Excerpt: Majid and Farzaneh by Dina Nayeri

It was just casual talk. People talk,’ said Farzaneh, frantic, when the Sepâh came for her. It was 2017. The girls, three and nine, watched their parents pace and fret.
‘What were they wearing?’ asked Majid.
‘Street clothes,’ said Farzaneh. ‘It’s Sepâh. No one else does this. Mohammad must have sent for me.’ She was shaking. Farzaneh’s brother was high up in the revolutionary guard – he had a ‘thick neck’, they say in Farsi – and he had decided she was an apostate and a brazen, unreligious woman who must be broken. She didn’t pray. She was mouthy and lax with hijab. Now and then she asked questions: Should faith be a prison? Why must I hunger for thirty days? Why can’t I choose my own clothes? Her brother called her godless, a Christian, a Jew.

‘If they come in street clothes,’ said Majid, ‘it’s serious. If you go, you’re not coming back. Then they’ll take me and the girls will be orphans.’ Farzaneh started biting her thumb nail. ‘We have to run.’

Their street was at the dead end of an alley. The window in the back looked out over a parking lot that opened to the next street. The family snuck out onto the terrace. On her way out, Farzaneh grabbed her purse and a flask of cold water. They took nothing else. No clothes; no toiletries or treasures. The girls left their backpacks, their toys. Sarah, the older one, watched stunned as her mother put three-year-old Shirin on her lap and slid down the fire ramp into the parking lot. Majid put Sarah on the slide, sat behind her and pushed off. When their feet hit asphalt, they ran.

They drove to Urmia, a city bordering Turkey. They rented a room, tried to sleep. Farzaneh bought toothbrushes and a new neck brace; she had suffered from neck sprains for years. As the girls were preparing for bed, washing socks and underwear in the sink and hanging them up to dry overnight, Majid stepped outside to make a call.

‘Your brother went to see my parents,’ he said, when the room was dark and humming with girlish sleep. ‘He said he’ll find us and kill us. He said, even if the government lets you go, he’ll never let you go. Farzaneh joon, he’s a two-fire revolutionary. We have no future together in Iran. Let’s not doubt. Let’s get out together.’

They weren’t running from the Islamic Republic, whose interest is cold and finite, but from a brother whose rage could cross borders. In the morning, they changed their SIM card. Majid found a smuggler and prayed he wouldn’t leave breadcrumbs for his brother-in-law.

They drove to the border at midnight. They waited in the dark, whispering to the girls to quiet their breathing while a guide crept ahead to await the shift change of the guards. The smuggler disappeared with his fee; he would go no further. When the guide signalled, they shuffled to him, keeping their heads low. The guide lifted the girls onto a horse, then grabbed the reins and gestured for Farzaneh and Majid to follow and they began climbing the Zagros Mountains into Turkey, to a safe border village. They walked for five hours in pitch-black silence, though that route takes a fit man half the time. They made stops, the horse treading quietly, as if it knew. With two children, they couldn’t risk being shot at in the night. The guide left them partway through; he wouldn’t cross into Turkey. A Turkish guide met them a few paces into the country to take them the rest of the way. The girls didn’t speak. The gravelly mountain wore through Farzaneh and Majid’s unsuitable shoes in a few hours. Only the guides, with their accustomed eyes, could see through the gluey black night. Majid and Farzaneh glanced back toward Iran; they had survived thirty-six years of a brutal regime to watch their home melt away behind a peak, into darkness.

They reached the village just as the sun was rising. In a small room, they waited for the smuggler’s group to complete. The girls slept.

In Istanbul, Majid arranged for another smuggler. Getting out of Iran was dangerous, but nothing compared to crossing the Aegean by boat, entering Europe illegally. What they had to offer the final smuggler would drain the family Majid decided to settle for a less vetted one, in order to have money for another try. That night, they sat in an inflatable boat made for fifteen with fortyfive others, held their daughters tight and watched as the smuggler turned on the motor.
‘You, over there,’ he said, pointing to a young man near the top of the boat. ‘You’re the captain of this boat. You hold this here. It works like the motor of a car. Those are the lights of Greece. Go toward it. Don’t turn. Don’t stop until you reach the lights.’

