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Taghi, please sit beside your mom. Zahra, beside dad.

Taghi, please sit beside your mom. No, please switch.

All kids should be in front.

- Sit in front of your grandfather. - Come to your uncle Taghi.

Same for Hosna.

Fatemeh, you should come closer and sit on your knees.

Come to your uncle.

Tabasom should also come to the front.

Go to your grandmother.

Salehe, come closer to Taghi.

Mehdi, move closer to your wife.

Fetemeh, you still have to sit on your knees.

Ava should be there too.

Fatemeh, move a bit to the left.

Some one ran away!

All smile please and show your most photogenic face.

Ava! Please join.

- Taghi, please keep her in your arms.- Alright.

Please all look at me.

Be a bit patient.

I think it is now well balanced.

Thirty three years ago on this same day,

mom and dad arrived in Iran.

carrying a few pieces of clothings and a one-year-old child.

The public is warned of the dangers of air pollution for all ages.

Today the pollution passed the red level in many areas.

The forecast organization added that,

we should not expect any wind in the next three days.

Mazandaran province host immigrant birds every winter.

Birds are called immigrants.

While we are called strangers.

- But we are also immigrants. - They call us "aliens".

We are born here and never have left from here.

Born here or not, you are still an immigrant.

Why should we even be called immigrants?

I am really wondering what we should be called.

Today, we are a family fo fifteen in a three-floor house.

A house in which lights are always on,

yet has no foundation, in this land.

This is my last year in the university.

Even if I graduate,

I am not allowed to work in Iran with my diploma.

If I stay, I will have to stay as a labourer.

I wasted my life digging water wells. I should have learnt tayloring earlier.

I was a labourer for 28 years.

Maybe tayloring is already good for you as you were a refugee.

But we were born here and studied for years.

I am not saying tayloring is a bad job.

I just know I'm capable of achieving a lot more.

I studied for years. But I ended up working from 8am till midnight.

If we were not immigrants, I could have continued studying.

The feet of an immigrant are tied.

Why bother studying if you are not allowed to use your qualifications here?

If only our home country was not in such a mess.

Taghi, please help more when you come here.

Just saying.

She told me your nose looks like an Afghan's.

- What else? - That's all.

- What did you say? - Nothing.

- Were you embarrassed? - Yes.

But why?

- Who called her that? - What?

- Who called her Afghan? - One of her classmates.

She said: "I hadn't noticed before,

but from the shape of your nose, I realize you are an Afghan"

What is the difference between an Iranian and an Afghan nose?

You are also beautiful darling, just like an Iranians.

So you believe that we are not beautiful in our own right?

Oh mom...

We are any way two different ethnicities, no?

Of course we are different,

and I believe our Hazara face is even more beautiful, right sweetie?

It's making my eyes sting.

Is it bothering you that I am grating onions, Zahra?

Yes, it's stinging Masoumeh's eyes.

Where are you going, sweetheart?

I want to ride my bike.

Do you think Iranian girls marry Afghans?

If they do, they only marry pretty Afghans.

They do not marry us with small noses and almond eyes.

No one will marry our son Taghi.

He's too old already.

You tell girls your son is around 30, you'll see the girls won't accept.

They call him an old man.

Until now his brothers have paid for his studies.

His brothers have been good in supporting him.

He should get a job before he gets married.

If he needs a job, there's a job ready for him.

You should match it with the black line.

They expelled Masoumeh from school today. They returned her school registration.

What did they say?

They said Afghans should study only in the city where they are registered.

No immigrant is treated like this in other places.

After thirty years!

I told her: "Then why don't you kick her out of the class now?"

She said: "No, not now.

I'll feel bad to ask her to leave in the middle of her class.

Please tell her not to come starting tomorrow."

Then she said: "This causes security issues for us."

How dare she consider an 8-year-old girl a security threat?

Can we register her in an Afghan-run school?

We can. But the tuition fee is very high.

What can I say.

I'm like a bird grown in his neighbour's nest.

A nest I will never get used to.

- We're going to have some cake. - Don't scratch the tray.

I woke up very early in the morning.

Everyone was sleeping,

nobody noticed me going out.

I am going to request an exit visa to travel to Afghanistan.

Theatre Station, Theatre Station.

Dear passengers, please follow the signs to choose your route.

I have to see what motherland has for me.

Can you give me the price of flights from Tehran to Kabul?

And which days are the flights?

Five hundred dollars?

If we continue thinking Afghanistan is unsafe, it will never be built.

Yes, Afghanistan is unsafe, but we students plan to change that.

How? With our knowledge.

The first time I came, Afghanistan wasn't a good experience.

But our goal is to push educated Afghans born in Iran to come and live here,

and be gradually integrated into Afghan society.

The first time I saw Afghanistan was in 2006.

