English breakfast

Oh, how winter nights are long in the UK! My window had no curtain, and I could see how the sunlight was pushing its way out through the grey sky that looked lower than usual. Day was coming very reluctantly. My elderly roommate was quietly sleeping. From behind, she could look like my mother or maybe I was looking for similarities between her and my mother who was so far away from me. She slowly woke up and prepared for morning prayers. She limped towards the bathroom, and I did not want to think how she was going to perform Wudu and wash her feet in this Western style bathroom. She limped back and threw her praying mat and herself to the floor and started praying while seated. Watching her praying and looking upward toward the low ceiling was comforting. The humming of Arabic prayers felt so familiar and soothing. I wish I knew some Arabic and could ask her to pray for me. How come those endless Arabic lessons at schools in Iran never worked for me! My mother would pray if she knew where I was, but God forbid. How could I tell her I am in a prison? How could she bear the pain of imagining her only daughter in prison? How could I explain to her that all my hard work to come to Europe was to end up so disrespectfully in a detention centre? I remembered how at Kabul airport when we separated as I left for London to study, I looked back at her for the last time to say a final farewell and noticed she had turned back to secretly wipe away her tears. She did not want me to see her tears and I did not want to cause her pain. I enjoyed watching my roommate praying, but I did not have the will to stand and pray myself. Those days I was revisiting and negotiating my relationship with Islam.

Finally, the clock struck 7am and it was time for breakfast. My roommate had gone back to sleep and did not seem to be ready to go downstairs for some unfamiliar breakfast. She was not able to walk well, it was too painful to go to the bathroom, let alone going to the canteen. That morning, I decided to bring her some dry food. I remembered that there were white toasts and thin slices of cheese. I could make one or two Halal sandwiches for her. I thought I would be the first in the canteen, but I realised many women like me could not wait to get out of their room. I ate my breakfast and prepared a few toasts for my roommate and wrapped them in paper towels. I tried to imagine her happy face after receiving food and that made me excited. While I was going up the stairs, a male young white member of the staff saw me and asked me what I was carrying in the towel. It was obvious that it was food, but I told him what it was. He asked me to unwrap and show him. He said it is against their internal regulations to carry food and consume it in our room. I explained that it is for my elderly roommate who cannot walk well. He insisted that she has to come down herself and I must put back the food. He was a few steps higher than me. A white man intimidating a brown woman. I felt like a maid who had stolen food for her poor family. Did he really believe me? Was he really thinking that I was stealing food? Was that breakfast really worth stealing? Was he really trying to respect the regulation or did he want to show me his little power? Had he ever tasted our breakfasts? Does he know back in Iran and Afghanistan we eat freshly baked bread for breakfast which cannot be compared with these industrially made white toasts? The unseasoned scrambled eggs on white toast in the canteen was good, but for me it was not as tasty as eggs cooked with fresh tomatoes and onions, seasoned with local spices and served with cardamom flavoured green tea. I went back to the canteen to put back the food. Nobody would use those sandwiches anyway, so I had to throw them in the bin. I felt terrible. I felt disrespected and humiliated.

Yarl’s wood immigration removal centre

I arrived at the Yarl’s Wood removal centre in March 2008. Yarl’s Wood is the largest immigration removal centre for women in the UK. The private security company Serco has been responsible for managing it since 2007. Three categories of people are detained in this centre: foreign nationals who have served a sentence in the UK and await deportation, asylum seekers like me who were waiting for processing of their asylum application, and those who have entered or remained in the country illegally.

Figure 5.1

© Copyright Oliver White and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

Upon arrival, I went through a round of security checks. All of my belongings were confiscated. I did not have much with me anyway. I only had my LSE-logoed backpack with me containing my laptop and the mobile phone that one of my brothers had gifted me and a few bank notes. My laptop and the sim card of my mobile phone were taken away, and I was only allowed to use my mobile with the new sim card the prison authorities provided. That was enough for me to be connected to the outside world through my partner who was based in India and found ways to put credit in my phone so that we could keep in touch and work on my asylum application.

I was put in a room with a disabled elderly woman from Sudan who had mobility restrictions. There were two beds and a bathroom in the room. The bathroom was not suitable for an elderly person and that might be the reason she had not taken a shower for a long time. Her English was very limited, and we hardly could have a meaningful conversation. I managed to make her understand that I was born in Iran, hoping our shared religion would create a common ground. She rightfully associated Iran with Ayatullah Khomeini and guessed that I might be a Shia Muslim and lost any interest in listening to me. I should have mentioned Afghanistan instead!

