News

Reza came here as a child refugee

23 December 2019

Reza came to the UK as a child refugee from Iran. After leaving foster care aged 18, he applied for asylum. Unfortunately, the Home Office refused his case, and told him to return to Iraq, a country he has never been to.

Reza was a healthy happy young man.ten years of destitution and uncertainty at the hands of the asylum system changed all that.

Reza was forbidden to work or study or apply for homelessness assistance. He had to leave college, became destitute and got very depressed about his circumstances.

His depression problems got worse the longer he was homeless. Eventually he got Section 4 while he gathered evidence for a new asylum case.

At 9 am on Sunday 15 December 2019, Reza says a man from his accommodation provider in Glasgow turned up at his temporary accommodation and told him to move. Reza replied he was given no notice, Reza told him his things weren’t ready, that he was on medication.

The man told him,

“you have no choice, follow the rules or go back to the country you came from”.

Reza moved the next day. The flat was bare. He bought some food with his ”Aspen card” and then realised there was no cutlery, or a freezer. So he would have to cook the frozen food and eat it quickly or it would go to waste.

His bedroom was effectively a cupboard, the flat has no soundproofing , there is constant noise. No internet or TV, no money for mobile credit or to take a bus. Reza dwelled on the man’s words again. In his despair, he took an overdose and self harmed, cutting his face, because, he reasoned to himself, there must be something wrong with his face for his life to go this wrong, for other people and the system, to want him to go home.

Sometimes, in this work, “advice” is not enough to keep someone’s hope going. it was upsetting to see what Reza had done to his face, wrists and arms. He took out a scrap of brown paper, with Persian writing on it, it was a poem by Omar Khayyam, he read it to me, about life being an illusion. We shared a conversation about the Sufi mystic poets Rumi and Khalil Gibran. He folded the scrap up into perfect squares, and said:

“It’s been ten years and I haven’t seen my mother. I wish I could smell her perfume.”

It was lucky that Hamid, a fellow Iranian covering security for us, agreed to come in and chat with Reza. Hamid told him he had been tossed between hope of resolution and destitution for 13 years,  now he had his papers, he had his own place, was looking to set up his own business, and had hope. Asif dropped by and told Reza his story, coming into Glasgow as amongst the first asylum seekers of the forced dispersal project. The refrain was: don’t give up hope. Take support where you can. Focus on the goal.

For Reza, that goal is February 2020, his asylum hearing, it gives Bill Craigie, a lawyer with Latta & Co, time to gather evidence to claim asylum.

After sending a written complaint to Mears Housing, Hamid and I got Reza a duvet and a second hand TV for Reza. I also gave him a diary, to write down his appointments, structure his days and focus on his asylum hearing.

Reza should never have lost ten years, if he had worked or studied, he would have been a confident person able to stand on his own resources. Instead, he is depressed, at risk of self harming or suicide, and in need of someone to care about how he is doing.

Positive Action in Housing is helping Reza prepare for his new asylum hearing date. If he gets his status he can go to college again, find work, pay taxes, build his life. it will be a job done for us. But why did it come to this in the first place?

#positiveactionh #rebuildalife

Robina Qureshi 

Reza is one of 302 adults and  228 child dependents from refugee and migrant communities who benefited from Positive Action in Housing’s Emergency Relief Fund at our Winter Surgery last week.

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