Journey of a Thousand Storms

by Kooshyar Karimi

  About the Book

  In Journey of a Thousand Storms Dr Kooshyar Karimi, author of Leila’s Secret, tells his gripping personal story of surviving prison in Iran and life as a refugee before finding success in Australia.

  Kooshyar Karimi had two careers in Iran, one as a doctor and one as an award-winning translator. Until he was kidnapped by the Intelligence Service.

  Behind his professional success, Kooshyar was a rebel on several fronts. Marginalised since boyhood as a Jew in a fundamentalist Islamic state, he was a member of a political group that opposed the government. He’d also been using his medical skills illegally, to save unmarried pregnant women from death by stoning.

  Snatched from the street by the secret service, he was jailed and tortured and then forced to spy for the regime, before finally escaping to Turkey. There he faced a whole new struggle to keep his family safe while awaiting refugee status from the UN. He was forbidden to work and at the mercy of corrupt police, con men and red tape. Then life became more dangerous still, when the Intelligence Service tracked him down and used his mother, back in Iran, as blackmail.

  Kooshyar’s inspiring story of how he managed to forge a new life in Australia is heightened by his largeness of heart, strength of character, and insight into human behaviour, from the unfathomably evil to the selflessly kind. With the skill of a natural storyteller, Journey of a Thousand Storms recounts a life of endurance, compassion and gritty determination.

  Praise for Leila’s Secret

  ‘A masterpiece of moral impossibilities and climactic suspense.’

  Bob Brown

  ‘Remarkable . . . Karimi earns our trust through his experiences and his sympathy with the plight of the marginalised.’

  Owen Richardson,

  Saturday Age

  ‘A profoundly moving story, beautifully told with extraordinary insight, and filling us with awe at the strength of the author’s moral courage.’

  Robin de Crespigny,

  author of The People Smuggler

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  To Newsha, Niloofar and Anna

  For our journey

  ONE

  The bus I’m in is about to cross the border from Iran to Turkey – from my beloved home to an unknown land. I feel simultaneously exhilarated and ashamed. Nobody should have cause to feel happy about permanently fleeing their homeland, ever. I am alone in every sense. My wife crossed the border separately, with our two daughters, six hours ago. Azita is a Muslim and can go to Turkey freely. I’m Jewish, and I am the one they want.

  At five in the morning the bus stops at Tabriz, the town on the border. This is the last checkpoint, the last stop in Iran. All the passengers give their passports to the customs officer and for the next two hours we wait for our names to be called. People are excited to be going to Turkey, to a land that allows them to listen to Western music and to dance and drink alcohol without being persecuted, but my reasons for being in this bus are very different.

  I pace up and down outside the immigration office, chain-smoking. I try to stay calm by telling myself, Get ready to be shot, don’t be scared, death is nothing to be afraid of. When my name is finally called, my heart races even faster and my palms are wet. I try to hide my tense expression, but no mask can cover a man’s dread when he’s tossing a coin for life or death. Although in many ways death would be a blissful relief, I’m still frightened. I haven’t enjoyed my life so far but I’m worried about my daughters. I don’t want them to grow up without a father.

  But miraculously, the Iranian border officer hands me back my passport, duly stamped. Not having the slightest clue what’s going on in my terrified mind, he gestures to me to move on. A voice inside me whispers, You are free. You can go. But I cannot. I am transfixed. I turn my head and glance at the mountain through the window. This will be the last time I see Zagros, the summit on which ancient Persian heroes fought with evil forces to protect our land. Farewell, my Iran! Goodbye, my beautiful home, I say to myself, and force myself to leave the office.

  I step onto the Turkish side of the border in a state of shock. My joy is so intense and my sorrow so profound that I can hardly breathe.

  ‘Welcome to Turkey,’ says a Turkish police officer. Despite his fake formal smile, these three simple words immediately become the loveliest of lyrics.

  When I join my family later that day, at a bus stop halfway to Istanbul, they hardly recognise me. I can barely contain my emotions, nor can my older daughter, Newsha, when she finally realises that the malnourished ghost smiling at her is her father. I’ve lost so much weight I look like a dead body pulled out of hot sand. This is the first time I’ve seen my younger daughter, Niloofar, who was born while I was on the run. She has big black eyes, plump lips and a gorgeous smile. I hold her in my arms and whisper, ‘I will never leave you again. Never.’

  The bus to Istanbul passes through villages with satellite dishes on every roof. I am struck by the contrast with Iran, where you are arrested if you attempt to watch foreign TV. Big Brother doesn’t want you to know what’s going on in the outside world. Marrying someone not approved of by your parents or criticising the Supreme Leader are also serious crimes, as is a woman allowing a few strands of hair to show from under her scarf. These laws are based on what the Prophet Mohammad dictated fourteen centuries ago and are upheld by old men who have no idea about modern technology or civil rights, men who are intolerant of any form of change because it makes them disoriented. That’s why Iran isn’t progressing, and why there are innumerable reasons to be publicly hanged there: homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, apostasy, or, God forbid, questioning the Prophet Mohammad’s decision to allow his nine-year-old daughter, Fatima, to marry his 25-year-old cousin, Ali. Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. In my homeland, expressing curiosity is like wandering blind through a minefield.

