reserved for diplomats and political elites. Those homes were symbols of opulence and luxury to me back then. I now realize that they were just copies of an average Western European house.

Nima was smiling and admiring the ambassador’s house from the outside. But he refused to step inside it. He looked scared.
“I’ll just stay out here. I’ll go walk around and see other houses in this area.” he said meekly. I was in too much of a hurry to react. I just grabbed his arm and coaxed him in.

Inside, the ambassador gave a speech about the greatness of Korea. He had planned that event to promote studying in Korea. Videos showcasing Korea’s technological power were being projected on a screen behind him. During his speech, he told us that Korea would be a better place with our talents. Someone in the audience yelled “but you don’t give us visas!” He acknowledged it and said that he will do anything in his power to have the consular section approve student visas.

His words struck me like lightning. A country who wanted to issue a visa to me? Every developed country I knew perceived me as either a religious terrorist or a handout-seeking refugee. Even if I qualified for a visa, getting it was a coin toss everywhere else. But this ambassador wanted me in his country. He was giving me a chance to escape, and I became determined to take it.

In his yard, some Korean universities had set up booths to explain their application process. I talked to each and every representative and grabbed every brochure. I was in a frenzy. But Nima was still frozen and passive. “Didn’t you hear?! This is our chance to escape!” I kept trying to excite him to no avail.

On the way back, I tried to probe him:
“Why were you so frozen? Don’t you want to be in Korea?”
- “I do, but… forget it.”
“Forget it? What possibly could matter more? It’s our future!”
He suddenly turned to me and said in a harsh tone: “Pouya, what in the hell can I do? I can’t get a visa. I can’t pay for a university. You know my dad. He would give his money to a beggar before he gives it to me.”

From what I had seen of his father, Nima was right. His father was a sleazy and fanatical man. He owned land in some of the best parts of Esfahan and threw extravagant religious ceremonies in honor of the martyred Imams every year, but refused to buy more than two pounds of meat for his family every month.

In Iran, it is customary for husbands and fathers to hide their money from their families. Men keep their families in needless poverty. When my father announced that he had bought a new house, at 12 years old, I was still sleeping in the crib I had when I was born.

With one or two notable exceptions, in all 18 years of my life in Iran, I never saw men express affection for their wives or children, or buy them gifts. It was not that Iranian people hated their families, but rather that they simply did not know how loving someone looked like. Our culture had taught us that love was domination; that beating your wife into wearing hijab was a sign of affection, and that deprivation builds your child’s character. Our parents were so blinded by those ideas that they could not understand that it was good for us to escape Iran, one of the 21st century’s most bloody dictatorships.

“I know. My father also said he wouldn’t give me a cent,” I told Nima. “But we can’t stop here! Let’s first learn the language, apply to a Korean college, and plan our stay. That much we can do. We may end up convincing our parents. We will steal money if necessary. And if we genuinely couldn’t, at least we can die in peace knowing we didn’t give up without a fight.”
A glimmer of hope appeared on Nima’s face, and quickly disappeared.
“What are we to do about conscription? They won’t give us passports without military service.” he asked wearily.
“We’ll dodge it. We’ll get an exemption, we’ll find a way.” I replied. He looked at me like I had lost my marbles. His face looked tragic and resigned. We didn’t speak another word.

In a last ditch effort, I biked to the park with him, sat him down on a bench, and talked to him for hours. He looked like he was dealing with an enormous pain.
“Who are you kidding, Pouya? We can’t escape. We’re doomed to die here.”
- “Of course we can escape. We just need to work for it.”
“Where do you propose we get the money, Pouya? I talked to him, I yelled, I fell to the ground and kissed his feet. My father made it clear that he won’t give me any money even if I killed myself. What’s the point of trying anyway? Even if my father lets me go, the military won’t. If the military lets me go, the embassy won’t.”

I didn’t know how to answer him. All I had was an implicit bias for action. All I knew was that I must not give up without a fight. Nima and I couldn’t survive in a sewer like Iran. And there was no obvious way out. The logic was irrefutable: Even if we somehow obtained a draft exemption, escaping requires a visa, visas require a lot of money, and making money in Iran is impossible.