Before my arrival at this centre, and during my initial screening interview at the Home Office in Croydon, south London, the officer in charge asked me whether I had any legal representation. I did not. The officer recommended that I find one before my main interview. Through a friend, I found details of an organisation that provided free legal advice to asylum seekers. That organisation is closed now. When I arrived at this removal centre, my partner, the lawyer, and I started working together to compile any necessary documents that would strengthen my case. My lawyer had warned me seriously that most people in this removal centre, as the name suggests, get removed back to their country of origin. The shock of arriving in a prison had not settled down and I now had to deal with the stress of getting deported back to Afghanistan.

There was a possibility of being bailed out, but I could not afford the amount required and I also could not find anyone who would pay for this. We were all confined indoors and the only way to get fresh air was to open our windows, but these were secured and could not be opened wide. My window was facing a brick wall which was 2 meters away and I could see a tiny bit of sky. Most of the women in the prison were brown or black. The dynamics, strength, and positivity that black women brought with them in that rather depressing building has stayed in my mind vividly. The resistance of these women in keeping the prison a lively place gave me some strength to hold myself up. I remember there was a room which looked like a hair salon. I never stepped into it. I wish I was not isolated and could enter, but the sound of life and laughter coming from that room made this place less like a prison.

I never disclosed the experience of this removal centre to my family, particularly to my parents who have now departed from this world. They would be devastated to know their daughter was imprisoned. People of Afghanistan who have migrated try to portray a successful image of themselves in the West to families left back in Afghanistan. I wanted my family to know that they made the right decision to support my departure to Europe. I did not want to look like a loser. I was still in this undeclared mission of proving to myself and my family that I can look after myself as a single woman. In addition, I did not want to give them a hard time as they were not able to do anything for me from afar. However, the women in the prison looked after one another. A young woman from Sierra Leone was particularly kind to me. We were both in the same car when we arrived at this removal centre. I was not keen to socialise simply because I was trying to understand what was going on around me. She brought me out of my dark moments by making me dance to the songs she sang beautifully. One day, in her room she told me her story and pulled up her T-shirt to show me the signs of torture on her body. It was very confusing and shocking that both of us felt we needed protection as our lives were at risk in our country of origin, but the asylum system in the UK rejected us.

Towards the west

The fall of the Taliban in 2001 had created a sense of optimism in Afghanistan. Hundreds of local and international non-governmental organisations and UN agencies had popped up in Afghanistan. There was an exciting mood of ‘reconstruction’ in the air. However, the optimism did not last long. Afghanistan was becoming increasingly dangerous. Taliban insurgencies had reappeared. The actual fighting with the NATO forces mainly took place in the south and southeast parts of Afghanistan, but the fighting was gradually spreading to other areas of Afghanistan. NATO forces were supposedly fighting to bring lasting peace and development to Afghanistan and liberate women from Afghan men and a patriarchal society. But for many, including the Taliban, US-led forces were considered foreign occupying forces imposing a hegemonic Western ideology. The ‘civilising mission’ of the development regime was not working and was instead adding more tension to the communities that for a long time had been suffering from many political and economic upheavals. The donors’ obsession with ‘gender mainstreaming’ was one of the elements that irritated many communities (men and women) whose main concerns were not increased public visibility of women, but poverty reduction, lack of health and education infrastructure, clean water, unemployment, insecurity, etc.

Thanks to a degree in English-Farsi translation that I had obtained in Iran, I could join a foreign NGO in late 2004, a few months after I was forced to leave Iran and saw Afghanistan for the first time. I worked for two years for this NGO. Around mid-2006, it was getting clear to the head of the NGO I was working with (a white Western man) in Mazar-e Sharif that my life was in danger, and I should leave his NGO. This came after my long struggle and resistance to some of my colleagues who had been pushing me for some time to resign. As an Iran-born and Iran-raised Hazara ‘returnee’ woman, some of my colleagues found my behaviour unacceptable. I had been living a delusion of making Afghanistan my home after a life in Iran and was fighting for my position on various grounds: trying to be a financially independent single woman at home; fighting for some freedom of movement in a new country; figuring out my way in a country I was forced unwillingly to adopt as a ‘home country’, and constructing my identity as a female Hazara citizen of Afghanistan, a country that had become infected with ethnic, religious, and linguistic tensions. In the meantime, at work with my colleagues, I had entered into another battle trying to prove that I was capable of doing the job I had been entrusted with—improving women’s participation in the National Solidarity Programme. The status of being Iranigak had complicated my already minoritized and marginalised identity as a female Shia Hazara woman in a Sunni majority country run by Pashtun elites.

