Narrative Essay On Iranian Refugees

Born and raised in Iran to Afghan parents, who had immigrated to Iran at the height of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, I was awarded a first-person view of injustice and corruption. As Afghan refugees, we were not afforded a fraction of the rights and privileges given to Iranian citizens. Even education, a fundamental human right, was inaccessible to us. It was such maltreatments that incited my mother's visit to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2002. After speaking to my mother, the representative decided that we met the strict requirements for resettling in Canada. A promise of a better future spurred my mother to pursue the case. After a year of processing our application, the federal government sponsored us. With nothing but a small suitcase filled with clothes, we arrived in Canada on November 23rd, 2003. Many assume our struggles as refugees are over once we arrive in places like Canada. They are correct in that we no longer suffer from mistreatment, but they fail to account for the barriers we face once we arrive at our new home. There exist inherent challenges for refugees. We came to Canada with nothing to our name, no education, no knowledge of the culture, and no grasp of the …show more content…
Placed in a fourth-grade class without even a first-grade education or the ability to speak English I struggled to keep up in class. Lacking any training or formal education herself, my mother was not able to help me. Cultural differences only compounded the already present obstacles. It took three years of hard work and pure determination to catch up to my grade level and excel. By the eighth grade, I was an honours student, class valedictorian, and volunteering as an interpreter for newcomer Iranians and Afghans in my community. I had conquered the most challenging milestone of my young life. As a pre-teen, I naively assumed that life was finally in perfect