SESIÓN CONTROL

Afghan refugees began settling in Shiraz shortly after the initial exodus from Afghanistan. By the early 1980s a sizable Afghan community was established in the city

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and today it is estimated that there are approximately 100 000 Afghans residing in Shiraz and tens of thousands more across the Fars province.

Afghans are permitted to settle in any area of Shiraz and face no legal restrictions on their movements within the city. However, the community is concentrated in poorer areas, particularly in the south of the city, with smaller populations found where there are significant building projects being undertaken, such as in the newly established northern suburbs.

Foremost factors bringing Afghan refugees to Shiraz have been the availability of work (particularly in the construction industry) and the presence of familial networks. ‘A Hazara man from a village near ours [in Afghanistan] said there would be work for [my husband] in a textile [dyeing] factory just outside the city,’ Fahima explains, when I ask why she and her husband made the decision to relocate hundreds of kilometres south from their first place of exile just outside the city of Mashhad on the Iran–Afghanistan border. Most of those who had lived elsewhere felt that Shiraz had offered an ‘easier life’ with particular mention made of the weather, availability of work and housing, relatively low hostility from local residents and comparatively lower levels of restrictions placed on Afghan migrants. As Fahima comments, ‘We had heard from other Afghans that life here was good, that the weather was pleasant and the people welcoming.’ Farahnaz likewise notes, ‘they [Iranians] say that Shiraz is more relaxed [than other cities in Iran] and that Shirazi are more laid back [than other Iranians]. I think for the most part they just want to get on with their own lives and that is good for us [Afghans]. That is what we want too.’

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These comments, and similar, were almost invariably clarified by statements to the effect that things have changed, that life in Shiraz has become increasingly difficult, that local hostility has risen and that employment and housing are today more limited than in the past. The Sharifi family settled in the Fars province in the mid-1980s. Now, after more than two decades of calling Shiraz home they have decided to depart Iran. Agha- ye Sharifi contrasts the early period of their exile with recent policy and societal shifts that have impacted Afghan refugees in Iran, ‘When we came to Shiraz [in 1992] we had no trouble finding a place to live, work, school [for our daughters]. Only recently it has become much harder. They are deporting Afghans and suddenly we are strangers here and treated with suspicion.’

Mohammad, a young Afghan man, who had recently been forcibly returned from Tehran to Shiraz, where his residency permit had been issued, felt that life in the capital city—with its much higher Afghan population and more diverse employment opportunities—was preferable to life in Shiraz.

There [in Tehran] I could just hide in the crowd. Nobody notices you. Nobody cares if you’re Afghan or Turk or whatever. I had a good job with a tailor and I was earning enough money to send back home [to Shiraz] and to enjoy life. If it wasn’t for the fear [of being caught] it would have been perfect. Here I’m stuck at home with no job, no hope. If I go outside people say ‘Afghan, Afghan’ to me. Just two weeks ago I was hit in the street. Beaten up for no reason. Beaten up just because I am from Afghanistan.

Iranians in Shiraz tend to self-identify as hospitable, laid-back and friendly, if not at a personal level then in terms of stereotypical characteristics of the city’s residents. Interestingly, these traits were often described as simultaneously ‘typically Iranian’ and rarely found in other parts of Iran. Furthermore, a sense of nostalgia was evoked as

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Iranians looked back and lamented the way in which changing demographics had altered the imagined character of the city and its people.

‘We Shirazi have a reputation for being…not lazy. What would you say? Laid back.’ I am seated in a teashop that is located within the grounds of the Saadi mausoleum, with a group of students from Shiraz University. Maryam nods, agreeing with Hana’s assessment and adds, ‘Iranians are hospitable, but none more so than us Shirazi. I mean’ she clarifies, ‘real Shirazi. Not these country bumpkins who arrived last week and think they can call themselves Shirazi.’

This self-identification frequently jars with overt hostility towards Afghan refugees. Hana opines that in the post-Taliban era refugees remaining in Iran ought to return (or be returned) to Afghanistan. ‘Our government invited these people in to make a point to the Russians. Now the Russians are gone and we’re stuck with three million Afghans. Criminals, drug dealers, poor and diseased. I say our generosity has been taken advantage of.’

Amongst Iranians who self-identify as Shirazi—a term obliquely suggesting Persian ethnicity and denoting, not someone who is merely resident in Shiraz but, someone who perceives themselves as ‘rooted’ in place through substantial ties to the city that stretch through space and time—the presence of both rural migrants and Afghans in the city was, without fail, cited as one of the most pressing problems facing Shiraz today. Ahmed, a Shiraz-based researcher, has followed urbanisation trends in the Fars province over a period of decades, ‘The villages have emptied and millions of people have flooded into Shiraz. Not just Iranians either, but Afghans and others. This is an old city and it wasn’t

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made for such a population. You can see the problems this is causing—traffic, pollution, over-crowding.’

