Mina Moayyed has lived in New Zealand for 30 years. Her escape from Iran wasn’t easy: she survived gun shots, speeding trucks, and sleepless nights in the desert.
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As told to Mava Moayyed.
I left Iran when I was 19, because as a Bahá'í woman I wasn’t going to have a chance to get a higher education.
I had just finished high school and wanted to go to university, but when students enrolled they had to fill out an entry form that included a question about religion. If you put ‘Bahá'í’, your application was immediately rejected. That's still happening now.
Even as a child, when my teachers at school found out my parents were Bahá'ís, they would do all sorts of nasty things. I was in primary school and one of the kids said something rude about my family. When I told them to stop, my teacher made me stand in the corner of the room with both my arms and one leg in the air while the children laughed at me.
In high school, my physics teacher took me aside and told me he would reduce my marks on my test unless I said I was a Muslim. I refused and he took my marks from 20 to 13. I remember I cried all the way home because I’d never had a 13.
When I finished high school, all I wanted to do was study. I couldn’t even get a job, because even then you had to fill out a form with a question about religion. No one would hire me.
Mina (far right) in Iran with some of her family Photo: Unknown
My uncle was leaving Iran and told my parents that if they wanted to send me out [of the country], he’d be happy to take me with his family. We couldn’t even get passports. We were imprisoned in our own country. I remember my mother was crying her eyeballs out because she was so worried. It was a dangerous trip. People died trying to cross the border; they would get shot by the revolutionary guards.
You had to have a guide if you wanted to escape. There were these people who would charge you a lot of money and help you across the border into Pakistan or Turkey. They lived around the border so they knew the roads very well.
We left in the afternoon and there were 11 of us in the truck, including two little kids. We were dressed up to look like the locals from the desert we were crossing. We weren’t allowed to bring anything – not even a change of clothes. I remember our guide saying "Are you sure you want to do this? Because you can never go back."
At one point, the truck we were travelling in was shot at. The guy driving the van was just flying because he was so afraid of being hit, but because it was the middle of the night and we had turned our lights off, the guards couldn’t see [us]. But they could hear the engine, so they were shooting towards the noise. We could hear the gun shots coming towards us and we thought at any minute we could die.
I remember the moment when we were crossing the border I turned back because I wanted to see my homeland, but I couldn’t see anything. It was so dark.
It took about four days to get to the first city in Pakistan. We slept in tents pitched in the desert.
Photo: Unknown
Comparatively, our trip was actually relatively easy. Even just six months later, so many more Bahá'ís were leaving Iran and it became much more dangerous. Many of them had to walk for days or ride a camel. Some of them were hospitalised when they got out.
When we arrived, the local Bahá'í community in Pakistan helped us. I was there for about three years and met my husband. We came to New Zealand in 1986. At the time, New Zealand didn’t have a refugee quota for Persians, so, sponsored by the New Zealand Bahá'ís, we immigrated to Nelson.
Even though many of the refugees now have much worse journeys to get here, I can understand, on some level, what they go through. I also understand how they feel when they get here. It’s a country that’s very alien, very different from the lives they left behind. Initially it’s very hard, and what they need is for people to want to be with them, not because they feel sorry for them but because they appreciate having these people in the country.
I think sometimes the understanding is that these refugees come here and take something from us. But I think, given the right opportunities, these people become contributors to the development of this country, whether socially or economically. It ultimately enriches New Zealand.