As soon as I arrived at the airport, I started trembling with fear,

and I wanted to turn around and go back.

All these difficulties made me stronger.

I would like to tell all Afghans students:

Do your best. Afghanistan needs you.

Don't ever think of staying in Iran.

She means us!

Iran does not need us. It's our homeland that needs us.

Are you really planning to leave?

Well, yes.

I'm contacting different people over there.

Some of my meetings are already confirmed.

How long do you plan to stay?

I'll have to see.

In this heat...

Try to come back soon.

Why? Because of the heat?

No, in general.

Let me know if anything happens while I'm away.

Meanwhile, you only have to stick to your studies.

Have you already taught me this?

Or did you skip?

No, we haven't studied this part yet.

This is about making sentences.

He often studies English carefully in the library on Sundays.

Your exam is out of 20. No, out of 40.

This question has 4 points.

Your final mark is out of 20.

You reached it!

You got it!

Don't let her bite it.

No, no, it's dirty.

Who's this?

This is Maryam, and this is Safari.

- Could you write your name in Farsi as well? - Yes, but not my last name.

Write only your name then.

- Persian or English? - Persian.

Give this to uncle Taghi.

Oh auntie, I have some lipstick on my lips.

Well, I mean, it's a pen.

But it's like a lipstick.

I know you prefer that it's a lipstick.

I like it but my mom does not allow us.

She says it's made of baby blood. Of dead babies.

- You mean they extract blood from dead babies? - Why are you scaring them?

Their mom already did.

Potatoes and onions on sale, only 1000.

Five kilos for 5000.

Onions 1000! Potatoes 1000!

I think it's about time we started thinking about getting Taghi married.

Why don't you think about finding him a bride?

Do you want a wife from our relatives?

Or among strangers?

From Mashhad, Shiraz or Tehran?

- When is your son's wedding auntie? - The end of the week.

This coming week?

I'm off soon to visit our homeland,

Kabul.

You're going to Afghanistan?

But you will be coming back after?

I'll come back to present my thesis,

but I plan to find a job and eventually settle there.

Isn't it possible to stay here in Iran? Not possible?

- I don't want to stay. - Safe travels then.

- Work here and help your brothers instead. - I've had enough of being here.

- Please keep Iran for yourself. - But Iranians are our brothers.

We share our pain, we share our happiness.

We have marriages between us.

We bury our dead in their cemeteries.

We use their mosques, their shrines and holy places.

You can visit holy shrines, parks, towers.

You can even go to the sea, everything.

And I think it's our own fault when they arrest us sometimes.

We don't live in the city where we're registered.

Some even travel without circulation permit.

So we are prisoners then?

But you're just travelling.

Why should we always be in fear when we travel?

Didn't you recently go to a wedding in another city?

We were on a bus. And they asked us to get off.

I'm sure you didn't pay your tickets.

What happened?

As we were boarding, the driver asked us for our circulation permit.

We said: 'who are you to ask? You are not a policeman.

You are nobody. Yes, the driver.

He said you should all show me your circulation permit.

I'm not risking my bus for some lousy Afghans.

So we got off the bus and boarded another one.

And we showed the new driver our documents.

Why should we be checked for one simple journey?

Why all this fear?

You were born and raised here. Why can't you be satisfied with that?

In Afghanistan, they dream of the safety here in Iran.

I'm not complaining about Iran. I just want to live in my own country.

I'll send you videos from Amir Lake, and make you happy.

It's a beautiful lake, I know.

I will cross the border in a few days.

A border which, for many Afghans here, is a nightmare.

A nightmare of deportation and statelessness.

- Two or three? - Only two, mom.

Now four. My finger hurts.

Mom, you press and the drop tries to fall,

but you leave it halfway and the drop goes back.

It's now five.

I should massage it for 10 minutes and then we do the other ear.

I'll be a bit deaf for some days.

Taghi, who will make you tea in Kabul?

A suicide bomber and 6 armed men

from the Taliban attacked the Afghan parliament in Kabul today.

At least 19 people are reported injured.

This is one of the most unexpected attacks in recent times.

It raises may questions about the competence of the Afghan security service,

which is trained by NATO.

The attack today began with a suicide bomber who crashed his car onto the parliament building.

I'm off to Kabul at the end of this week.

Do you want to send a hello message to any one there?

Or send anyone a gift?

Well, I have nothing to send. Say hello from your own side.

Once I settle there and know my way around,

maybe I can take you there too?

Or you don't want that?

I know everything about that place myself. I used to live there.

I'll stay here and see who will finally stay with us.

I've brought your lunch.

Do you prefer to eat here or will you go home to rest?

No rest. I have work to finish here.

Then I have to pray.

See you later.

Why do you make so much noise?

Why don't you go to park?

- We'll go later. - With whom?

