Beyond the familiar alleys of Golshahr

Mashhad is a major city in Iran, especially renowned as a place of pilgrimage, attracting millions of religious tourists. On its outskirts, the Golshahr district may seem incongruent, like an awkward patch in the cultural fabric of the city. Although the northeast periphery of Mashhad is generally known as a disadvantaged area, Golshahr is tainted with additional layers of notoriety and stigma. Accommodating more than 40,000 Afghan migrants mostly of the Hazara ethnicity, it is recognized as an overcrowded neighbourhood of Afghanis, a term that has become one of abuse among Iranians.

The emergence of cafes and traditional Afghan restaurants in Golshahr, adorned with pictures of Hazarajat’s natural beauty and historical landscapes, fails to tempt Iranian outsiders. The juxtaposition of the Afghanistan flag alongside Iran’s flag standing on café counters finds its audience among no one but Hazara youth, most of whom, like me, have never lived in Afghanistan. However, in spite of the hostile, negative stereotypes circulating about Golshahr, I have often heard my Hazara peers refer to it as a haven—the safest place in Iran. For a Hazara boy after an exhausting day of digging wells or construction work, Golshahr would become a sanctuary, a place to momentarily escape the uncertainties that loom over our lives. In a music track named after the neighbourhood, Ali Amir, a Hazara rapper, describes Golshahr’s atmosphere as different, as special—‘it acts on us like a painkiller’ (Amir 2019). The Golshahr alleys are, after all, inoffensive—nobody calls us Afghani there.

The intangible sense of safety in Golshahr was only revealed when abruptly stripped away as I left for Tehran in pursuit of a university education in 2015. Having successfully passed the matriculation exam, the Konkur, I was accepted into the field of cinematography and was finally able to follow my passion. In high school, despite my interest in the arts, I studied Experimental Science, as Afghan nationals were restricted to theoretical fields (Mathematical, Experimental, and Human Sciences). Afghan students were also restricted in terms of what they could study at university and in which regions they could study. I felt lucky that I would be finally allowed to study what I wanted in university. We, Hazara youth, encountered so many obstacles in Golshahr, but we did not think of them as insurmountable barriers. Instead, when we faced a blockage in our way, we considered every possible option to finally find a way around it. The fact that everyone with a school diploma was allowed to sit the Konkur for art seemed to offer a chink in the barrier for me.

In our family, there was already a writer and a painter (my older sisters). Despite financial hardship, in Golshahr, a tendency towards literature and art prevails among Hazara youth. Specifically, poetry and writing circles have always been popular, although many parents (typically first-generation) are illiterate. Regardless of the duration of residence, level of education or any other factors, all Afghan migrants are restricted to labour-intensive work, such as construction for men, which does not pay enough to support their families. Mothers in many families contribute to the household costs by working on farmlands, in korki (wool-cleaning workshops), or doing piece work, pistachio cracking, or beading at home. Many students, like myself, had to work in sewing workshops during the summer holidays to save up money for their school education fees. For me, literature and art were the only ways to be able to imagine and think beyond the restricted scale of life in the community. The idea of studying cinematography was a dream come true. However, soon after I moved to Tehran, my excited dream smashed into the concrete walls of those boundaries.

On my first day in Tehran, Sooreh University, to which I had secured entry, refused to register me. One of the administrative staff, Mr. Shafiqi who was a middle-aged man in charge of new entry registration, flatly stated: ‘You are Afghani’. When I insisted, he lost his temper, almost shouting: ‘I corresponded with Sazman-e Sanjesh (Examinations Board) many times last year to not send Afghani students to this academy’. The fact that after many years, I can still clearly remember what he said is sad. I remained entirely silent, as uttering even one word would risk me bursting into tears. Then he explained that the ambiguous residence document of Afghan students was the reason, even though the true reason was already explicitly expressed. Although the denial of my entry into that art academy was arbitrary, my several appeals to the Foreign Educational Affairs Organization were of no help.