  I have made no plans beyond reaching Turkey and have no idea what the next step will be. I know I’m far from safe even here, as the Iranian and Turkish governments regularly exchange political prisoners and dissidents. Fugitives like me disappear in this country every day. But still, I have never been so thankful – I am alive.

  I can’t stop looking at my daughters. Five-year-old Newsha is asleep on her seat, and baby Niloofar is quietly lying on Azita’s lap. I sip Scotch from the bottle I bought at the Turkish border, silently celebrating my escape.

  As the bus winds its way through the unfamiliar countryside, the significance of what I’ve done really hits me for the first time. There can be no turning back from here. And I can’t help thinking about everything that’s led me to this point.

  It began, in a way, while I was in primary school, on my birthday in 1978. My mother, father, brother and I were sitting at home in Tehran listening to BBC radio for the latest news about the revolution. My father had borrowed the transistor radio from Reza Frekans, his friend who owned an electronics repair shop. I didn’t have a birthday party or get any presents. Celebrations, trips to the cinema, shopping – these belonged to fairytales. Where I lived, in the basement of a house in the slums, the most joyful moments were having a full stomach or surviving typhoid. Moreover my father, a bus driver with three wives and seven children, har
dly even remembered my name, let alone how old I was.

  Nevertheless that birthday turned out to be exceptionally important. For several months there had been demonstrations against the Shah. During his reign the elite had devoted them­selves to amassing wealth, while the rest of society was increasingly devoted to the rewards of religion. The Shah’s biggest mistake was to underestimate the mullahs’ influence on the masses. Now, in a last effort to retain control of his country, the Shah had declared a military curfew: anyone outside after dark would be shot on sight. Despite this, the streets were full of protesters marching and chanting slogans.

  It was seven in the evening and we could hear sporadic gunfire. My mother was praying in Hebrew under her breath for the bloodshed to stop, but my father was furious that the majority of young Iranians were against the Shah. ‘Our country is now very prosperous and these idiots are going to destroy it,’ he announced, glaring at the radio.

  I had never seen my father so frustrated, but what mattered most to me was that he was there, with us, on my birthday. He visited only once or twice a month, and every night I prayed for him not to have an accident on the notoriously dangerous roads. I now worried about what would happen to him when he left the next day. The previous week some revolutionary guerrillas had fired at his bus, shattering the windshield and the side window, narrowly missing his forehead.

  A bang on our door startled us. ‘Don’t open it,’ said my father.

  After a moment of tense silence the banging resumed, louder and faster. ‘It could be the army or police,’ said my mother. ‘If we don’t let them in they’ll smash the door.’

  My father got up. ‘You stay here,’ he ordered us.

  He opened it carefully. To his astonishment a young man stood there panting and shaking. ‘Please let me hide in your house —’ he began, but was interrupted by a close round of heavy gunfire.

  ‘Get out of here,’ said my father, going to shut the door.

  ‘Baba jan, please . . .’ I murmured from behind him, and my mother added, ‘Be kind, Khalil. He will be shot if we don’t help him.’

  My father shook his head. ‘I don’t care,’ he said.

  The man told us he had been taking part in a peaceful demon­stration when the army rushed in and opened fire. ‘I saw dead bodies everywhere,’ he said. ‘A tank ran over a woman and crushed her chest.’

  I imagined him slipping on his own blood on the street. Suddenly I had an idea. ‘Let me hide him in the bus, Baba jan.’ I pulled my father’s sleeve.

  ‘Kooshyar is right, let him hide in the bus. Please,’ begged my mother.

  My father looked at me and finally said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the young man. ‘May Allah bless you and your family.’

  I sprinted to the bus, the key in my fist. I knew this key very well – my father would give it to me whenever he came home from remote parts of Iran. I’d sweep the floor between the forty-three seats, inhaling dust from deserts, and if I found an old coin it would make my day. Most times, though, there’d only be a plastic bag full of vomit, so I’d fetch the hose and a bucket and wash the whole bus. When I finished, my father would smile, give me a rusty, crooked coin (the equivalent of about twenty cents) and say, ‘Good boy.’ I’d run to the grocery shop with the coin in my hand feeling rich and happy, convincing myself, My father cares about me. He loves me.

  But it was my mother who starved herself to feed us, who comforted us when we were afraid and who suffered in abject poverty. She did her best to shield my brother, Koorosh, and me against harm and disease, sacrificing her life so we would be safe and educated.

  I led the protester to the bus, where I grabbed another key from the glovebox and opened the luggage compartment. There was just enough room for two slim people. I slipped in and lay down.

  ‘Get in,’ I said to the terrified man. ‘Yallah! Shut the door!’

  The darkness was absolute and smelled of diesel and old rubber. I felt the man’s breath on my cheek, and the cold metal under my back. Neither of us dared speak. We could hear tanks rumbling in the street, some shouting and the occasional gunshot.

