PRAISE FOR STRANGER NO MORE
“This heroic and granular plight of a refugee will turn your heart towards the broken and displaced. Yes, you will wince at the grit and reality of a life torn by tragedy—and yet you will also come near to a life redeemed by a God who reveals His strength in weakness. You simply will never be able to look at the refugee crisis thru the lens of superficial statistics anymore. And yet you will also celebrate how an intentional, purposeful Savior chooses to intervene against human brutality. An inspiration.”
—Benjamin K. Homan, president of Langham Partnership
“Every single person is on a journey to know Jesus, even though we may not often know it or see it. Annahita Parsan shares an amazing, inspiring, and gripping story about her journey to a faithful Savior. You won’t be able to believe all that she endures and you certainly won’t be able to put the book down once you start. This story gives us a fresh perspective on the refugee crisis we face today.”
—E. Andrew Mayo, president and CEO of the Medical Benevolence Foundation
“Tremendous to read Stranger No More. I pray that many more Muslims will fasten their gaze on Jesus, as Annahita Parsan has done. They will discover that God is love. Thank God for non-Western theologians, such as Annahita. There is more to discover about God’s love and glory, and Christians who read the Bible through Middle Eastern eyes have a unique contribution to make. Don’t stop now, Annahita. I am sure there is a second God-glorifying book inside you that will bless us as this one has.”
—Bob Blincoe, PhD, president of Frontiers USA and author of Ethnic Realities and the Church
© 2017 by Annahita Parsan
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EPub Edition September 2017 ISBN 9780718095727
ISBN 978-0-7180-9572-7 (eBook)
ISBN 978-1-4002-0751-0 (IE)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-0-7180-9571-0
Names: Parsan, Annahita, 1962- author. | Borlase, Craig, author.
Title: Stranger no more : a Muslim refugee’s story of harrowing escape, miraculous rescue, and the quiet call of Jesus / Annahita Parsan with Craig Borlase.
Description: Nashville : Thomas Nelson, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019194 | ISBN 9780718095710
Subjects: LCSH: Parsan, Annahita, 1962- | Christian converts from Islam--Biography.
Classification: LCC BV2626.4.P37 A3 2017 | DDC 248.2/4670092 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019194
Printed in the United States of America
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This book is dedicated to my two children, Daniel and Roksana. Their wisdom, encouragement, and understanding have seen me through the darkest times, and gives me hope for the future. I am blessed to have them by my side.
All Glory to God who made this book possible.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE ISFAHAN, IRAN
PART TWO TURKEY
PART THREE DENMARK AND SWEDEN
PART FOUR IRAN AND SWEDEN
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
Asad was doing a bad job of holding in his anger. He stood at the front of the church, his back to the congregation, fists balled and staring at the wall behind me. Between the lack of eye contact and the years-old beard, I guessed he was maybe a little fanatical. But not so much. A true Islamic fundamentalist wouldn’t be in a church having a conversation with a woman like this. Unless . . . I glanced down. Thankfully his shirt was way too tight around the middle to be hiding anything dangerous.
“Why are you trying to convert people?” he said.
I told him that I really was not and that I would be happy to talk with him just as soon as the church service was done.
He glowered a little and turned tail.
I was praying for someone when he came back. The air was pretty heavy in the church. God was at work all over the room. And Asad walked right into the thick of it. As soon as he got within a few feet of the front, he fell right down and stayed there for twenty minutes.
He was a little confused when he finally came around. “Where am I?”
“In church.”
“What happened?”
“God wanted to talk to you.”
And that’s when the tears came.
He cried so long that the church was all but empty by the time he stopped. I asked him whether he had any questions.
“No,” he said quietly as he got up to leave.
The next week, right at the end of church, Asad was back. Back marching up to the front, back flat out on his back, and back sobbing.
“Do you have any questions, Asad?”
This time he looked right at me. “Will you pray for me?”
The third week was a little different. He had a shopping bag with him.
“Take this,” he said. “I don’t want them any more.”
It was a Qur’an and some other religious books.
“But I want a Bible in return,” he added.
Do you want to know the thing I love most about Asad’s story? It’s not so much what happened in the beginning, with God getting his attention in such a powerful, dramatic fashion. It’s what came later. It’s the way that God showed Asad—as well as his nine-year-old daughter—just how much he loved them both. It’s the fact that within a year they were both baptized, and that today, they are continuing to say yes to all that God invites them into.
And I love that it reminds me of my own story too. I was a refugee and a Muslim, just like him. I was lost and wounded. And when at last I said yes to God, he began to transform everything about my life.