Then the smuggler stepped off and they were in open water, forty-five unlucky runaways, with no sea training but no other choice, no country that would take them back. They were caught within the hour. The boat began to sputter and die out, then came to a complete stop in Turkish waters. A coast guard ship caught sight of them, shone a light on the boat, blinding the children and ending the journey for that night. For a moment, they dared hope the ship was Greek or English, but they hadn’t travelled far enough. And soon, the men yelling in Turkish ended all such hopes. The men loaded them onto the ship and took them by car to Izmir, in Turkey.

In the car, Majid, who spoke Kurdish, befriended a young Arab Kurd. He told his story and was believed.
‘Sir, if you tell them you’re from Iran, you’ll spend three months in Turkish prison,’ said the man. ‘The prisons here are spilling with Afghans and Iranians. Syrians are released, God knows why. You must say you’re Kurdish Syrian. Don’t worry, I’ll register for you.’
He gave Majid Arab names to use. Then he said aloud, to those sitting near them, ‘No one will say this family is Iranian. They are Arab like us. Everyone here is Syrian. Understood?’
Some nodded. Majid paused and shook the man’s hand. The man leaned in. He whispered, ‘You’re lucky; no other Farsi speakers here. If the girls keep quiet, you’ll be believed.’

In Izmir, they were fingerprinted. The man registered them as Syrian Kurds. They kept their gaze to the floor until he was finished. They were taken to a tiny windowless room in a caravanserai hotel. They counted the money for the next smuggler. Days later, they were back on an air dinghy, looking at the lights of Mytilene on Lesbos as the smuggler assigned a ship captain and explained that the controls are much like the ones in a car.

The girls held hands as, once more, the shoreline receded. Soon they were on open water, headed for Greek lights. But the night was windy and waves rose up high around them, rocking the dinghy hard. It swayed from all sides, terrifying the girls, making Shirin cling to her mother. The boat took on water. Soon they were soaked through, their shoes waterlogged. Some wanted to turn back, screaming that their lives were worth another try, but others insisted it was rain, not seawater, filling the boat. Men used their clothes to drain the boat. Shirin wept. Someone vomited in the sea and Farzaneh wondered if it might all end here, in Turkish waters.

Just as another wave crested, a searchlight tore through the dark, lighting up their faces again. Shirin’s grip on Farzaneh was so tight now that she barely had to hold her. The Turkish coast guard began yelling into the boat. This time, it seemed, someone had left their mobile phone on.

An officer boarded the dinghy and ordered the refugees to mount the ship by rope ladder, one by one. ‘The children have to go separately,’ he said. Shirin clung tighter, gripping Farzaneh’s hair, her legs wrapped around her mother’s hips like a baby koala. Every muscle in her arms and legs had contracted and she wept on Farzaneh’s shoulder.

‘I’ll take her myself,’ said Farzaneh, rubbing Shirin’s back.

‘That’s not possible,’ said the guard. He grabbed Shirin by the waist and tried to pull her off. Shirin screamed. Majid stepped in, whispering to his daughter to let go, to go up with the guard and Maman would join her. She wailed. Farzaneh tried to imagine those five minutes in her daughter’s life, when she waited on a different vessel than her mother, watching, imagining the two boats parting. Those five minutes would scar her for life.

‘I’ll take her,’ said Farzaneh. She put Shirin on her back and began to climb. ‘Hold on tight, azizam,’ she said. This is how monkeys transport their children, she told herself. Shirin’s animal instinct will make her hold on. Still, every step higher against the side of that ship, every inch between her daughter’s body and the sea, meant a more disastrous injury if she fell.