While mention is made of increased pressure on urban services and facilities, environmental degradation and various problems associated with poverty and overcrowding, deeper seated anxieties are almost invariably expressed.

Ali Reza, a shopkeeper in a leafy middle-class suburb, laments the changes that migration has wrought on the city he was born in:

Shiraz is not like Shiraz anymore. It used to be a beautiful city but now it has become like an overgrown village. We have Turkmen, Lor. But where can you find real Shirazi? Real Persians? There are parts of Shiraz that resemble downtown Kabul. Just Afghans. It’s not safe to go there. I’m Shirazi and there are parts of my city I can’t visit.

Anxieties often revolved around issues of incivility and the diluting effect of (poor) rural migrants on the cosmopolitan nature of an imagined ‘real’ Shiraz. In addition, Afghan migrants are perceived as physically and culturally threatening. Ultimately, the presence of Afghans in the city is deemed to indicate a potential loss of Iranian cultural identity.

Such fears were further entangled with a narrative about high birth rates in the Afghan community. Ali Reza continues, ‘Afghans come here and you see how it is—they have five, six, seven children. I don’t have a problem with Afghans and I think we have a duty to help our brothers but we don’t want to turn Iran into Afghanistan. And, frankly, that’s what’s happening.’

Iran’s sharply falling fertility rate has become an issue of popular concern, as the Iranian government seeks policy solutions in order to reverse the acclaimed successes of its earlier focus on population control. Access to contraceptives and reproductive health education has been wound back and policies that will impact women’s employment and

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education, both of which have been determining factors in sharp fertility decline, have been introduced by parliament (Larsen 2014). At the same time, the presence of Afghan migrants in the country has been quite cynically utilised by sections of the government and media in order to frame childbirth as an act of patriotism. In this discourse it is Iranian culture that is threatened by slowed population growth. In a reversal of earlier advertising campaigns in which small families were promoted as ‘Islamically acceptable’ and leading to a better quality of life for all, today large families are being discursively constructed as an expression of ‘Iranian-Islamic culture,’ against the dual corrupting forces of external ‘Western’ (i.e. non-Islamic) and internal non-Iranian elements.

For Afghan residents of the city anxieties assume a different shape. Everyday fears dominate, while the aching uncertainty of a life lived in limbo forms a context in which small anxieties are multiplied and magnified. Despite having obtained a stable and relatively well-paid position as a construction foreman and being granted consecutive work visas enabling him to remain in Iran, Abdul Golhi has spent the past twenty years in a state of constant expectation of being summarily deported back to Afghanistan, ‘I am always looking over my shoulder. We all know people who have been sent back. Even those with all their papers in order. I could lose my job tomorrow and then what? I have no rights here. My children will end up on the street or worse.’

Afghan parents struggle to balance the desire to provide their children with a semblance of ordinary life and a modicum of freedom, with fear that they will become the target of neighbourhood ire.

When a branch from the [neighbour’s] persimmon tree was broken off they came knocking on our door threatening us, accusing our children. Somebody even claimed to have seen them attacking it, which just wasn’t

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true. We try to keep them inside, but it’s hard. They’re boys. They need to run around.

Following this incident and struggling to keep their children occupied in the confines of a one-bedroom home, Abdul Golhi joined together with several other Afghan fathers in the Sadra region—a newly established satellite town to the north of Shiraz—in order to organise Quranic classes. Mullah Azami was born in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province and trained in Iran’s seminary city of Qom. He accepts a small stipend in order to provide religious instruction. Three afternoons a week, Abdul Golhi escorts up to fifteen boys to classes held in a gloomy basement. Eventually, when the building it is housed in is completed, this will become an underground garage, but for now the owner is happy to collect rent on the otherwise unused space. It is hardly an ideal classroom but the students seem unconcerned by the rudimentary surrounds. Somebody has taped a print of the Imam Reza shrine on the rough surface of the wall and a colourful carpet has been laid over the cement floor. ‘One day we would like a proper classroom. Chairs and desks. Maybe we will run a school for the boys.’ Mullah Azami breaks in, smiling a gentle reproach to Abdul Golhi, ‘And for the girls, too. We’re not in Afghanistan anymore.’

Most Afghans describe ways in which they seek to modify their behaviour, in an almost invariably futile attempt to make their ‘Afghan-ness’ less offensive. These techniques revolve around avoiding confrontation and limiting movement within a small radius of which home forms the centre. Despite having lived most of her life in Iran, Razieh rarely ventures beyond her immediate neighbourhood, ‘I will go to the mosque and back and, if [my son] Naghib has already left [for school], to the bread shop, but it makes me nervous and I always feel I must apologise for being here—for being an Afghan woman here in Iran.’

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