The rejection I encountered in Afghanistan was not unique to me. Millions who had returned to Afghanistan or visited for the very first-time experienced discrimination and marginalisation on various levels, as described by Reza in the previous chapter. In the same NGO, I developed feelings for a colleague (the partner who helped me while I was in detention and whom I married ten years later). Although our socialisation could only occur in public spaces such as the dining room of guest houses or on long drives to the fieldwork sites, I did not realise that I was still breaking some unwritten rules. This had caused discomfort among some of my male colleagues. In an email from a high ranking and elderly ‘white-bearded’ male colleague to the head of the NGO, I was accused of behaving like Iranian women who are not familiar with the culture of Afghanistan and causing disruption to the project. It was not the first and the last email pressure from colleagues to the head of the NGO. The head of the NGO suggested that I work in other branches in the region, such as Pakistan or Tajikistan. Instead, I resigned and thanks to a scholarship, I went to the UK to study for my master’s degree.

I feared for my life when I left Afghanistan, but I looked at this journey as a way to get away from the crisis and instead focus on self-development. I therefore informed my family and colleagues that I am travelling to the UK not to save my life but to study for my master’s degree. I did not take the decision to leave Afghanistan lightly. Growing up in an environment where immediate family and extended families and community play a key role in our daily socialisation, it was not easy for me to imagine myself all by myself in a completely new country. Similarly, it was not easy for my parents to see their young and single daughter travel abroad to study. My family had already had to deal with the pressure from our community to stop me from working for a foreign NGO. Many Afghans, including my family and relatives, looked at these foreign NGOs with suspicion. Despite these pressures, we had come to an agreement and I was able to work and contribute financially to my family.

Early one morning in summer 2006, when my father was performing his morning prayers outdoors next to our garden, I sat next to him to discuss my departure to the UK. He had just finished and was reciting Zikr with his praying beads. He was definitely enjoying those spiritual moments under the sky while warm breezes were making our vine branches and sunflowers sway. My mother was in the sleeping net trying to wake up my siblings for the prayer. I told my father that a degree from the West would facilitate my integration into the Afghan government, a position he always hoped for me. Many government officials of Afghanistan had studied in the West. To be part of the government, for him, meant to be part of the central power, he never enjoyed in Afghanistan as a marginalised man. Since the persecution and subjugation of the Hazaras in the late nineteenth century, lower socio-economic status had marked the Hazara people’s landscape. My father was a landless peasant who worked on other people’s lands until he found his way to Kabul to work as a porter. He later started making trips to Iran for seasonal work, and in late 1970s, right after the Soviet invasion, he took his young family with him to Iran and settled there.

That morning, he finally agreed with a heavy heart that I could go and study in the UK and gave me his blessings. My elder brother was not happy with the idea of me leaving home as a single woman, but who could confront my father! That summer of 2006 we had all planned to visit Daykundi for the very first time with my parents. The province of Daykundi was the birthplace of my parents. For the first time since 1977 when they had left for Iran, they were able to travel to their village, Quchanqi. My father had lost his parents when he was child, but my mother was around 16 years old when she had left her father and her home village for Iran, and now, she was going to visit his gravestone. Central Afghanistan is among the most impoverished parts of Afghanistan, and the village of my parents had not gone through many changes since they left.

But that summer, after gaining the approval of my parents, I had to travel to Pakistan to apply for the British visa as there was no British consulate in Afghanistan. I regret that I missed my once in a life-time chance to visit Daykundi with my parents. I do not know how much I can know about that precious piece of land without the presence of my deceased parents. Above all, I wanted to visit Daykundi for a symbolic reason. It is my official and adopted place of birth, since neither Iranian nor Afghan authorities were willing to put Iran as my birthplace on my identification documents. Now, the Taliban has taken over the country, there is no way for me to visit Afghanistan, let alone Daykundi.

Life in the UK as student

Despite fearing for my life, when I arrived in the UK, I did not think of claiming for asylum. I hoped very much that things would settle, and I would be able to go back to Afghanistan upon completion of my master’s degree. That first year that I lived in the UK (2006–2007) was enough to come to this understanding that asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants are not only unwelcome, they are also stigmatised. On the train to university, I could read the tabloids and see how the British media and the right-wing politicians particularly targeted asylum seekers who arrived irregularly and portrayed them as a threat to the general public. Refugees were demonised and I did not want to be regarded as a threat.

