Kathy Barazandeh was thirteen and living in the Iranian capital of Tehran when the Islamic regime killed her father for his advocacy work as both a Kurd and a Jew. Soon after, her brother was called in for questioning. Believing he would face the same fate, he quickly fled the country. The government’s reprisal was swift. Authorities confiscated large portions of the family’s property, a practice commonly used against minority groups, and seized the passports belonging to Kathy, her mother, and her sister. They held the passports for over ten years to prevent them from leaving the country. Kathy was permitted to attend school, but only to study Islam and Sharia law. Her Jewish identity became a secret.
As an adult, Kathy ran a small workshop where she developed prefabricated buildings. A protective helmet was required for her safety at work. At the same time, Iranian law required women to wear a chador, a full-body cloak that covers the body from head to toe, leaving only the face visible. The chador restricted her movement, making it impossible to wear the helmet properly. When she was found working without the chador, she was fined, her business was shut down for several months, and she was summoned to the Islamic Court. A contact with ties to the government risked meeting Kathy privately and warned her of the danger she faced. He told her the primary charge being prepared against her was that she was Jewish. He cautioned that if she appeared in court, she would be arrested, or worse. She had ten days before she was required to appear.
At thirty-eight, Kathy said goodbye to her mother and sister, grabbed her passport, and began making plans to escape to a safer country. Turkey was the obvious route, but she was warned that there were Iranian informants everywhere. Instead, she arranged to travel to Malaysia, where smugglers were supposed to meet her and provide a new passport. She paid $10,000 USD. The smugglers never came. She then moved to Indonesia, where she eventually found smugglers. Under the cover of darkness, she met up with a group of refugees at the port. Together, they waded into the water, which rose as high as their necks, before being lifted into a small, crammed fishing boat. They spent the next four days at sea without relief. She credits God with bringing them close enough to shore for the Australian navy to intercept them.
Refugees arriving in Australia by boat are not permitted to enter the mainland and are instead held on offshore islands. Kathy spent the next several years living on small islands off the coast of Australia, designated for refugees in exile. She lived in tents, enduring temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. She was permitted a ten-minute phone call once every fifteen days. She had no internet access. She was cut off from the outside world. The waiting stretched on.
Almost ten years after Kathy left Tehran, she arrived in Canada in the winter of 2022, sponsored by JIAS and welcomed into the Holy Blossom Temple community as one of their own. Kathy took her first cold, deep breath and said to herself: “This is the end of your journey. You can breathe. This is the freedom you have waited for since you were a child, with the right to practice your culture and live the life that was meant to be yours.”