Odi's Story - Arriving in England

This is the second instalment of Odi's courageous story of his political imprisonment in Iran, his difficult voyage to London, and his struggle towards asylum and a new life for himself and his family in the UK.  This very personal account is representative of the horrors and challenges faced by so many asylum seekers around the world. 

On the 12th of January, 2009, the driver said, “This is England. You are safe now.”  I saw green land around me.  I had 200 Euros in my pocket and paid a taxi to bring me to London from a city two hours away.  I said, “I’m a refugee. I want to go to any organisation that helps refugees.”  He took me to the main UKBA (UK Border Agency) office in Croydon.  It was 5 p.m. and a young male immigration officer said, “We’re closed now. Come back tomorrow.”  I said, “Where shall I go? I don’t know anyone,” and he said, “It’s none of my business.”  I saw lots of cameras, and I was scared of cameras.

I was back on the street.  I started shouting and crying in front of people, but nobody asked me what happened.  I found a subway and sat under there and spent the night without food, water or money.  When I woke up, there were two pounds in coins all around me.  People thought I was homeless and it’s true, I didn’t have a home.   I saw the pound for the first time.  It’s a very heavy coin. 

In the morning, Croyden was busy.  At 9 o’clock there was a long queue outside the UKBA office.  After an hour, I was told, “Go in and sit.”  Two hours later, a young female officer called me in with an Iranian interpreter and asked me about my case.  There was glass dividing me from them.  When I said it had taken me between 20 and 28 days to get to England, she said, “He’s lying.”  She judged me very easily and said it should have taken just 10 days.  If during the screening interview the Home Office doesn’t believe your “way” case, it can affect your main case as well.

That night they sent me to a NASS (National Asylum Support Service) hostel in Birmingham.  I was there for a month, and after two weeks, they took me to Cardiff for my main interview.  The interview took from 1 o’clock to 8 o’clock and was like an investigation.  The immigration officer said to me, “You are safe now. You can say everything here in England.”  But I didn’t feel safe.  I was shy to tell him about my tortures, and ashamed and scared.  When he asked if I had any signs of tortures on my body, I said, “No,” even though I had the scar on my forehead.  That gave him, and my solicitor too, a final reason not to believe me.  You have to show proof for everything or you’re a liar.

After a couple weeks, they moved me to Cardiff to another NASS hostel.  When I got there, the Home Office sent a refusal letter pointing out the reasons they didn’t believe me.  After that, my solicitor appealed to the Tribunal in Newport, but he did not appear with me in court.  When I showed my arrest letter to the judge, he said I could have bought that kind of document easily in Iran because I hadn't had time to translate it from Farsi into English.  After a month, in March, I received a letter from the judge saying that, like the Home Office, he didn’t believe me.  He wrote:

I dismiss the appeal on asylum grounds.
I dismiss the appeal on human rights grounds.
I dismiss the appeal on humanitarian protection grounds. 

And because I had just five days to make another appeal and didn’t have any additional documents, I couldn’t do anything.  After two weeks, the Home Office sent a letter saying they had received the judge’s decision, which matched theirs, and that my housing and financial support would end in one week. 

Then I was homeless.  I had nothing – nothing to eat, nowhere to stay.  People told me that Manchester was bigger and that I would have more of a chance there.  An Iranian friend bought me a ticket, but I had a horrible situation there.  I had to sleep on the street and eat from bins.  People said things to me that you can’t imagine.  Some homeless guys tried to steal my wedding ring and jacket.  There are lots of horrible things I could tell you that you wouldn’t believe because you’ve never been in that situation.    

After two months, an Iranian guy I knew from Refugee Action invited me to share his room in a house.  He was an asylum seeker like me but still had his support.  I went to live with him for a year and a couple of months.  

While I was there, my brother-in-law called and told me that the day before, my wife had been arrested on the street to ask about me.  I asked where she was and he said he didn’t know and that it was the sixth or seventh time this had happened since I had run from Iran.  She hadn’t told me.  Anytime I had spoken with her, she had said,  “I’m alright, I’m okay” because she didn’t want more sadness to come to me.   And when I heard that from my brother-in-law, I cried a lot.  

Another guy lived with us in the shared house.  He was Kurdish from Syria.  He asked why I was crying, and I started speaking with him about my problem and my wife’s problem.  He said, “Go to another country and take another chance, and then you can bring your family if they give you a visa.”  And I said, “How can I do this? They have taken my passport and I have no money to buy a ticket.”  Straightaway, he took out his wallet and gave me £100.  He said, “Go to Dublin, Ireland. I think this is enough for a ticket.”  I said, “What about a passport? How can I pass the gate and immigration officers?”  He said, “To be honest, I don’t know. Just go, and when you arrive there, ask for help.”