That year studying at LSE for my master’s degree was incredibly tough. I struggled to cope with the loneliness that had fallen upon me. The intensive one-year master programme tends to confine students to either the library or the small student residence room. I missed the ordinary sounds and smells of life. On top of this, I struggled with the course itself. I had changed my discipline and needed to work more to get familiar with the theories of sociology. I was also exposed to academic English for the first time, and this made me slower than my peers. Above all this, I was trying to come to terms with the reality that my relationship with my European partner was serious, but I could not see how I could tell my family and convince them to accept him as my husband. This emotional burden took a toll on me, and I started having mental health issues and had to seek medical support. At some point, I was so unwell that I was advised to quit my masters. But there was no way I could return to my parents as a failure. I had to bear the extreme anxiety, panic attacks, and nightmares of those days. I received extensions for my assignments and finally finished my degree.

After completion of my studies, I did return to Afghanistan but soon realised that the situation had deteriorated, and I could not stay. My UK visa was still valid and that allowed me to return to Europe. I decided to apply for the ‘highly skilled migrant programme’ that would give me two more years to stay in the UK and time to look for a job. My plan was to find a job and stay in the UK for two more years and observe the circumstances in Afghanistan from a distance and decide whether it could be safe for me to return. I was confident that my work experience in a so-called developing ‘post-conflict’ country and a degree from a prestigious university would help me to get a job quickly. I had learnt that asylum seekers are regarded as non-Western and non-white people who are after the social benefits of the UK and are an economic burden. I did not want to be regarded as a burden. I was educated and I knew I could work and be independent the way I used to work and be financially independent in Afghanistan. If I could extend my visa via the ‘highly skilled migrant programme’, I would be considered as an asset to their economy and not as a burden.

I stayed with a Hazara family that I got to know during my studies in London. I shared a room with their toddler daughter who was learning, with difficulty, to sleep on her own. I had found an informal job in a Hazara business in southwest London. The distance from my accommodation in northeast London and the informal job was quite long and it took around two hours to get there. I was overqualified and underpaid for the job, and my boss’ treatment was not appropriate, but I needed the salary to pay for my living costs, mostly for the visa application costs and food. I did not have to pay rent and my friend let me eat with them if needed. It was not an ideal situation, and I was clearly a burden. I hoped to be able to find a formal and well-paid job. I had managed to save a few hundred pounds but had to spend them for a critical health issue in a private clinic as I had no access to the NHS. I was broke and time was running out and I was getting very anxious that I would overstay my UK visa.

Despite meeting all the requirements to prove that I am a skilled migrant, my visa application was rejected. One of the reasons was the lack of evidence. I did not have a birth certificate, although copies of my valid Afghan passport with valid UK visa were attached to the application. I did not have a birth certificate because I was born at home, in a remote industrial dairy farm located in an impoverished suburb of Tehran. My parents registered me as their child without the need to present a certificate. I was registered as a refugee from birth and lived with that status until we were forced to go to Afghanistan in 2004. Moreover, the closest town with a hospital must have been hours away by car. But my family had just arrived from Afghanistan in the late 1970s and could not afford to spend their hard-earned and small salary for hospital appointments. I was my mother’s second child, she had already given birth to one at home in Daykundi. I was left with no option but to claim asylum in the UK. I went to the Home Office in Croydon, south London, and started the process.

Afghanistan embassy

My Afghan passport says I was born in Daykundi, central Afghanistan. But I have never seen central Afghanistan and as I mentioned above, I missed my first and last opportunity to visit it with my parents. Upon our involuntary repatriation to Afghanistan from Iran in 2004, I applied for a Tazkira (national identification document) based on the records of my father in the ministry of internal affairs. He was born in Daykundi, and if I wanted to have a Tazkira, the place of my birth could only be Daykundi. I demanded the Afghan authorities write ‘Tehran’ as my place of birth, but I was mocked by them. To obtain a Tazkira or any documents proving our identity as citizens of Afghanistan has always been a struggle for Iran-born and Iran-raised returnees. This struggle is extended to Afghan government representatives abroad.

The need to visit the embassy of Afghanistan has always made me feel uncomfortable. No matter if it is in Iran or here in the West, I have always been made conscious of my racialised, gendered, and minoritized status in Afghanistan. What has made my position more vulnerable was my Iranian-accented Farsi, which despite my efforts, has always betrayed me and signalled the fact that I have lived in Iran. I needed a birth certificate for the ‘highly skilled migrant programme’ that would allow me to extend my stay in the UK. I hoped the Embassy of Afghanistan would help me with a letter explaining the situation, but they were not willing to help.