PART ONE
ISFAHAN, IRAN
“Come,” my grandmother said, jerking me up to my feet. My whole family called her Khanoum, a title that conveyed the respect and honor she deserved. “We must hurry,” she whispered. I did not delay, following her out of the mosque the same way that I had followed her in—my eyes locked down on the ground in reverence. Ever since I was a young child I had made these little journeys, accompanying Khanoum to pray at least once a week. Our visits always ended this way, with her rushing out and me chasing after. As the prayers of a thousand voices ended and the march of a thousand pa
irs of feet began, Khanoum would lead our dance through the crowd of women, all hooded and caped in black chadors that made them seem, to me at least, like ravens robbed of flight.
From an early age I had known to link my steps in with hers, imagining there was a short, invisible string between us. I still pretended it was there when I was thirteen, but by then I also allowed myself to look up and around me. As we passed beneath the ornate walls that stood taller than any tree I had ever seen, I stared at the vaulted ceilings that shone above. Their blue and gold tiles always made me feel as though I was at the bottom of an ocean, that above the roof was some unknown, mysterious world.
“Faster, Annahita,” she said, as I fumbled with my shoes outside. Though I was already as tall as her, it was still a struggle to keep up as Khanoum sped down the alleys that bunched up behind the mosque. The string is being stretched tighter than usual today, I thought.
When we reached her house off Farshadi Street, I assumed that Khanoum would relax. Like any Muslim girl, I knew the change that came across a woman as soon as she crossed the threshold into her home. Once the door shut and the chadors were removed we could all lose the act. Laughter would return to our world, as would music and color. But that morning Khanoum did not remove her chador. She did not laugh or joke or impersonate the pompous men who paraded about the mosque. Nor did she twirl around the kitchen, and her feet and eyes did not dance in time as she prepared the black tea, fruit, and cheese.
She just moved in silence. I watched, equally mute, following her to the courtyard outside when our simple meal was ready.
Khanoum’s courtyard was one of the finest I knew of. Two pomegranate trees stood guard by the tall metal gate, their branches never seeming to run out of the fruit that hung ripe and red. A pool as big as any bed I had ever seen sat in the middle. It was painted blue inside and out, the better to show off the fish that lived within. Low cushions lined the wall to the old house, dwarfed by the tall windows with peaked arches filled with colored glass. Though the world was alive outside its walls, Khanoum’s garden was an oasis, and like the house it accompanied, belonged to a time when the city of Isfahan was home to a tide of wealthy merchants.
I sat next to Khanoum on the cushions and watched the pool.
My glass was half empty by the time she spoke.
“Annahita, do you know how old I was when I married?”
I shrugged.
“I was thirteen years old. It was not my choice, but it was my duty. My husband was also my cousin, and he was twice my age. I knew nothing of what it meant to be the wife and woman that he wanted. I was just a child. He did not treat me well.”
The silence returned. I knew it was not my place to break it.
“After four years he left me. He married another woman and moved to Tehran. I was still a child, and younger than you are now, so I went to live with his mother, my aunt. For five years we begged him to return, pleading with him to come back and lift the burden of shame from over me, but he refused. His compromise was to wait until I was eighteen years old and divorce me. A little of the shame left me, but I no longer had the protection of his family, so, once again I had no choice but to marry. On the day that we married, that man, your grandfather, was more than twice my age.”
I had heard part of this speech before. I knew that my grandfather was much older than Khanoum, old enough for him to be little more than a vague wisp of memory to me. And I knew that she had been married before. But married at age thirteen, when she was even younger than I was now? That was new.
The information was not the only piece of the puzzle that was new. I had not seen Khanoum in this kind of mood before. I had always known her to be strong, to be the kind of woman who would not drop her speed or miss a step as she passed the mullahs outside the mosque. But this was different. It was as if a part of her was missing.
Two glasses sat between us, one empty, the other untouched. Khanoum reached out her hands and curled them around mine. Her eyes held me just as tight as her fingers.
“Annahita,” she said, her voice almost cracking. “I am worried about you. I am worried that my bad life will repeat for you.”
Somehow, I knew she was right.
I stood up from the dirt and checked my wounds. My knee was sore, both palms were scratched, and I could taste blood in my mouth from a cut on my lip. Nothing too bad, I thought.
“Again!” I shouted. I watched my brother Hussein wrestle the bicycle back upright and wheel it to the end of the alley that opened to the bright sunlight of the main road.
“You want me to go slower this time?”
