In Iran, they call it a democracy but it’s more of a dictatorship, and one day, I started protesting about the government’s policies. I knew the risks, but I felt someone had to do it. Finally, it became too dangerous for us to stay in Iran, and we escaped to...
Jan We didn’t want to bring our children up in Britain as we could see the shrinking economy and the social program being run back. But I had never even left Wales before, except to go to Scotland – I’m not very adventurous at all. So it was a huge thing for me to...
My father came to Australia by boat in 2001, just before the government stopped processing asylum seeker visas for refugees who had arrived by boat. Every time I think about that, it just amazes me because if we’d arrived even one month later, our lives would’ve been...
Our whole family was thrown out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein because of my father’s political activism, so I grew up in Iran. But we never felt like we belonged there, and we weren’t given Iranian citizenship, which meant we didn’t have many rights. So,10 years later, my...
I met Julia, an Australian, in my local café in Montmatre. She was taking some pictures, and we got to chatting. On our first date, she was 2 hours late because she had got off at the wrong station. But I waited for her. Her plan was to travel on to Barcelona, but she...