During my life so far, I have only spent two consecutive years in Afghanistan (2004–2006), one year from mid-2015 to mid-2016 to conduct ethnographic research, two-week trips in 2017 and 2018 to introduce my son to my family, and a week in May 2021 to hold a funeral ceremony for my father. The rest of my life I have spent in Iran (25 years) and then here in the UK (16 years). Even though I have not lived in Afghanistan long and I myself feel so uncomfortable in the embassy of that country, it is so ironic that I am only recognised as a person from Afghanistan.

The stigmatising, criminalisation, and humiliation of applying for asylum

What I was experiencing as an asylum seeker in the UK was the result of tightening immigration policies introduced by the ‘Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006’. This act gave the immigration authorities the right to obtain my biometric data, apparently for the purpose of proving I am the rightful holder of my passport. Asylum seekers, by fault, were considered dishonest, and therefore, the contrary should be proved.

In order to claim asylum, I had gone to the Home Office in Croydon. At that time, one could turn up at the Home Office and there was no need for a prior appointment. I arrived early in the morning and faced a long queue. We went through a tight security check and then entered the buildings. The first appointment was for screening when the date for the second appointment is determined. In the screening interview, my interviewer was a black lady who asked me general questions about my details and then briefly asked about the reason I claimed asylum. I remember that I was asked to provide the birth date of my grandparents, parents, and siblings, and I could not remember all and did not know some of them. My parents did not know their own birthdate and had to invent a date based on the rough data they had, but they had recorded their children’s birthday. Celebrating birthdays was not common in our family until older siblings started celebrating for the younger ones. The interviewer expressed surprise and scepticism. I was also asked whether I am affiliated to any terrorist organisations or have committed any acts of terrorism. I remembered I was asked similar questions when I applied for the British visa in 2006. We are by default prone to being terrorists and must acknowledge in advance if we are not. These assumptions hurt.

In the second interview, I told the full story. I gave full details of how my relationship with my colleague had caused tension in my work and later in my immediate family. I also explained that I decided to return to the UK as I was confident I could apply for the ‘Highly Skilled Migrant Programme’ and stay two years longer and this time was enough to look for a job. According to the British immigration law, a person who flees for his/her life should claim asylum as soon as s/he enters the land of Britain. I did not claim asylum as soon as I returned to London. I was therefore charged with the offence of deceiving the immigration officer verbally at the airport as I did not reveal that I would like to claim for asylum. It was not my intention to claim asylum when I re-entered the UK, but the interviewer did not want to believe me. I was not aware of such rules. The immigration laws and rules keep changing, and it is not reasonable to expect people who flee for their lives to know European languages and keep themselves updated with the latest changes in the immigration laws of the countries they go to. Many asylum seekers who take the land route and travel irregularly have no clue which country they will end up in.

The interviewer in the second interview was also a black lady and she recorded my voice this time. I felt betrayed that a woman of colour is charging another woman of colour with an offence, not knowing how people of colour reproduce white supremacy and unjust structures by behaving ‘white’. One should not be surprised to see the brown women Priti Patel and Suella Braverman amongst the most hostile UK Home Secretaries to migrants and refugees. And while I write this piece, Rishi Sunak, the first brown Prime Minister of the UK vows to deport asylum seekers who come to the UK by boat to Rwanda.

When I was informed that I had been charged, I was quite confused. I was not sure if I had understood correctly and doubted my English. I remained quiet and composed. The reality hit me when I was taken into a room and someone started taking pictures of me, very much like the thriller movies in which a criminal is caught and photographed from various angles. When they took pictures of my profiles, both to the right and to the left, I started suspecting that something was going wrong. My biometrics were taken for the first time in my life. I waited in a room for a long time, then I was directed towards a car. As soon as I got out, I was shocked to see the van. It looked like the fenced police cars used for transporting prisoners. Something broke in me. I sat in the car with a few other young women. We did not exchange any words. The drive felt so long. The long winter nights had set in and I could not see where we were going. I wept quietly until we arrived in the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. I had been put on a fast-track route where people are more likely to be rejected and sent back to their ‘country of origin’.

Performing asylum

Asylum seekers and refugees learn about the constructed images of them in the west and try to behave the way they are expected to in order to maximise their chance of an asylum grant. My friend from Sierra Leone knew that she needed to prove whatever ‘story’ she presented. She had several significant and pressing reasons that would qualify her for an asylum grant, but she decided to only present the ones that the immigration officers would be most likely to believe or are trained to consider as valid cases. This case was very similar to an Afghan undocumented young man whom I had met in London later. He had claimed asylum as a minor in the UK and had to go through an ordeal until he was finally rejected. He was victim of sexual violence but was too ashamed to use as his case for asylum, but rather relied on persecution by the Taliban to present his case.