Our mom.

I printed the photos of the kids for my wallet.

Zahra is not well recently.

I promised to write to her everyday.

Like many Afghans,

mom cooked me Bosraq the night before the journey.

It is the food for my journey to Kabul.

- Have some green plum. - I don't like it very much.

It's sour.

Have those ones.

Do you like it?

I'm hearing the dreams of the road, from the other side.

I'm hearing the dreams of the road, from the other side.

The road is dreaming about cedar trees.

How green they are, in this beautiful spring.

I'm carrying a basket full of pomegranates.

How green I am, in this beautiful spring.

How green I am,...

Strawberries!

Delicious for your parties.

Green plums!

Only 4000.

Hello to you and your viewers in BBC Persian.

I would also like to say hello to the immigrants all over the world.

It has never been so insecure in Afghanistan.

We witnessed very violent incidents in Kabul this year.

This has caused many Afghans to emigrate to Europe.

The government of Afghanistan cannot really keep up.

This is because the lives of the people do not really have value for them.

I arrived in Kabul late at night.

The morning today was very fresh.

I had plum jam for breakfast.

Hey! How are you?

Are you okay?

Don't you hear us?

Let me switch to handsfree.

You still don't hear?

Is he coughing?

Hey, do you hear us?

- I can hear you. - Can you hear us?

It's a bit better.

- How are you? - Yes, how about you?

How are you?

Everything is fine. And you?

Here nothing has changed.

Speak louder.

- Are mom and dad with you? - Mom is here.

Dad is at the tailor shop working.

Did you go to our village to meet the relatives yet?

Yes, they are well.

Both your aunts and all their grandchildren?

Did you also see my sisters?

People here look like us.

They talk like us.

I feel I arrived home.

The land is mine.

The valleys are mine.

The sky is mine

How peacefully I lie beneath this sun.

Time is passing.

And as time passes, we lose moments.

You will grow old, oh my young lover.

You will grow old, oh my young lover.

I sing for the hearts of you lovers boys.

I sing for the hearts of you lovers boys.

The stranger's land is foreign to me.

I'm lonely and in pain, there's no cure for me.

Where is my mother to pray for me?

Because the foreigner knows nothing of the suffering I feel.

Isn't that our house?!

The door is all broken. Look at that hole!

It's pretty dry there!

What do you mean? Don't you see the trees?

Do you call those grasses trees?

There are also goats! Whose goats are they?

What a beautiful place we had!

It's all ruined now, that's why you make fun of it.

It's her first time seeing it.

It's even less green in autumn.

We all used to live here together.

Watch the hens!

Is she my auntie?

Yes, she is!

Oh, Taghi has filmed our village.

My sister has made herself beautiful!

She laughs like your mother.

Don't put hijab. This video is for your brother.

Look how she laughs while covering herself!

And there is her grandkid!

I've never seen my aunts. They don't know who I am either.

I say hi to my brother,

his wife and to his children, his grandkids.

I say hi to everyone.

Auntie! Do you remember my brother Habib?

He was the one-year-old when they left there.

No, I don't remember him.

I also do not know the names of your other siblings.

Oh war! You sent everyone away from home.

Hey come! We're making this video for my brother.

It's hard to imagine what mom and dad's life was once like here.

Or what would've become of us had we been raised here.

I used to fight during the Soviet occupation.

But soon it turned into a civil war inside Afghanistan.

Oh Afghanistan, the revolution, the people...

We left home and headed toward Iran.

We were on the way for one month.

Such a difficult journey... I became terribly sick.

As soon as we arrived to Iran's border, I fell ill because of homesickness.

But you are destined to survive and live in this world.

You fought to live.

Did you meet your new classmates the other day?

- Which day? - The day you went to register.

To register in the Afghan-run school, you mean?

They asked me why I transferred.

Mom told them I'd been expelled from the Iranian school.

They asked how it felt to be expelled from an Iranian school

and then enrolled in an Afghan school?

They told me to write it down.

What did you write?

I wrote about my dreams.

- Can you tell me about them? - No.

I took first, second and third grades in an Iranian school.

When after the third grade, after the 'Feast of duty',

I had to enroll in an Afghan-run school too, same as you.

Could you guess who's this?

Is that you auntie?

You tell me!

That's you!

This is you.

Dust, wind,

weak internet.

And sometimes long hours of electricity cut.

I became sick drinking tap water, and had to stay in a hospital.

I've learned to take care of what I eat.

I think it's affordable to live in Iran.

If one person works, a family can eat.

But elsewhere, everyone has to work.

Well, you're Iranian.

Your situation is different from mine.

You have never experienced discrimination.

And you have some privileges that I don't have.

Sometimes my nieces ask me: "Someone called me Afghani!

What does Afghani mean? Is it an insult?"

