TEHRAN - Every Thursday at dusk, members of one of Iran's most beleaguered
religious minorities gather at Tehran's railway station. With anxious, teary
eyes, they are there to see off relatives and fellow Baha'is that have decided
to pull up stakes forever and take the 8pm train to a new life in Turkey.
The Tehran-Istanbul line has been running weekly for 12 years, with every trip
carrying Baha'is away from the discrimination they live with in Iran. Despite
being the country's largest religious minority, Baha'is have faced
discrimination ever since their religion was founded.
The Baha'i faith was founded as early as early as the mid-19th century in
Persia. Although it regards its founder, Baha' Ullah, as
the latest in a line of prophets including Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and
Mohammed, Iran's Shi'ite religious establishment considers the faith a
heretical offshoot of Islam.
Although Baha'is had faced discrimination for years, after
Iran
’s Islamic revolution in 1979 they were singled out for repression. The new
constitution gave no official recognition to the faith, seen as a false by the
fledgling regime. Since then Iranian authorities have killed more than 200
Baha'i leaders, thousands have been arrested and imprisoned, and more than
10,000 have been dismissed from government and university jobs.
The surge in persecution and harassment after 1979 led many of Iran's 300,000
Baha'is to consider their options, with many having no option but to
leave their homeland.
Approximately 200 Baha'is are making the trip to Turkey on this train, dozens
on a one-way ticket. I will be on the train for days, with a stop 60 hours into
the trip in Kayseri, a Turkish city along the route to Istanbul that has become
a popular end stop for Baha'is.
"On this train everyone has excess baggage, how come you don't have any?" a
bewildered cargo attendant asks as I prepare to board.
The comment grabs the attention of two middle-aged women within earshot.
Turning to me, they ask if I can check in some of their excess baggage to spare
them paying an additional US$110. "In return, we will give you freshly brewed
tea on this long, three-day trip," they said.
Just 10 minutes late, the train departs. After settling in, I leave my
compartment to find the two women.
At the station, I saw a boy crying as they embarked. When I ask one of the
women why, she says he was the youngest member of the family, and that he had
to be left behind.
"Poor boy, he feels really lonely now," she says. "If he had his passport, he
would have come with me, but now he might have to leave the country illegally."
If we could stay
During the journey, many of the more than 80 Baha'is on the train agreed to
speak anonymously about their reasons for leaving Iran.
"After the revolution I was made redundant at the Ministry of Education and I
had to rent a cosmetics shop. It was okay until 10 years ago, when they
declared my working license null and void," says one man. He says he managed to
send his two sons to Pakistan and, with the help of the Baha'i community, they
then moved on to the United States.
There continue to be reports of Baha'is facing arbitrary detention, false
imprisonment, confiscation and destruction of property, denial of employment
and government benefits and denial of access to higher education, said a United
Nations report released on Monday.
"Now, my two daughters are older and want to continue their studies. Since we
cannot let them go on their own, so my whole family had to leave," he said. "We
sold everything we had and we don't want to go back to Iran. We plan to stay
living in Kayseri for some time until the United Nations or the Baha'i
community does something for us."
The family paid $700 for train tickets, a significant burden on his and other
Baha'i families.
"All of us in this train have relatively low incomes, and we have been under so
much pressure over the years that we don't have a penny to our name," he says.
"Even now that we are heading to Kayseri, we have put all our hopes in God,
because we know we have hard days ahead of us ... If only we could stay in Iran
and live like other people."
Life in limbo
A middle-aged woman from Babol, in northern Iran, said she was visiting her two
daughters in Kayseri. They have waited for two years there for the UN to send
them to the US to study, she said, adding that she knows her daughters may have
a long wait ahead of them.
"This is the fifth time we have been on this train to Turkey to visit our
daughters and take them some money and food," she says, thanking God that,
unlike most Baha'is, her family is quite wealthy.
"My husband and I have worked all our lives and we have managed to save some
money to bring up our children. Some international aid organizations have
helped our daughters live in Turkey until they can go to the country they
want."
I ask why she doesn't emigrate herself. What keeps her and other Baha'is in
Iran considering the hardships they face?
"As far as I know, most of our fellow Baha'is love Iran and would like to earn
an honest living there and serve their fellow countrymen," she replies. "I
consider myself one of them." Nobody likes to be driven from their home, she
explains, and the Baha'is who have left Iran had good reason.
"Most of them have left their country because of their children's future. Some
have left their homeland because they were fired and couldn't find a proper
job. And after the executions in the early years of the revolution, some left
because they feared for their lives."
She said that the situation is not that bad anymore, but that Baha'is are still
leaving Iran due to the difficulties they face.
Alone on deck
The train to Istanbul passes plains, mountains, lakes and rivers, and 36 hours
after leaving Tehran - six hours from the Iranian border - we reach Lake Van.
Passengers making the trip to Turkey are transferred to a Turkish ship that
will ferry them across the lake, where on the other side they will switch to a
Turkish train in the city of Tavan. On the ferry, some of the passengers dawdle
on deck, while others head inside to gather strength for the rest of the trip.
I see a young woman gazing at the horizon, leaning on the ship's railing. "I am
18, from a Baha'i family, and I am here to follow my destiny," she answers when
I ask about her reasons for leaving Iran, apparently alone.
"I want to live in a free country, continue my studies, and express my opinions
and beliefs," she says. "I want to live somewhere where nobody asks me 'why.'
For me, Iran is a country where you have so many 'whys' to answer. 'Why are you
a Baha'i? Why are you this? Why are you not that?' I want to live freely, with
no problems in life, where I can achieve my desires."
Despite its failings, she says, she loves Iran.
"I have lots of close bonds to the people there, but to have a better future I
had to leave my homeland," she said. Her goal is to stay in Turkey until she
can move to the United States to study medicine.
"The Baha'is in Iran suffer a lot, but they are patient and tolerant," she
adds. "They all hope that one day things will get better, but that day never
seems to come."
A woman on the train cries as she tells me: "From the very first day of my life
I have been in sorrow and agony, but because of the love in my heart for my
homeland, I never thought of leaving."
She worked as a dressmaker since the first day of her marriage 27 years ago in
order to help her husband - who works as a taxi driver despite being university
educated - put food on the table.
"We did all we could to keep our children in Iran and see them succeed in
life," she says. "But I have to confess that all that pressure has made a loser
of me. I feel utterly defeated."
While she did what she could to avoid leaving home, everything changed when her
daughter came to her and said she planned to leave Iran.
"For the next five or six months I kept trying to talk her out of it, but in
the end I gave up, because I realized she was right in coming to this decision.
But believe me, even now all my heart and soul belongs to Iran."
At 8am, the train finally reaches Kayseri, ending the long trip for many of the
Baha'is. They are greeted warmly by members of their community.
After 10 minutes, the train leaves the station to continue on to Ankara and
Istanbul.
Upon returning to my compartment, I am pleased to find a pot of freshly brewed
tea awaiting me.
As promised, I will have enough to make it through the rest of my journey.
Asha Shahir is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Farda.
Copyright (c) 2008, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
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