  After ten minutes we heard soldiers being ordered to check the nearby houses and narrow lanes. My heart thudded in my throat and I was drenched in sweat. The protester remained silent, breathing deeply and trying to keep still. I was more worried for him than for me: the soldiers were unlikely to shoot a kid. But would they punish my family? Would they kill my father for letting a fugitive hide in his bus?

  Now there was banging on doors in our street. I had experienced fear many times in my life by then, but nothing this intense, this crushing.

  ‘If they catch me I’ll tell them I kidnapped you and forced you to hide me here,’ the man whispered. His words soothed me but a few minutes later I heard my father say nervously, ‘Here, officer.’ We listened as the bus door was opened and then footsteps of soldiers, maybe two or three, were right above our heads. I stopped breathing, waiting for them to come and search the luggage compart­ment. I wanted to run out and shout, ‘I’m innocent!’ I felt a strong hand grasping my wrist; it seemed that the man had read my mind and was trying to calm me down. In the midst of my fear I admired his courage.

  Eventually, the footsteps retreated, but we lay there in the cramped space for another half an hour, until we were sure the soldiers had gone. It took a long time for my breathing to return to normal.

  ‘What is your name?’ the man asked as we waited.

  ‘Kooshyar,’ I whispered. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Ali Mazaheri. Kooshyar, you are a brave boy. Thank you.’

  Once the tumult in the streets had settled I opened the compartment door and we crawled outside. Ali said, ‘Kooshyar, I owe you my life,’ and then he slipped quietly away.

  Seven years later I was about to sit my final exams when a sardar, a chief commander in the army, came to our school. Iran had been at war with Iraq for five years by then, with more than a million people killed. Four hundred students gathered in the hall to meet the war hero, and when he finally arrived we stood and clapped for a long time. But it was not his large black eyes, well-trimmed beard, square jaw and impressive height that struck me, nor his passionate speech urging us to join the fight against Iraq. I recognised the commander instantly. He was the revolutionary I had hidden in my father’s bus.

  Eight years after that I was an intern in Imam Reza Hospital, doing my last year of medical training. One morning I went to check on a patient after his surgery and saw the name on his file. It was Ali Mazaheri. He’d been given strong sedatives following a third operation to remove shrapnel from his spine. I put my hand on his shoulder to wake him and when I told him who I was he smiled.

  ‘Kooshyar,’ he mumbled.

  But it was the fourth and final time I met Ali Mazaheri that had the most profound impact on my life. In May 1999 I had been on the run from MOIS, the Iranian intelligence service, for three months, hiding in remote towns on the Caspian coast. Following torture I had been forced to become a spy for them, and had gathered information that led to the arrests of many people, including thirteen Jews accused of being spies for Israel. The regime had issued a death sentence for them, and I knew that with my mission now complete, I was the next target.

  The arrest of the thirteen Jews had caused an international outcry. The United States Congress, the European Union and the United Nations demanded that Iran release the prisoners, but none of this would help me. My homeland was no longer safe, but I had no passport and no money to pay people smugglers to get me across the border.

  Before fleeing to the coast I’d bought a fake birth certificate in downtown Tehran, in the notorious slum where I was born. I didn’t have much time. If MOIS were to find me they would tear my body to pieces. They had told me this often enough.

  My only chance was Ali Mazaheri, who was now in charge of the passport office. Would he save me? Or would he turn me in? According to Middle Eastern tradition, we had become brot
hers that day on the bus twenty years ago, but I had no idea whether Ali would respect the code of brotherhood, whether he’d remember telling me he owed me his life.

  I came out of hiding and went to Ali Mazaheri’s office, even though I knew that by doing so I was risking both our lives. As soon as he recognised me and saw my expression, he understood the graveness of my situation and agreed to meet me somewhere safe. When he appeared he was wearing a hat and sunglasses. I told him I had to leave Iran and needed a passport.

  After a painful silence he took off his sunglasses, inhaled deeply and quietly asked me if I had a photo and my details written down. I handed over the information, which he put into his pocket. Ali studied my face and I saw something in his eyes that day, something I hadn’t seen in them for twenty years. It was fear.

  I tried hard not to tremble or break down. Then Ali grabbed my hand in his sweaty grip.

  ‘Pick it up tomorrow, same place,’ he said at last. I wanted to hug him but I just nodded.

  As I walked away he said, ‘Don’t ever come back, Kooshyar, or I will be hanged.’

  The next day I had the fake passport with a note: You have only forty-eight hours.

  TWO

  The bus stops in the middle of the night at a restaurant a few hours from Istanbul. I need to pee. I’ve almost finished the bottle of whisky and I feel euphoric. This is the first time I’ve consumed a commercially made alcoholic drink. Up until now, if I wanted to drink I had to make wine at home using my mother’s traditional Jewish recipe, a crime punishable by ten years’ jail, or else buy it on the black market: enormously expensive homemade vodka that was ninety percent industrial ethanol mixed with water.

  I go to the toilet and find out I have to pay the equivalent of two dollars to use it. This is unbelievable to me – toilets are free in Iran. I find some scrubby bush and urinate there instead. My drunken state transforms the cries of crickets into opera. I join my family in the restaurant and the prices on the menu also startle me. Ten dollars for a sandwich! I ask Azita how much money she has managed to bring with her.