And I always have to explain to them what an Afghan or an Iranian is.

This is why I don't feel good about the term Afghani.

When I was in first grade, there was only one Afghan in our class.

And everyone called her: "You! Afghan!"

When I think of her, I realize how much she suffered.

I think here is not a place that welcomes strangers.

We've lived for thirty-five years in Iran. Maybe it's enough.

How long should we live in a stranger's land?

We can sell our things and go.

- But how? - We'd have to sell everything!

Pack everything up. We can sell the machines in the tailor shop.

We can sell all the stuff here for 200$.

Seriously.

Someone will buy it.

Saturday, July 23rd 2016.

Today, I am joining a march in Kabul with student.

The call is to demand from the government to do its job properly.

Watch carefully, maybe we see Taghi!

What would Taghi be doing there?

He is there. He just sent a photo precisely from there.

Right now, we are getting reports hat there has been an explosion

in the middle of the protest in Kabul.

Based on our live reports, many are injured among the young protesters.

And we are assuming there must be many killed among them as well.

We do not yet have the exact number of the dead and injured.

The injured protesters are now being transferred to Esteghlal hospital by the police.

Maybe he has no network.

Do you know if he went there alone.

The bomb exploded in the square.

It was only 20 meters away from where I was standing.

Monday, July 24th 2016.

The funeral started at ten in the morning.

People have come from every corner of Kabul

to bury the victims of the bomb attack.

It was summer and I was either 13 or 14 years old.

In the mornings, I went to school and in the evenings,

I went to the tailor shop.

It was like that until I got my high school diploma.

After that, I tried to enroll for college, but they wouldn't accept me.

They told me they were not accepting applications from Afghans at that time.

That was my bad luck then.

I had worked hard and deserved to go to college.

I called our parents.

I told them this is the situation, what should I do?

Dad said; "it's up to you."

As for me, I am just an old man, and I have limited means.

I have the rest of the family to support, and I can't afford to pay you through university.

And whether you study or not, our status here is not stable.

He's always talked about our situation like that.

Legal or illegal, this year we will probably be deported.

Every Afghan lived with the same fear.

No one dared start an economic or educational activity because of that instability.

But I don't regret not having continued my education.

Thinking about this job, it might not bring in a lot of money,

but at least I have a job.

Wherever I end up, people will need what I do.

Do you have money? Sure?

We had to enroll Masoumeh in an Afghan school when she got expelled.

Her teacher asked her to write about her dream job for the future.

She wrote that her dream was to travel the world.

If you look at these photos, each one is different.

Here, I am 19 years old.

Look how young I was.

You received this ID card as soon as you came to Iran?

Yes, we got the ID card when we got here.

Back then, the ID cards had no expiration date.

There was no need to renew it. I had the same card for 12 years.

This card is from since you were one year old.

We thought, because we and Iranians speak the same language

and have similar culture and religion, things would be easier for us.

Little did we know that after 30 years of living here,

the Iranian government would deny us any right.

Well, this is not our homeland. That's how things work.

Your thesis title?

Presenting the necessary common skills for Afghan graduates

in the field of engineering, for an effective presence in...

Will you have to say this all at once?

...for an effective presence in Afghanistan.

Oh my God, it's three whole lines!

- What if his rope is torn? - It won't.

- Why not? - Because grandad is taking care of it.

What a big tongue.

He's talking to you.

It wasn't my fault!

It's too wet.

- Oh, my feet. - Do you want a chair dad?

No, it won't be possible.

Put these breads over there.

We should not make noise while eating, darling.

You have 15 minutes to present your thesis.

My colleagues and I expect to see a clear presentation of your subject.

You should conclude with an analysis of your findings from your field research.

According to statistics, there are 13,000 Afghan students in Iran.

There are, however, legal constraints preventing them

from pursuing professional careers in Iran.

My field research was in Kabul over a period of 4 months

where I got a sense of the reality of life in Kabul.

For Afghan students in Iran, graduation is a proud day.

The happiness of this day, however, will soon turn into anxiety.

Cornered to a choice between staying and bieng restricted in pursing my dream,

or heading toward another land,

far from loved ones.

Considering the quality of your thesis, the methodology of your arguments,

and your answers to the questions of this panel, we award you with an A+ pass for your graduation.

- Isn't this Taghi? - It's him.

For me, I have decided to go where I can do something.

These two are Mehdi and his wife when they were kids!

Mom made herself beautiful.

What is it?

This is my eldest daughter, Masoumeh.

I'm Masoumeh. The daughter of Habib.

- Which grade? - Third.

Hello from me and from my grandchildren.

Hello to my sisters.

Hello to your hens that we saw.

Our greetings come to you from far away, but with a heart that feels very close.

We wish you safety in our homeland.

Wish us the same, as we are strangers here.