I found the whole experience of claiming asylum humiliating. Most of the staff in the prison felt entitled to maltreat the inmates in a patronising and infantilizing manner. I decided to limit my interaction with the staff to avoid further humiliation and instead spent time in the library. It was a very quiet library as most of the books were in English and most of the inmates were not fluent in English. There, I found an interesting shelf on which there were thick folders titled ‘country profile’. I took down the ‘Afghanistan Country Profile’ in which there was general information on Afghanistan and the grounds on which one could grant asylum to a person from Afghanistan. I found it was like a ‘cheat sheet’ based on which I could frame my answers in my asylum interview. I was fluent in English, and I could read and learn from it, but this was not the case for most of my mates in the prison. In my original ‘story’, I wanted to explain that my life in Afghanistan is in danger because my colleagues disapproved of my behaviour and started sending me threatening emails. The corrupt Afghan police who hold traditional beliefs would not have been able or willing to protect me. But after reading the ‘Afghanistan Country Profile’, I realised that I must also highlight my ethnicity and religion as well as my gender to increase my chance of acceptance. This would have not occurred to me had I not read this report.

Grant of asylum

A few days after I arrived in the prison, I was given an interview date. I was extremely anxious as data showed that the interview was simply to meet the formalities and I would eventually be deported. While I was waiting for my interview, I was given leaflets on voluntary return and the financial support that comes with it. These made me more anxious.

A white lady interviewed me for my asylum application in the prison. A female Iranian interpreter had come with her, but as I was fluent in English and not happy with the translation, we decided to continue the interview without an interpreter. The interpreter was unfamiliar with the context of Afghanistan and the situation of refugees from Afghanistan in Iran. The interpreter expressed surprise, in Farsi, when I gave my accounts of racism towards refugees in Iran. I found her uncomfortable when I talked about Iran and the mistreatment by the Iranian government and public of the refugees. There were details that the interpreter was not able to transmit to the interviewer due to her ignorance.

In addition, the asylum application interviewers have a reputation for being strict and trying hard to find faults in your case or ‘pull up a string of hair from yoghurt’ to use a Persian proverb. My partner had access to the Internet and could help me find and compile evidence for my case. He wrote a statement and managed to get a statement from the head of the NGO I worked with. The interview was long, and we had to have a break in time. There I saw my legal advisor for the second time. Being in a prison was upsetting in itself and recalling what has happened to me in detail had made me more upset. Above all, knowing your life and future depends on this interview and the judgement of the interviewer create an immense amount of psychological pressure. I recalled what I had remembered from my life in Afghanistan and what could serve my case, but to my surprise, I had to make a lot of effort to explain why I should not be deported to Iran, my birthplace, but which would not accept responsibility for a non-citizen.

I waited around a week until the result of my interview came. I had a meeting with the interviewer, and she gave me the news and wished me well. I was among the rarest cases who could leave that prison with a grant of asylum. I think it was simply because I was fluent in English and that had made access to resources easier. I also had someone equally fluent in English outside the prison who was resourceful and could help me with finding evidence. My roommate had very limited knowledge of English and relatives back in Sudan who could not afford to invest the same resources in her application. I see why the rate of grant applications was very low in that prison. As I was now legally a refugee with status, I was immediately removed from the prison. I received the news of my application in the afternoon and by night, I was in a car towards an emergency accommodation. I arrived at the centre at night and left it at night. I have no memory of how that centre looks from outside and never wished to know. I decided to put the humiliating memory of this centre in the very back of my mind. I had no sense of where this emergency accommodation was located, but I remember I stayed in a church that had been transformed into an emergency accommodation. I stayed in a few more places until I was given a place in a hostel to wait for social housing.

After asylum

The hostel was located in Goldhawk road, west London, and close to Shepherd’s Bush. The hostel was for single people or people not accompanied by their families and predominantly occupied by asylum seekers from Eritrea. An Iranian man and I were the only Farsi speakers. We were all given one bedroom each. Toilets and bathrooms and kitchen were all shared. We were not allowed to have visitors overnight and no children were allowed. Compared with my life as a student, the life in that hostel was closer to the life I was used to. Gradually, I made friends with some women from Eritrea, one of whom later became my son’s godmother. While I was living in this hostel, I found my first job as a Human Rights Officer in a health charity. Contrary to the British public and state perception, most of us in the hostel wanted to put the trauma we experienced behind us and build a new life in the UK, find jobs, and start paying taxes.