Farzaneh tried to climb with one hand, holding Shirin’s bottom with the other. The officer kept yelling, ‘You can’t do that! The child can’t go with you! Trust us to take her up!’ But Shirin was glued to Farzaneh’s back, her breath hot with fear and Farzaneh had to release the other hand and climb the ladder, trusting Shirin’s arms and legs to hold her. Her grip wouldn’t loosen all at once, right? Farzaneh would feel it weakening.

On the ship, Shirin continued to cry in Farzaneh’s arms – big breathless hiccups, fits of screaming, ribbons of tears. An officer approached and hovered over them.
‘Calm her!’ he said. ‘Do it now.’
‘I can’t,’ said Farzaneh. ‘She’s scared out of her mind.’
‘What kind of mother are you?’ he said. ‘Calm her!’

It was enough. Weeks of wandering in unwashed clothes, daughters wasting away, two failed sea journeys, with death waiting at her doorstep and this man was yelling at a crying child. Farzaneh began to scream. ‘You animal!’ she said. ‘You’re no human. She’s three. What does she know?’

Now the captain rushed toward them. Majid tried to step in but the captain pushed past him. He pulled the officer away and slapped him across the cheek. ‘They’ve lost everything,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

Shirin spoke one word before falling asleep. ‘Maman,’ she mumbled. ‘Maman, Maman, Maman.’ Then she nodded off on Farzaneh’s shoulder. She wouldn’t speak again for ninety days.

In Izmir, they were fingerprinted and freed again.

On the third trip, Majid stood up and told everyone to turn off their mobiles. ‘No silence or airplane mode,’ he said. ‘GPS sends signals. Switch off. Off!’ It was nine o’clock and the Greek lights were visible again.

Today’s captain pressed ahead, straight toward the lights. No one spoke. Shirin hadn’t spoken for days, not since the rope ladder. Now she spoke in secret syllables when hungry or when she needed the toilet. After some time, they began to wonder if they had left Turkish waters. But land was still far off. They pressed on. The land drew closer. The refugees held their breaths and began to whisper about the journey on foot. Where were they to go to report themselves? Half a kilometre from Mytilene, the familiar harsh light appeared and Farzaneh released all hope. I can’t do this again. She looked up, despairing, whispering soothing words to Shirin. ‘Oh God, let it be,’ said Majid. The ship looming nearby wasn’t Turkish. Was it from an EU country? ‘I think tonight is the English watch,’ Majid whispered. ‘I think we’re in European waters.’ On board, Farzaneh listened to their words and tried to learn something from their uniforms, their hair and skin. Their talk was melodic, with clipped consonants giving way to long vowels, elegant, like the men and women in English movies.

The officers held them on the water for hours, as the refugees were transported onto rescue boats three or four at a time, their flimsy life jackets exchanged for coast-guard vests and taken to the ship.

They waited in a bus till morning, without food, water, or blankets. The girls shivered all night in their wet clothes. Their lips turned blue. A driver arrived and the bus set off. At eight o’clock, they were unloaded in Mytilene’s refugee camp, known to its residents as ‘The Hell of Moria’.
‘You won’t be here longer than a week,’ someone said as they were pushed into quarantine. In the distance, grimy travellers from Africa and the Middle East waited in lines for food. Toilets ran over and people bathed in buckets near them. Arab and Farsi men fought with broken glass bottles. The line for toilets was two hours; three hours for an undercooked meal.

‘I don’t know,’ muttered Majid. ‘I’m like Rostam. Everything seems to take me three tries.’ Only his wife chuckled at the dramatic reference to the poet Ferdowsi’s legendary Persian hero. They were given a mattress in a tented salon packed with bodies. No blankets; they’d have to bargain or fight for those. Like animals, thought Majid. He looked up, they were right below the Wi-Fi box. From then on, their sleep would be interrupted by men hovering over them, looking for a signal that would connect them to home.

Moria would be their home for ninety days.

Copyright © Dina Nayeri,
Canongate Books