Nonetheless, having prepared for the Konkur (university admission) exam for months to quit seemed ridiculous to me. I was accustomed to negotiating the barriers to my education. The Education Minister of Iran issued new directives every year regarding the registration of Afghan nationals in schools, and we had to wait to see what problems they would bring and how we could get around them. Concerns about the prospective rise in fees or additional restrictions always cast a shadow over the summer holidays. Typically, the directive usually arrived just a few days ahead of the start of term, with very limited capacity left for new entries to the schools. However, at least in Golshahr, we were not alone in our dreads and hopes. This time, as the only Afghan in an all-Iranian cohort, I felt like an outcast with problems peculiar to me.

For me, insisting on my right to study this course was the only way. I waited for Mr. Shafiqi and other staff in the corridor of the university’s administrative section for several mornings in a row. Most of the time, after repeating my demand, I was silenced by the condescending monologues of Mr. Shafiqi, which oscillated awkwardly between rationalising his refusal and contemptuous pity. Finally, my efforts paid off. The university allowed me to pay my tuition and attend classes on the condition that I obtain a student visa. While proceeding with the registration, Mr. Shafiqi asked me ‘Why do you want to study cinematography? It is something masculine and even if we accept your entry you will not succeed as you are a woman.’ ‘I am sure I can,’ I responded with conviction. He then promised that he would make this process so hard for me that I would myself bring him my withdrawal letter to sign, like the other Afghani student last year. When I was going through the process of changing my residence permit into a student visa, I realised what he meant. The process needed signatures from the administrative staff multiple times, and Mr. Shafiqi was the one who always managed to get away with not doing it. Moreover, tuition was expensive for me and I needed to work more part-time hours, adding to the difficulties.

I was staying at my sister’s home in a distant southern suburb of Tehran, commuting two hours early every morning to the University in dilapidated minibuses with day labourers. Attending classes, in which my name was yet to be listed, with carefree Iranian peers coming mainly from the middle class, had sharpened the contrast of my peculiarity. Moreover, my typical Hazara phenotype, marking me out as Afghani, exposed me to questions about my origins each time I met someone new. In all cases, I insisted ‘I am from Mashhad’, an unsatisfying answer. In Tehran, I hid my identity not only to avoid a more explicit exclusion but also because, emerging from the cocoon of Golshahr, my self-image had been shattered into many pieces, making it difficult sometimes to configure who I am. I tried hard to speak Farsi with a Tehrani accent and to reshape my eyes with make-up.

I was a determined woman but, maybe, not strong enough to resist the racism I faced. Consequently, on one of the rainy days of that autumn, I finally withdrew my still incomplete registration, as Mr. Shafiqi had foreseen. A few days before, I had cut my long hair as short as I could and stopped wearing make-up. It was not driven by a conscious sense of feminism but by pure frustration. Later I started pursuing my education in anthropology at another university in Tehran. Although deflected from my initial ambitions, this experience of exclusion sparked new aspirations and a new trajectory.

The complicated procedures of becoming a university student for our generation of Iran-born Hazaras was a difficult rite of passage, marking entry into a new realm of potential interaction with Iranian mainstream society but in a capacity other than labourers, which is how we are typically seen. This procedure involved a bureaucratic process to change our annual residence permit as a muhajir (migrant) to a student visa. It takes nearly six months and concludes with travelling to Afghanistan to apply for an Iranian visa and entering Iran as a foreign student. This journey was deemed risky, though, particularly for girls crossing the Afghanistan borders by land. It was a significant concern and a reason for families to discourage their daughters from pursuing university education, especially because most of us could not afford a flight, which was safer. Another worry for the families was the risk of the student’s residence permit not being extended after graduation. For some families, it meant casting more uncertainty over our future, as having higher education would not broaden our job opportunities beyond the permitted menial occupations.