After this job, I decided to pursue my PhD in Geneva in 2011. My refugee status complicated my situation. As a refugee in the UK, I was not allowed to be out of the UK for more than three months at a time but studying for my PhD required at least one year and half to be based in Geneva. I made sure to go back to the UK every three months. The restriction on my mobility also meant I changed my research proposals and field research and conducted it instead in the UK among refugees from Afghanistan. Meantime, I had started the time-consuming and painstaking task of negotiating my marriage with my family. My status had changed and so too my bargaining power with my family. I was financially independent and contributed financially to family costs in Afghanistan.

Once I was granted asylum, I was also given a refugee or ‘Convention’ travel document with which I was able to travel to some countries. This travel document was for stateless people and with it I could not be fully Afghan or British. Despite holding a travel document, whose main purpose is to facilitate travelling, I was always nervous approaching the British border police who always found some reason to pick on me. My partner, being a white Western middle-class man, had the privilege of freely travelling around the world for work and pleasure and I accompanied him sometimes, wherever my travel document was recognised. I was the one constantly cornered and questioned at the border and sarcastically called ‘a very well-travelled young lady’.

After the grant of asylum, I needed to wait for five years to be granted indefinite leave to remain. The time I spent in the UK before my asylum application, which was nearly two years as a student, would not be counted. In 2013, I was eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain. It took one year for my application to be processed, and during this time, I was confined in the UK with no travel document. The application for ‘naturalisation’ is the next step after obtaining a permanent visa in the UK, and this was supposed to be a smooth process. However, I had to wait another year or so to be eligible for naturalisation. After obtaining my indefinite leave to remain, I was kept waiting for a long time without any information on why my naturalisation application takes so much time. With the recommendation of a friend, I decided to seek legal help and it was not cheap. My lawyer managed to obtain information from the Home Office system through ‘The Freedom of Information Act’ in which it was stated that as I had deceived the immigration officer verbally, there was doubt whether I am eligible to be a British citizen. The Home Office never told me why they were delaying, otherwise I would have tried to ‘prove’ I am a good person and ‘worthy’ of being a citizen. My lawyer asked me to bring evidence that I am a good person! I compiled a few documents and one of them was a letter of recommendation from my PhD supervisor. In his letter, he stressed that I am an academic person and will contribute to British academia and that he knows me personally and has full trust in me. I had also attached my CV in which it showed that I started working a few months after being granted asylum and paid tax in this country. I also attached letters from my professional manager. These were sent to the Home Office via my lawyer, and it worked. In June 2015, I finally received my British passport. The first country I travelled to was Afghanistan in July 2015. It was to conduct ethnographic research in Mazar-e Sharif, the city where my family lived. I embarked on a research project and could spend an unforgettable year with my family after a very long time. In the same year, I officially got married with my partner and received my parent’s blessings. The discrimination that had forced me to leave Afghanistan in 2006 had not ended. The situation has deteriorated, especially with regard to security. This year was different from 2004 to 2006 because I had entered Afghanistan as a British citizen and employed by a Western university. My legal and social status had changed and that hugely impacted my stay in the country.

Despite all the challenges mentioned above, I have built a life in the UK. And that was mainly possible because I was among the lucky few who are legally recognised. For any asylum seeker, legal recognition is the most important step towards building a life in a given country. To be a ‘citizen’ with legally recognised equal access to resources and opportunities was something I felt first in the UK. Had I been given the possibility of having legal recognition in Iran, my birth country, I would have taken a different path in my life. Had I been given equal opportunities as a ‘returnee’ Hazara Shia woman in Afghanistan, I would have also taken a different path in my life. Lack of legal recognition in Iran and racism, prejudice, discrimination, and the violence that it induced in Afghanistan was the impulse for my family, relatives, and all the Hazaras in our community to migrate to further and riskier destinations to improve their lives.