Nima’s decision was to lie down and freeze. But I could not bring myself to passively accept my fate. I also knew that escape was impossible, but I had a deep, almost esthetic objection to the idea of giving up without a try.

In my favorite movie, Ratatouille, there is a scene where the main character, Remy, having no reason to think he could survive, was waiting to die.

SOMEWHERE IN THE SEWER SYSTEM - NIGHT A soaked and exhausted Remy has pulled his battered cookbook to the sewer bank. It’s dark and cold, it smells bad, but he’s safe.
Remy flips a crinkled page, to an appetizing photo of pastry. His stomach GROWLS. He looks away, turning to a drawing of GUSTEAU on the opposite page. The ILLUSTRATION comes to life; speaking to Remy--
GUSTEAU: “If you are hungry, go up and look around, Remy. Why do you wait and mope?
REMY: I’ve just lost my family. All my friends. Probably forever.
GUSTEAU: How do you know?
REMY: Yeah, well, you’re dead.
GUSTEAU: Ah... but that is no match for wishful thinking. If you focus on what you’ve left behind you will never be able to see what lies ahead. Now go up and look around.

OUTSIDE THE BUILDING - ROOFTOPS - DUSK

CAMERA follows as Remy scampers along railings and ledges, past windows, up vines, the ROOFTOP FALLS AWAY TO REVEAL- A STUNNING PANORAMA; PARIS AT NIGHT. It is GORGEOUS-- a vast, luminous jewel. Remy is GOBSMACKED.
REMY: Paris? All this time I’ve been underneath PARIS?

Remy was my childhood hero. This movie was the north-star of my life (I wrote a separate article about this topic here). By showing what is possible if we “go up and look around,” it inspired me not to give up without a try. “Don’t mope. Go up and look around!” I told myself, when the hopelessness made me feel like shutting down. “I’ll just go up and look around,” I told myself as I entered different military camps to get an exemption. “You got your exemption. Now keep going up!” I ordered myself, as I spent more months preparing my visa application. “My dreams may die today, but I must go up and look around!” I snapped at myself, when I stood at the doors of the Korean embassy, terrified to walk in, with no money in my bank account.

Even though I was not eligible, I was able to convince the visa officer to approve my visa. The rest of the journey was incredibly horrific and arduous, but had I not tried doing the impossible, I wouldn’t be free today, living as a writer in the US with the love of my life. Most likely, I would have been dead.

I escaped Iran, not because I knew it was possible, but because I refused to accept that it was impossible without testing the boundaries myself. Sometimes our internal model of what's possible becomes our greatest prison. Like a startup founder challenging established industries, or a rat who dares to become a chef in Paris, I discovered that reality's true boundaries often lie far beyond where our minds tell us they do.

Many of my friends, intelligent, lively people with big dreams did not try to escape Iran. Nima was one of them. They were genuinely in love with the West, but painfully held back, thinking their dream life was impossible.

They had good reasons to think that: The Iranian totalitarian dictatorship took all of our choices away from us. And the foreign lawmakers made our escape illegal. The free world worked in tandem with Iranian tyrants to preserve the status quo; ensuring that anyone born in Iran remains a helpless victim.

But historically, even the most powerful unjust institutions could not force human beings to live as victims forever. The real world is malleable. Breaking the chains might be very difficult, but it is always possible.

To get into a free country, I had no choice but to sell myself on a market. I was abused, starved, and made homeless many times. I knocked on many doors for help, and was rejected over and over again. I traversed four different countries. I was treated like a terrorist because of where I was born. But as long as there was a single road untaken, I did not give up my dream of living in freedom.

I believe in the power of art and personal stories. I’m writing about my life because I want my story to inspire others. Not only victims of dictatorships, but anyone who has an ambitious plan for his life but does not know whether he can reach it.

I want to say: “Don’t say it is impossible until you’ve earnestly tried doing it. If you love your dream, if you can’t live without it, then do everything on earth to get it. The struggle will be worth it.”