In the Mashhad passport office, by chance, I met one of my Golshari high school classmates, Fatemeh, who, like me, was alone on this journey. We planned to go together to Herat as it was much more convenient in terms of distance and expenses than Kabul, the capital. We hired a taxi driver for a round trip to Herat, which was four hours away from Mashhad. The border checkpoint was crammed with people returning to Afghanistan with their possessions packed in large cheap bags. After several hours of waiting there, we crossed the border and could continue our journey to Herat. Along the way, at Dogharon, we stopped at a UNHCR camp. We were given a Voluntary Repatriation Form to complete, and we each received a grey blanket with a UNHCR label on it, a pack of biscuits, and a bar of soap. Then we were directed to the Ansar Camp, established for returnees from Iran and located in a remote suburb of the city. When we arrived it was evening. The camp operator was reluctant to accommodate us, claiming it was not safe enough and he did not want to shoulder the responsibility for two young women. He finally let us in when he saw we literally had nowhere else to stay and it was getting dark.

I experienced Herat neither through the eyes of an Iranian visitor nor a person visiting their motherland. My identity lacked the authenticity for either perspective. Both my parents were children when they arrived in Iran with their families. Consequently, we had no property or social ties left in Afghanistan to make me feel less of a stranger to the soil I am officially identified with. Yet, there was a vague sense of familiarity, reminiscent of my feelings of alienation in Iran, especially when local people in Herat referred to us as zavarak. This sense of familiarity grew even more tangible when two boys riding on a motorcycle hit us with rotten oranges, calling us Iranigak, when we were on our way back to camp. Zavarak in Afghanistan’s Farsi means ‘little passenger’ and Iranigak means ‘little Iranian’ both with ridiculing connotations. The terms zavarak and Iranigak had a strong shared significance with Afghani, which we are called in Iran, carrying the same harsh message ‘You do not belong here.’ In Herat women typically wore burqas which we were not used to. Instead, our chadors, combined with our distinctive Iranian accent, made us stand out from local Herati women.

After a week in Herat, when I was back in Iran, I found very little to share about my experience in Afghanistan. Our journey did not involve visits to tourist sites or sightseeing. Instead, it was just a challenging part of a bureaucratic ritual we accomplished and swiftly returned. On my way back home, on the bus to Golshahr, an old Hazara woman called me allay (meaning dear in the Hazara dialect), asking me to pass her bus card to the driver. When I looked at her wrinkled and smiling face, I felt a familiar sense of connection once again.

Golshahr, a place of conflicting feelings

When I was back in Golshahr the sense of safety that it gave me was delicious—it felt like frost-nipped skin enjoying a pleasant tingling from the heat of the fire. However, it was an incomplete pleasure, something was missing that was not clear to me and which I still think about. My experience in Tehran and Herat opened my eyes to the incongruity of my situation as a muhajir and left me confused. I started to talk about this to other people and my peers in Golshahr. We were a generation of ambivalence—foreigners in our country of birth, migrants without having ever migrated, ‘Iranian Afghans’. Meanwhile, Golshahr was the only space capable of holding all these paradoxes together. In Golshahr, we were neither Afghani nor Iranigak.

We had a more dignified term to introduce ourselves: muhajir. The first time that I realized the specific meaning of this term was during my first days in elementary school. The teacher was asking us our names alongside our fathers’ jobs. It soon turned into a tedious chain of names with the recurring motif of ‘worker’ uttered by different voices. The Afghan students needed to mention their nationality as well, and I did so as Afghani. It was an elementary school in the neighbouring district, and although the number of Afghan students was significant, they were not the majority as in the schools in Golshahr. That day, one of my Afghan classmates took me aside and told me ‘Don’t say “I am an Afghani” instead, say you are “muhajir”.’ At that moment of childhood, I understood that this term, Afghani, was associated with something shameful.

