“One day, villagers brought a wall down on me”
Former ice rink of Cergy in Ile-de-France, on Wednesday, May 10th. About ten migrants are waiting for meeting a doctor thanks to the action led by Première Urgence Internationale. An Afghan moves away from the group and wants to tell his story. Here is his deeply moving narrative.
“My name is Arman*, I’m thirty-three years old and I’m a homosexual. It’s forbidden in my country, Afghanistan. I’m from a Pashtun descent. Is used to work in the building trade, I built houses. I often went to Iran to find employment.
I was forced to marriage at the age of 13. I come from the Logar province, in the South of Kabul. We used to live in a little isolated village of Charkh district with my wife and our five children. It such an isolated village that the American never went there. The region has been controlled by the Taliban for many years. We had to follow very strict rules, life was very hard. In my country, being homosexual is a capital offense punishable by death. Everybody looked at me with an evil eye. I got persecuted for many years, even by own family. One day, villagers brought a wall down on me. I was seventeen years old, I thought I was going to die. I stayed under gravel for a long time. My relatives succeeded in rescuing me but I still have many wounds.
Arman shows his scars at the back, on his arms and at his head.
“My children began to be persecuted, too. It became impossible to stay.
I left with my wife, my children and my family in law a year and a half ago. We wanted to go to France. I love this country so much that I named one of my four sons “Paris”. We got separated at the Iranian border. I climbed into a truck, my family in another. Things did not happen as planned: the smuggler ran away and I had to drive myself. I was very scared, but I knew that there were no other solution. I could not return to Afghanistan.
It’s the first time I ever told this story”, confides Arman, tears in his eyes. I had never said a word about it. It’s a horrible situation. I’m a human being, I have the right to live as I want.
Arman is looking for his family, he has no news. He would like to stay in France and to find an occupation. He confides his great distress: “If I don’t get my identification papers, I set myself on fire.”
Arman was brought into contact with an association for the protection of homosexual refugees who had to flee their countries where they were persecuted. He then discussed for a long time with the psychologist of Première Urgence Internationale.
* the name was changed
