Why Don’t You Go Home

In December of 2006, for the first time in my life, I felt safe and truly happy. Because I had just arrived in Canada.

I managed to escape the physical and mental tortures that I suffered for my entire life in the hands of my abusive family and extremist relatives all of whom were fanatic supporters of the Iranian dictatorship, in 2004. And following my escape from Iran, I had lived in dire poverty and absolute uncertainty in Turkey for almost two years. And by the end of 2006 I arrived in a free and safe country, Canada.

But soon after arriving in Canada, my happiness perished, and my psychological problems started to surface

Any psychologist who has experience working with refugees will tell you that this is normal.

When you’re being tortured or when you’re a refugee, your fences are up; you’re in survival mode, and you don’t necessarily exhibit strong symptoms of trauma. But once you’re in a safe place, your mind and memory start to review all the traumas and horrors that you’ve lived through. And that’s when your mental health can go down hill, rapidly.

I started having panic attacks two weeks after arriving in Canada, in December 2006. But I knew next to nothing about mental health and didn’t have a clue that I was having panic attacks. I was getting extreme heart beats, and my brain was going blank unexpectedly.

I went to a local clinic. The doctor checked me out and said I’m healthy. He also didn’t realise that I was having panic attacks.

But panic attacks were just the beginning of my psychological battles. After those panic attacks it took more than 17 years to get properly assessed and receive proper help and treatment.

What was causing the panic attacks you might ask. Let me take you back to1991, the first of my high school years.

Street Soccer

In my teen years, I spent all of my free time playing street soccer. I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I loved the running part of it because it made me exhausted which numbed my senses and made my parents’ physical and emotional abuse feel less painful.

Before reaching the high school age I had endured years of constant physical and emotional abuse by my parents and teachers. But their level of abuse was so severe and chronic that can only be dubbed physical and mental torture and child labour.

One day, after everyone was gone home, I was sitting on the side of the street not wanting to go home. Zein, one of the kids in the neighbourhood, was passing by. I think he was going to the local store to get himself and his siblings some snacks. At that time, he was a better soccer player than me, but unlike me and like most other kids he played only half an hour to an hour a day.

He came up to me and asked:  Why don’t you go home?!

I replied: There’s nothing to do at home!

This wasn’t the only time some kid or adult would ask me that very same question.

But I couldn’t tell them:

• that I was afraid to go home.
• that staying out was my way of escaping my prison (my home) and the daily tortures by my parents.
• that running is my painkiller.

Deep inside, I thought: “They wouldn’t believe me!”

Home or Prison?

Let me give you a better picture of the home that I grew up in, and the abuses and childhood labour that I was subjected.

Born into an arranged marriage

I was born in a village in central west Iran, surrounded by mountains and far from civilization. I was the first born into an arranged marriage (in fact a forced marriage). My mom was forced to marry a stranger from a village far from hers. I have heard from my aunts later in life, that when I was born, she refused to breastfeed or even hug me as a baby; in my first few months my mom left me on the hard floor crying for long hours until my aunts or cousins would hear me and come and pick me up. They fed me cow milk for a few months until my dad managed to make a trip to the city and bring some baby formula.

My Extremely Violent and Abusive parents

My dad, a true coward in my view, ran an absolute tyranny at home and was extremely violent towards his wife and children.

My mom always had blue or dark bruise marks on her arms and always tried to hide them from me. What’s most painful and unacceptable to me is that she believed her husband had the right to treat her that way.

My mental picture of my mom is of an irritable, violent, and abusive woman. She was always physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive.

My Daily Routine of Abuse and Labour

During primary school and junior high years, I endured malnutrition and child labour along with daily beatings by my parents and teachers. I was often whipped by a leather belt or flogged with cables, metal rulers, or skewers.

I have avoided describing the abuses in detail, because they are graphic and can trigger traumatic and emotional experiences for the reader.

These were the years when the Iran–Iraq War had increasingly more impact on Iran’s economy. A short time before the war, my dad had brought our small family to Tehran, the capital city of Iran. The family at the time included me, my parents, and my newborn sister. We lived in a poor neighbourhood in Tehran, where all life essentials were rationed including drinking water.

My mom had 5 young children and couldn’t leave home. I was her oldest. Although I was only 7 years old, she would send me to stand in lines for bread, milk, and other rationed food items for a minimum of 4 hours a day, even in the coldest days of winter. I had to do that, otherwise we wouldn’t have bread to eat, which meant we would go hungry, and I would get a beating from my dad when he got home at night.

I also had to stand in line for drinking water and fuel, a couple of times a week. I had to carry five or six 40L containers of water, for about a kilometer, the distance from the water tank to our house. The fuel containers were very unsafe and always leaked. My hands and clothes were always contaminated after getting fuel. As the oldest child in the family, I also had to do any chores that came up in the household, such as doing the dishes and (hand washing the) laundry, sweeping and dusting the house, cleaning the toilet, and baby sitting.

I was always exhausted and depressed at the end of the day. But then I had to do my school homework and study for the daily quizzes. We were given an average of 50 to 60 pages of homework every week and had to complete one or more quizzes everyday. Teachers didn’t have a lot of time for teaching us, so basically, we had to study at home, learn the subject well, and do well at the quizzes and exams!

I was regularly punished by my teachers because I could never finish my homework.

Running, my painkiller

Although I played with other teenagers, I couldn’t make close friends. I would just stay out after school and stand on the sidelines of a soccer game for a team to pick me and let me play. Once the game was over, I was alone again.