The word Afghani is not inherently disdainful, though, and we often use it among ourselves. However, in the mouths of Iranians, this word turns into something contemptuous. The term Afghani is heavily inflected by the insults it is often accompanied by when used by Iranians until it has gradually become an independent insult itself. On the other hand, muhajir was an umbrella term in Iranian Farsi to describe migration of any kind. It has also been a term that the Iranian government often uses to refer to Afghans in Iran, carefully avoiding the term ‘refugee’, which entails potential responsibilities. Nonetheless, not being loaded with racially humiliating connotations was the only privileged aspect of this term for me.

In Golshahr, we speak a blend of Hazaragi and Farsi with a Mashahdi accent, which is informally known as the Golshahri accent and considered by Iranians as slang. In school, we tried our best to speak Iranian Farsi to be polite. Although schools in Iran are places for homogenising and assimilating diverse ethnic identities into the central Fars culture, the process was somehow different for us. We were being trained to blend into the society from which we are excluded. This was the true meaning of ‘muhajir’ for me: living on the margins. Ironically, the peripheral location of Golshahr resembles our situation in Iranian urban society. For our Iran-born generations, ‘muhajir’ is also implicitly perceived as an agreeable word for a disagreeable concept: Iranian-Afghan. This is a hyphenated compound term that is never used. Not just because it is an arbitrary word in terms of Iran’s constitutional law, but also because it seems to reveal something odd and incompatible. Iran’s constitution confers Iranian nationality only to the child born to an Iranian father. Granting citizenship to children born to Iranian mothers and non-Iranian fathers has been a source of controversy for years and is still in dispute. So, the word ‘Iranian-Afghan’ sounds paradoxical.

What would a hyphen, located between two sharply divided realms of existence, two racially dichotomized identities, uncover? It would violate the rules of classification and upset the balance of the boundaries. Therefore, we muhajirs are hybrid creatures who speak a dissonant combination of accents, situated between the realms and, thus, lacking purity. I often feel this sense of alienation whenever we are referred to as atba-e biganeh (alien nationals) by the officials or in formal texts. These concerns about purity have a more visible reflection in healthcare regulations, based on which, for example, organ transplantation or blood donation between Afghan muhajirs and Iranians is strictly banned. On social media, I happened to read of my peers’ experiences of rejection at blood donation centres where their blood donation was neither welcomed nor accepted, causing many complex feelings in them.

However, I am not surprised that our parents or grandparents were not keen on passing down a sense of traditional ethnic identity to us. For them, it might have aroused a deep-seated fear on both sides of the border—excluded as Hazara in Afghanistan, and Afghanis in Iran. My mother once told me about expulsion schemes during the mid-1990s, under which the police officers were searching for Afghanis in the neighbourhood, door by door. Terrified, she took us children and went to an Iranian neighbour’s house to hide. She told me some parents even faced empty homes coming back from workto find their children arrested. As ‘Hazaras’, they were seriously at risk of being killed by Taliban forces in Afghanistan (see Chapter 1). Narrating these stories must have left a bitter taste in her mouth, which made it hard for her to speak further about our traditional identity.

However, Golshahr chooses not to dwell on the old stories of suffering. Golshahr is a place to move on and a place to forget. This sentiment is also reflected in the pulsating flow of the people across Shulugh Bazar (literally meaning crowded market). This open-air market is not significant simply for its commercial capacity where cheaper vegetables and fruits are always available. In addition, it is a pivotal social space for Golshahr residents, a place that connects individuals to a dense social network, where starting small talk with friends met by chance, relatives or even strangers is easy. It serves as a resource for staying informed about the ever-changing government directives and procedures for muhajirs as well as the current news and rumours in the districts. At the end of Shulugh Bazar, there’s a space where old Hazara men gather, seemingly for peddling. However, whenever I saw them, they were busy talking to each other rather than actually selling and buying. Their items are limited to combs, radio wires, and chargers for old-fashioned cell phones like Nokia, alongside turquoise and agate stone rings. The main item, though, is their stories of the past and their memories. Like their wares, their narratives are becoming more and more obsolete, fading away in the hustle and bustle of Shulugh Bazar.

