The World Through the Eyes of an Immigrant (Part 2)

The eighteen-year-old me who escaped Iran in 2017 expected my life abroad to look like this: working hard in an entry-level job, applying to universities and studying to become an engineer, renting my own apartment, finding good friends, and eventually, falling in love.

If you had told me that instead of having a job, I would beg strangers for food, instead of forming deep friendships, I would see my only friend’s back broken under slave labor, and instead of finding love, I would be thought of as a prostitute, and end up funneled to Europe by a businessman—I would’ve thought you were describing a wickedly tragic movie. But that is exactly what happened to me.

I explained those events in the previous article. Here, I’ll pick up where I left off.

I accepted the businessman’s offer by replying to his email. He did the rest. He enrolled me in a dual-degree Economics program in Warsaw, paid the fees, and called his contacts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and got me a visa.

I walked into the Polish embassy without an appointment and was given a Schengen (European Union) visa with surprising ease. I had only two pages of paperwork. At the bottom of the form, I wrote the Polish businessman’s name. A few days later, my passport was returned with the visa sticker that allowed me to board a plane to Europe.

I remembered how hundreds of people used to line up behind European embassies in Tehran with stacks of documents, only to be rejected. That same legendary, unattainable Schengen visa—what everyone around me dreamed of—was handed to me because I wrote one man’s name at the bottom of the form. My friends were still rotting in Iran, not because they lacked merit, but because they didn’t have a businessman to lobby for them.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how unfair the visa system was.

I arrived in Warsaw in March 2018. After a few hours, the businessman came to pick me up and took me to a furnished one-bedroom apartment in a quiet, newly developed part of the city. He gave me around $2,000, showed me how to buy food at the supermarket, and left.

His name was Rafal—or Raphael in English. He was a C-suite executive at one of Poland’s largest companies. He always wore crisp, elegant clothes and spoke eloquently in four languages.

Even though months earlier he had tried to buy me, I was incredibly grateful for the money, the apartment, and the call he made that got me out of Iran. I started to think of him as a good man, and of Europe as a freer, more humane place than East Asia. Within days, I began to forget the terrorizing experience I’d had in Korea and looked at life with the kind of unlimited youthful optimism I thought I’d lost.

Some weekends, usually Sundays, Rafal would invite me to restaurants. He’d ask how I was doing, practice Polish with me, and answer my questions about Europe. Then he would talk—about his company’s problems, his personal life, or the state of the world. It struck me as odd. He seemed like a man with no friends. Out of gratitude for all he had done, I listened to him like a friend.

One night, he showed up at my apartment with a suitcase. He said his marriage had fallen apart and asked if he could stay the night. I expressed sympathy, gave him the bedroom, and slept on the couch.

He didn’t leave.

I thought it was temporary, that he was staying that long just because he’s too busy to look for a new place. Nonetheless, I didn’t like living with a strange 45 year old man. So I found a shared dorm room through my university, signed a lease, and moved out.

That night, when I told him I was moving, he looked disturbed.

“So you don’t like me?!” he asked, turning back and staring at me demandingly.

I stepped back and grabbed the wall for support. My heartbeat was in my throat. I felt a terrifying kind of deja vu. Once again, just like in Korea, the man who helped me expected sexual favors in return.

“No, I do like you. I enjoy our conversations. I don’t mind staying here but… it’s just that I thought I should give you some privacy.”

He never gave raises or promotions to someone in his company without them deserving it first, he said. He said that he had started resenting the fact that I was a freeloader.

“I know, Rafal. I want to pay you back, but I don’t have a work permit yet. I can’t make money.”

“Don’t play the victim, Pouya. It’s always ‘how poor and sick I am’ with people. My maid is from Ukraine. No permit either, but she’s raising a bastard kid here.”

“I clean the apartment. I can cook too. Let me pay that way.”

So I started cleaning his apartment twice a week. I knew what he really wanted, but I hoped that acting as his maid would be enough to satisfy his demand for something in return.

A different side of him emerged—frightening and cruel. He was angry, always yelling about the way I cleaned. I tried making him food once, but because I used turmeric in the fish, he shouted at me for using smelly spices, threw open the windows, and left the apartment until the smell cleared.

The dorm I moved into was an old house packed with international students. I shared a room with four others—two from Turkey, two from Azerbaijan. Their English was rough, but they were kind. Two of them worked illegally at a Turkish restaurant and brought back leftovers to share. They were poor, from small towns, and one of them snored loudly. We had no A/C, and once the sun set, we had to keep all lights off to avoid attracting mosquitos through the open window. But I felt safer and happier there than I ever did in my four years in Poland.

One night, Rafal brought dinner and asked me to eat with him. He asked what I would’ve done if he hadn’t saved me from Korea. I told him the truth: that I probably would have lived illegally and eventually been deported to Iran. He asked about the punishment for being gay in Iran. He wanted to make a point (I had told them I was a gay and Iranian when we first met in Seoul).

He reminded me that if he stopped paying my tuition, I’d be deported. He said of course I can run to Western Europe, but that I had no chance at claiming asylum (because of something called the Dublin Convention).

“So if it weren’t for me, you’d be dead,” he said. And I dreaded his next sentence.

Then he stopped and said, “It is certainly not fair. If you’re born in a bad country, you’re screwed. But life isn’t fair, Pouya. Poland is for Poles, Germany is for Germans, and Korea is for Koreans. You’re a guest here. And if I were you, I’d be nice to my host. That’s all I’m saying.” He threw his hands up.

He took another sip of his coke and whiskey. He was drunk. He sat on the couch next to me, leaned in, and sniffed my neck.

I pulled myself away.

“Sure, sure… If you don’t want it, I won’t touch you,” he muttered. “I just might forget to be a nice host sometimes.” He took another sip. “I hope you can find a way to pay your next semester’s tuition. It’s not that easy to make 2000 euros in Poland. Especially for a foreigner like you.”

I thought of escaping, of pushing him aside and running away. Run away and do what? If I work, the Police will arrest me. And if I don’t work, the Police will arrest me. I can’t be sent back to Iran. Maybe there is someone who will help. But why would anyone help me? I looked at him. This was the only type of help out that existed.

He advanced again.

I didn’t move. “Mohem nist, mohem nist, mohem nist, mohem nist…” I repeated “it’s not important” to myself in Farsi.

I’m sorry—the rest is hard to recount.

I remember being frozen. I remember bleeding, then crying, then forgetting my own name. My roommates asked what had happened, but I couldn’t speak. I pulled the blanket over myself, curled into the fetal position, and cried silently.

I couldn’t eat for days.

I was a precocious and savvy eighteen year-old. And I was raped by a drunk 45 year old businessman. Because he had money and the Police were going to deport me if I didn’t have money. My friend, Bita, was also raped by his visa sponsor when she was 18, in Germany. She couldn’t stand it and came back to Iran. But maybe because I was a boy, or maybe because I was more idealistic and hopeful, I subjected myself to more rape so I can stay away from Iran.