Fortunately, I did realise that running and exhaustion, served me as an emotional stabilizer and painkiller. So as long as there was someone to play with, I kept playing. I was always the last kid to leave the game.

Towards the end of high school, I was convinced that going to a state-owned university was the only way to escape my torturers. Because state-owned universities had dormitories. I knew that I wasn’t the smartest kid in the block, but I decided to study hard to get to a state-owned university.

During the university years I avoided going home or contacting my family as much as possible. I would only do so when the dormitories were closed a handful of days each year. Not surprisingly, my roommates and my classmate would sometime ask me:  Why don’t you go home?!

Even dormitory care takers, and one of my professors, asked me that question once or twice.

My Ultimate Escape

After graduation from university, I had to serve in the military. But my country was ruled by dictators, and I was reluctant to serve in their military.

But my parents and some of their relatives (who worked for their country’s intelligence services) locked me up, and literally tortured me for nearly 4 months, to force me to serve in the military.

Even my mom participated in the regular beatings. In one of the beatings, my mom left a deep claw mark on my neck that was more than two inches long. I still have a scar from that.

Eventually they dropped my exhausted body at the nearest military base and told the officers that I was not willing to serve.

Two week later, I managed to escape the military and find my way to a neighbouring country.

I had to resort to smugglers to take me to the neighbouring country. Escaping the military base and travelling with smugglers was a scary experience on its own, but it was even more traumatic to travel inside another country with a different language, alone and without enough money.

Living in a foreign country in uncertainty was extremely hard. For almost two years I was without a safe shelter, and sometimes had no shelter; I wasn’t allowed to work and many times I went hungry for 2 to 3 days in a row; in addition to the language barrier and the cultural shock, I suffered continuous harassments. But worse than being homeless, hungry, and discriminated against, was the uncertainty. I had no control over my daily life or my future.

Eventually, in December of 2006, I came to Canada

Coping Mechanisms

When I arrived in Canada in 2006, I arrived with a lot of mental health issues, but I was blind to my psychological ailments and vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, during the medical screening process after arrival, there was no psychiatric screening, nor did anyone alert me about my poor mental health.

Shortly after that I had my first round of panic attacks and a period of mental breakdown. It was a very scary time.

I now know that I was dealing with Severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Severe Anxiety Disorder (SAD), and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). But at that time, I didn’t know what I was dealing with.

In a few months my symptoms subsided a little and I thought: “Whatever it was, it’s over now, and I will slowly get better”.

Years passed, and I was still suffering from nightmares, flashbacks, isolation, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, insomnia, memory dysfunction, and depression. These symptoms had become a constant feature of my existence, since childhood, and I was so used to them that I considered them normal.

Six years after arriving in Canada, after many failures and rejections in career and social life, I had an episode of depression and PTSD flare-up, and a few panic attacks. So, I went to a walk-in clinic and asked for a referral to see a psychiatrist.

After a few months of waiting, I got to see a psychiatrist. However, my conditions were not adequately diagnosed. I was told that I’m dealing with transient OCD and depression.

After a few more years, I was still all alone with a great deal of vulnerabilities. After countless failures in my career and social life, being taken advantage of a few times, and living in poverty, I finally realised that I was dealing with a lot more than just OCD and depression; there were a lot more serious underlying issues that I had to uncover.

Decisive Measures

Subsequently, I planned to take on a few measures to investigate the root cause of my mental health conditions, to prevent further damage, and to protect myself from my vulnerabilities.

The main measure was to learn a lot more about psychology and psychiatry. In the meanwhile, I had to find ways to control my symptoms till I got a clear picture of all the underlying issues. That included two more measures: consistently taking daily notes and following a rigorous exercise regiment. I knew that daily long-distance running had served me as a great emotional stabilizer and painkiller in my high school and university years.

By the end of 2021, I was convinced that I’ve been living with PTSD, MDD, SAD, and OCD for many years.

So, I embarked on a systematic investigation of my physical and mental health conditions.

I broke my action plan down to the following phases:

• Thoroughly investigate my conditions.
• Get professional diagnosis.
• Embrace medical treatment.
• Get counselling and adhere to professional recommendations.

My own investigations took nearly two years to conclude and involved asking my family doctor for referrals for various medical tests. Once I had the data that I needed I asked my family doctor for a referral to see a psychiatrist, to present my findings and get a professional psychiatric assessment and a thorough diagnosis.

Eventually, I was assessed by the (second) psychiatrist and was diagnosed with severe PTSD, MDD, SAD, and OCD.

I also managed to find the Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture (VAST) and started receiving counselling services from one of their registered clinical counselors.

A lesson for all refugees

Ever since I came to Canada, many people including some medical professionals who have helped me, have asked me: “Do you go back to visit your family?”

They would see my poor mental health and pose that question, thinking that visiting my family would help me, not knowing that I’ve escaped from my own parents.

Their question reminds me of the question that kids in my street and my university classmates used to ask me: Why don’t you go home?!

Fortunately, I now have a good answer. I am home. Canada is my home.

In Canada, we have great resources in the field of psychiatry and mental health. I dare say that Canadian programs, organisations, and resources are among the best in the world.

Refugees on the other hand, are almost always unaware of mental health issues or have very little knowledge of the psychiatric effects of trauma and uncertainty.

We need to use those resources to screen all refugees that come to Canada and diagnose and help those who need it, as early as possible, because one day for many of them Canada is going to be home.