Golshahr stories are not fixed by those harsh winters and the summer harvests in Hazarajat nor the burnt lands and long periods of war, often told by the elders, the first generation of migration. While encapsulating an imagined home within its bounds, Golshahr continues to unfold new stories of struggles for survival and resilience. It embodies the confusion and struggle of the young generation, still in search of their identity. Accommodating thousands of muhajirs, Golshahr has been infected by the stigma attached to its residents. Therefore, among most of the Hazara youth, not only is Afghani a contemptuous word, but Golshahr is also unmentionable, even while commuting from the city. Instead, Tollab (a neighbouring district) is often given as an address, especially by women and girls. Nonetheless, on some occasions, when giving the real address becomes unavoidable, the situation can turn ugly. My sister, Elaha, recalled the night that her university course finished late after the buses had stopped running. When she was trying to get a taxi, many of them refused to take her to Golshahr.

Many years and even borders away, former Golshahr residents still remember it with conflicting feelings. Ali Ahmadi Dovlat starts his book, ‘Golshahr: Memories of a Geologist’ with this sentence: ‘I love Golshahr, the town of my yesterday’s fears and hopes.’ Reading his book, I was perplexed by this question ‘What has he missed so much about Golshahr?’ His memoir accurately reflects the uncertainty and restrictions of muhajirs’ lives in Golshahr and weaves a sense of connection in the muhajir audience through the recounting of his own life. It reflects the complex sense of belonging to Golshahr where muhajirs had the opportunity to develop a sense of ‘inclusion’ within a collective experience of ‘exclusion’. Thinking of my own experience in Golshahr, it was not a desirable place to live. My sisters and I hated Golshahr as it was located in a remote and notorious corner of the city. It was one of the reasons that I was enthusiastic about pursuing my education in another city, assuming that out of Golshahr I could be free from Golshahr’s stigma. However, soon after I left Golshahr for Teheran, I realised that I would not be free from the stigma of being recognized as an Afghani in Iran. At least Golshahr had sheltered me from the sense of being singled out, as we were all muhajirs. Golshahr was a place of exclusion, yet a place of safety that I felt more vividly upon returning.

In Iranian society, the Hazara muhajirs would often be singled out. It is not solely based on the Hazaragi phenotype but also because of the restrictions posed by our residence permit. The majority of Afghan refugees, including Hazaras, live under the Amayesh scheme, which is renewed annually and grants holders permission to stay in a province and apply for work permits in given job categories during their validity period. Lacking an Iranian cod-e melli (national ID number) means deprivation of or limited access to many public services such as health insurance, education, or bank services since this code is required on most platforms. Even the process for accessing the available services is often different and usually cumbersome for us. This ID code deficiency sometimes felt like an unusual disability, particularly that semester in July 2018 when I was compelled to take my final exams in a segregated room for ‘special cases’.

Several days before, I had been unable to print my exam card, and the registration staff, in response, explained that I was expected to show my extended resident permit to her to be able to take my exams. However, without informing me or giving any warning beforehand, she had already suspended my student portal and excluded me from the final exams. After an appeal to the university administration, I could only obtain permission to take my exams under the category of ‘special cases’, in a room set aside for disabled students. It was crowded and noisy as every student had a companion to help them with reading the questions or writing their answers. It felt deeply awkward when a member of staff inquired whether I had a companion, wondering what kind of disability I had.

Later on, when one of the members of an NGO that was working with Afghan muhajirs in Iran asked me to join them in their campaign, I was disappointed with the campaign’s title. It was tawanmand-sazi muhajirin-e Afghan (meaning in literal translation enabling/empowering Afghan muhajirs). It reminded me of that awkward experience of July that year. This word tawanmand-sazi (to enable/empower) is often used by the associations who work with people with disabilities, addiction, or mental illness—people who presumably are unable to engage fully in society..