Transnational families

My family members now are torn apart and scattered in different countries. Similar to any typical family from Afghanistan, we practice a form of ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ or a kind of ‘forced cosmopolitanism’. The protracted conflict in Afghanistan has caused several waves of exoduses and people have settled in various locations around the world. Afghans, therefore, build their social networks across several nation-states and in this transnational social space various dynamics are nurtured. I have siblings in Iran, Kazakhstan, Germany, Denmark, the UK, and Australia. My father’s eternal resting place happened to be in Iran and my mother’s on a hill in Kazakhstan. My parents’ premature deaths were caused by their marginalised status as refugees in Iran and Kazakhstan. Both lost their lives in 2021 to Covid-19 while waiting at the end of the queue for vaccination. My first cousins and other extended family members are all scattered out across the globe, mostly in Europe. Having been raised in a community-centred society, the imposed separations from people we grew up with and love weighs on our hearts. However, new technologies facilitate this transnationalism and make communication easier and more frequent.

Despite being transnational, the Hazaras in particular and Afghans in general are not a homogenous community in the countries in which they have settled. Afghans have left Afghanistan in various waves in response to different triggers, whether political upheavals, conflict, drought, or economic hardship. The last most recent wave of migration out of Afghanistan was triggered by the Taliban’s takeover of the country in 2021. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans were evacuated (including my co-authors Abdullah and Reza) and many left and continue to leave the country after the chaotic departure of the ‘international community’ or US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan. My sister and her family were evacuated to Australia and my elder brother and his family to Germany at that time. That experience has forged a bond among those forced to leave so abruptly. However, in spite of that common traumatic experience, Afghan communities in the diaspora are still divided along ethnic, linguistic, religious, and political grounds.

‘Still water stagnates, one must not stay still’

Around mid-June 2024, I had dropped my son to school and had few child-free hours. I decided to go to the hairdressing salon in our neighbourhood, which is run by some women of Turkish origin. I live in Edmonton Green, northeast London, where a large community of Turkish people live. It is a very lively, dynamic and yet deprived and working-class neighbourhood. I wanted to have my hair trimmed as the wedding of a Hazara friend with an English man was approaching. One of the good things about this hair salon was the fact that one did not need to have a prior appointment and could appear any time. As my schedule as a working mother with a child with special needs is constantly changing, this is perfect for me. I went inside and as soon as I saw Elif, I was pleased. Unintentionally, I had become her regular client and she had become my trusted hairdresser. Elif came to me smiling and asked me to wait for a while until she finished with another client. I grabbed a chair and while sitting, I noticed that one of the hairdressers was talking to two of her customers in Farsi. She was telling her client in Farsi that she had requested her Turkish colleagues not to disclose the fact that she speaks Farsi. It was because she does not want anyone to understand that she is Iranian. I interrupted to let her know that I speak Farsi and I understood what she was saying. I wanted to be ethical, so to speak, as I thought they may disclose some private information. The three of them turned their heads in surprise and asked with half-smiling faces, ‘are you Iranian?’ I said to myself, what a complicated question! I said I was born in Iran and spent most of my life there, but my parents are from central Afghanistan. The Iranian customer cut me off with a righteous look and said, ‘So you are an Afghani.’ I replied that I had only lived three years in Afghanistan. I was thinking how to explain here in this hair salon in simple language the citizenship debates that I used to have in tutorials with my university students. The words remained in my mouth when she said again ‘If your parents are Afghani, then you are Afghani.’ I repeated ‘I lived in Afghanistan for only three years of my whole life’. She said ‘No, you are Afghani’. Every time she uttered the word Afghani, I felt a slap on my face. Then, the three of them continue in Farsi between themselves. The lady responsible for eyebrow threading came to me and asked if my eyebrows needed threading. I said why not! Once my eyebrows were done, Elif came and looked after my hair. While she was carefully working on my hair, I went into my bubble and wondered how this term Afghani still had the power to hurt me.

In writing this chapter and reflecting on my experience of claiming asylum in the UK, I am conscious that I have made myself vulnerable by sharing experiences that I did not dare to share with my own family in Afghanistan. It has become comfortable to share after realising that the Hazaras who have been born or raised in Iran have experienced similar multiple layers of racialisation, discrimination, and humiliation while on the move. We rationalised our trajectory by holding on to this common belief that ‘Still water stagnates, one must not stay still’. We are Awarah (wanderers) and the status of Awaragi (wandering) defines who we are. My trajectory is not unique, and the contributors of this book share much of it. This chapter has demonstrated how my trajectory can be located in a broader phenomenon: I built a life in the UK. I have a home and a small family. I am highly educated and have a career. But the scar of this experience remains on my soul. In other words, the migration experience generally and the asylum system in particular humiliated me and kept telling me that I am small, that I am unimportant, and I should do what I am told, and that I have no value. In spite of those, I struggle but I continue. I have made friendships and networks, and there is solidarity but there is a constant battle, and we bear the scar of this battle.