“No,” I shouted back, hands on hips to make it perfectly clear that I was more than a little offended at the question. “Go faster.”
Hussein climbed astride our dad’s bike and started to push. Within a few yards he had picked up enough speed for him to transfer his feet shakily to the pedals. A little farther along and he had tamed the bike itself, stopped it from wobbling, and was picking up speed as he came straight for me.
My brother was my elder sibling and my very best friend. I had a younger sister, Mariam, and another little brother too, Ali, but when I was old enough to love the taste of adrenaline and young enough to still be allowed to play, it was my older brother Hussein whose company I cherished the most.
Custom dictated that I could not play with the other boys who lived nearby, and many of my cousins were older and lived too far out of the city for me to visit on my own. Yet even if they had shared our house, I doubt I would have wanted to play with them half as much as I wanted to play with Hussein. He was everything I needed. He made me laugh, and he kept life interesting. He taught me how to play soccer, how to ride a bike, and, whenever I was injured, how to make a choice somewhere deep within to ignore whatever pain I was in and keep going.
Not all of the skills he taught me were quite as useful. Like trying to jump onto a bicycle as it sped past. But as his feet blurred and the alley was filled with the sound of rattling metal as he pedaled toward me, I was determined to meet the challenge he had set for me. I’m not going to end up in the dirt again, I told myself as Hussein passed me. I timed my sprint to perfection, reached first one then the other hand out to the fat leather saddle, and leapt.
Hussein is three years older than me, so by the time I was thirteen he was more than old enough to drive. Not that our father agreed. According to him, Hussein was not yet ready, and whenever my brother asked for the keys to the family car—an olive-green sedan made right there in Iran—the answer was always no.
Hussein may have been older, and the firstborn male as well, but I had a special place in my father’s heart. On the few occasions that I fought with Hussein—which was only ever when his friends came over and I would try to come outside and see them—my father always took my side. So it was only natural that I be the one to ask for the keys whenever we wanted to try our hand at driving. All I had to do was wait until the afternoon when my father started drifting off to sleep on one of the floor cushions in the living room. Then he would not stop to ask why I wanted the car keys or what I intended to do. He’d simply reach into his pocket and hand the bunch over.
Caught between mountains to the west and desert to the east, summers in Isfahan were often brutally hot. The sun was particularly fierce one particular day, with temperatures getting close to 110 degrees, when Hussein and I snuck out with the keys. It suited Hussein and me just fine as we knew the streets would be empty while the city slept through the hottest part of the day. I handed my brother the keys and opened the heavy metal gates at the front of the courtyard.
It took a little practice for Hussein to edge the car carefully down the alleyway and out onto the main road without grinding the gears. My own driving was a little less advanced, mainly because the cushions I relied upon to help me see over the steering wheel made the pedals just a little too far out of reach. But I was determined not to give up, so I dutifully waited my time while Hussein took the first turn at the wheel.
We drove alongside one of the many canals that fed the city of Isfahan in the way we often did, in silent appreciation of the way the dry breeze filled the car and the water reflected back the sunlight like a trail of scattered diamonds.
The shouting only started when Hussein allowed the car to drift too close to the edge of the road and the front wheel slipped off the tarmac. The car pulled sharp to the right, the canal loomed, and, were it not for Hussein’s strong right foot on the brakes—and the fact that he never drove very fast in the first place—we would have driven right in. As it was, the car came to a stop with two wheels off the road, stuck in the muddy banks of the canal. After we caught our breaths, we took turns attempting to reverse the car back out onto the road again, but no matter how hard we tried, neither of us could. We had no choice but to wait and survey the damage to the front fender.
Eventually the sun dipped a little, people emerged from their afternoon naps, and some kind strangers came to our rescue. They hauled us out, but there was nothing we could do about the damage to the front of the car. Again we drove in silence, only this time no amount of beauty could have lessened the fear I felt.
I should not have been surprised that Hussein was given a stern lecture about how irresponsible he had been. And I should have known that my father would have looked at me the way he always did—his head to one side, his eyes sparkling, and his arms offered in an easy embrace.
My mother, however, was less pleased. She folded her arms and stared before telling me how I had let her down. My little sister and brother watched from behind her legs. They knew not to interrupt.
In Iran there are two types of women. Some are weak. They accept everything that happens to them, act out of fear, and allow themselves to be ruled by the men. Almost from the moment these women are born they look to their fathers and their brothers for security. Once they marry they place all their trust in their husband, and so spend their entire lives under the thumb of men. My mother was not one of these.
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