On the contrary, living among muhajirs, Golshahr was the place that gave, to some extent, the pleasure of feeling ordinary. It is a place where suffering takes on a specific character. When shared, not only does it become more bearable but also normalised. There is where the muhajirs are not alone in having problems with opening a bank account or owning a SIM card for their mobile phones and many other restrictions. Golshahr has even had its own pulp comedian groups, who often send up such challenges in their video clips. However, the dense social network among us in Golshahr has always functioned as more than just a source of empathy. It is through the warp and woof of Golshahr’s social network that the Hazara youth continue to find their way through barriers imposed on them, although it is not necessarily the story of success.

Many self-governing institutions such as literature associations, charities, and schools have been developed by muhajirs to fulfil some of their unmet needs. One of these institutions is the Afghani schools. Although every year many muhajir students are excluded from registration in official schools, whether for the lack of capacity, documents, or financial problems, there are self-governing schools for them in Golshahr. While I have not personally attended these schools, a visit some years ago and a conversation with an administrator brought back memories from elementary school. I remember the schoolmaster called a list of names and then pushed those children out of the line and I no longer saw them in the school. The Afghani school is where two groups of excluded people coexist. Muhajir teachers, often unemployed university students or graduates, due to work permit limitations teach muhajir students who were expelled or unable to join official schools. The teachers often face financial struggles, with months passing without wages as the students are unable to pay their tuition on time.

Though some of us were compelled to study in the dilapidated buildings of these schools with low-quality copies of the official schoolbooks, out of Golshahr we practised the shared aspects of our identity with Iranians, trying to ignore these stigmatised experiences which differentiated us from them. During high school, I attended writing workshops held at the Eshraq institution, located in the central part of the city. In those workshops, there was another girl, Zahra, who looked Hazara. However, her Iranian accent was very good. Both of us were hiding our identity as muhajirs. One day I saw her working in a stationery shop in Golshahr, and I was sure she was a muhajir. In the next writing workshop, I tried to hint that I too was muhajir, but she would not let down her guard. Leaving the workshop one day, I asked which way she was going. She said she lived on Tollab Boulevard. Even more confident I said, ‘I live in Golshahr’. That night on our way back home in the Golshahr bus we shared our experiences of hiding our identity, laughing all the way back, pleased to find a lot in common.

For some people of my generation, art and literature were not only a way to break free from the confines of muhajirhood but also a form of resistance. The Selma Theatre Group, active in Golshahr in recent years, embodies this spirit. This group was initiated and nurtured by the ideas of Alireza Saeedi, who has devoted a significant part of his life to teaching acting to muhajir youth for free. I have known him since his activities in Tehran in 2016. Alireza views theatre not just as an art form but also as therapy and a means of social change. To this end, discussion sessions are a pivotal part of their activities, and their performance themes are often interwoven with the experiences and narratives of the muhajirs. Over the past few years, he has sought to attract audiences from both Golshahr and other parts of the city, in an attempt to break the negative stereotypes against Afghanis and Golshahr.

For their first performance in Golshahr, they created a stage in an abandoned library named Resalat. However, they were compelled to leave after several months. Eventually, they managed to secure a dilapidated and desolate Ab Anbar, a large underground cistern, designed to store and cool drinking water. It took a few months for them to repair the building and turn it into a venue for their weekly public performances. The fact that most male members of the group were skilled in construction work significantly compensated for their lack of financial budget. The group functions as a network for cooperation, and their performances were often free. Currently, the group is displaced once again, as they had to move out of the Ab Anbar after about two years.

One may wonder, ‘What are they in search of in such a remote margin of the city?’. During the days I spent with them, engaged in preparations for one of their performances titled Adan (Eden) focused on the narratives of refugee camps, I perceived their endeavour as a manifestation of resistance within the muhajir’s life. Ironically, their own circumstances mirror the trajectory of a muhajir—constantly on the move, lacking a stable place to call their own. They have been displaced multiple times from the places where they have striven to adapt and belong. Despite the uncertainty of their circumstances, they are trying to develop, even if they are not sure how or where it will lead or if it will continue. They create social spaces from abandoned and forgotten places, turning them into areas where muhajir youth can share their voices with people from other generations and possibly outside their community.

