If you haven’t read the previous chapter, I would recommend it to you 
Chapter 02: A life changing decision – You are old enough!
Playing on the Atari was fun, playing with other kids soccer was fun and what about the Iran-Iraq war? In the year 1988 Iran and Iraq declared armistice. But as you can imagine even after the ceasefire the war had his impact on the population and of course on the finances. My father worked as an interpreter and my mother worked as an office administrator in a dental hygiene company and we both lived in a small flat near the center of Tehran.
I can remember that the dental hygiene company distributed modern toothbrushes which had a tube you could connect with the water tap. So you could use it quite like a shower for your teeth Yeah, I know… fancy technology!
Normality should enter into the life of the Iranian people in the following month, but not in my family and my life. I remember my first days in school, but they last for about three weeks. Because of political but also familiar reasons my mother decided to emigrate to Europe and I decided to join the tour with the age of six. I don’t know exactly why I decided that as – like most children – I loved both my parents, but perhaps because Europe is nearer to the United States of America.
As I have written in the previous chapter, most Iranians love the United States. USA. The land of the free. The land of infinite possibilities. Who could resists that? Especially in a country with many restrictions. And I was not an exception to this and I still believe in the American Dream and work for it.
But there was a tiny little problem… You cannot just emigrate from Iran. Just say that you want to live in another country. So one has to go the hard way… People smuggling. We would be able to fly to Turkey, the bordering country of Iran, telling that it was the destination of a vacation. From there it would be the hard way with people smugglers from one country to another country. The good side: You will visit a lot of countries. The bad side: Well… anything else.
So on the day of the departure I said goodbye to my father, my grandparents and my uncles and aunts and that was it. Goodbye normal life, hello unpredictable future.
To be continued… Next chapter: Heading towards Sweden, stopped in Germany – Adventurous border hopping with my mom!
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