Rooting and departure

Golshahr has changed significantly from how I remember it in my childhood—many Afghan traditional restaurants, Afghan clothes stores, and cafes have sprung up. These traditional restaurants are where I first in my life tasted many Afghan foods like manto and ashak. Some of my generation express a strong sense of belonging to Golshahr. However, it never felt genuinely like home to me. There is something about Golshahr that opposes the concept of home.

If a home is to be defined as a place where you have the right to stay and return, how can I call Golshahr home? We are constantly reminded that we are not welcome in Iran and that our stay is temporary. This temporariness is constantly underlined by the need to renew the temporary residence permit every year. The annual residency permit under the Amayesh scheme was mostly for those who, like our family, had come to Iran in the early decade of the Islamic revolution and usually is out of reach for those Afghans who came later. However, even this temporary residence permit can be easily cancelled or revoked. The frequency and duration of trips outside Iran are strictly limited and controlled, and any violation leads to the cancellation of the residence permit. People under the Amayesh scheme would lose their residence permit if they left the country. For passport holders with more mobility options, leaving Iran for longer than the permitted period (three months for regular passports) has to be an irrevocable decision and a one-way journey. This politics of border control makes the price of mobility very heavy emotionally. Also, it reveals the vulnerability of our roots and ties to our country of birth and residence, while exposed to the rigid rules of the border. Under such circumstances, ‘return’ to Iran, to the place of our birth or childhood, is only possible for us as tourists who pay for a visa and are allowed to stay for a limited time.

As living in Iran gives us no prospect of inclusion, the idea of leaving is a seed planted in our minds from the early days and grows with us gradually. In the mid-2000s, an International Organization for Migration (IOM) programme for educated muhajirs opened a new, though vague, opportunity offering a dignified job and a reasonable wage for the muhajir youth (see next chapter). It also became a source of inspiration for many of us to pursue a university degree and move to our country of origin after graduation. Like many other muhajir graduates, my brother Ali applied for the IOM scheme, awaited their recruitment, and finally left for Afghanistan in 2010. A couple of years later, my sister Elaha followed the same route. However, the hope for the future was accompanied by concerns about safety among the Hazara families. Since Elaha’s and Hassan’s departure, my mother had been anxiously following any news about Kabul, especially West Kabul, Dasht-e Barchi, where Elaha and Hassan resided. This district, inhabited mostly by the Hazaras, was occasionally targeted by suicide bombers.

Roots may be seen as attachments to the places you lived and the people with whom you lived and have a history. However, Golshahr is not a place to put down roots, as departure is always looming. We are called muhajirs and deemed displaced upon our birth in Iran even though we have not migrated, and yet it seems, we inevitably assume and internalise this identity.

For some people, the price of departure would be weighed against the risk of death. Between 2012 and 2015, more and more people in Golshahr were preparing themselves for irregular migration towards the West. During that time, we frequently heard of families auctioning off all their household items of furniture to pay for their migration. I can remember that my mother and I bought a set of cooking utensils from someone who was leaving. The atmosphere was tense, and the young mother was visibly agitated, struggling to determine the prices, especially for items received as wedding gifts. We bought a pot set, which I never felt comfortable cooking in and rarely used.

Many people have left (and leave) Golshahr in different ways and in various directions. Several years later, many of them come back to Iran as international tourists from various countries to visit their families and relatives, often helping them economically. But for some, like our neighbour, Nane Aman (Aman’s mother), the waiting never ends. For more than a decade, she has waited for a word from her daughter and son, the passengers on a refugee boat to Australia. On sunny days, sitting in front of the mosque in the streets where sometimes other elder women join her helps her with the painfulness of waiting which is now a part of her life. The bustling streets of Golshahr might be somehow therapeutically distractive for her. The lively flow of people in Golshahr’s streets never stops and Golshahr does not remember those who are lost. Golshahr, with those invisible walls surrounding it, is a place to move on from.