This is not a complete sentence, so it cannot be accurately translated. Please provide the full Farsi text.
Ali Kalai

The class is so small that the children are sitting three to a bench. Children from 9 to 11 years old. A girl and a boy sitting next to each other. Afghans and Iranians from poor families, and some Iranian nomads; all sitting together. I was just starting to quiet the class to begin the discussion when I heard a knock on the door. I opened the door. A young woman, maybe only a few years older than my own youth, stood in front of me and asked, “Are you my child’s teacher?” I asked for her child’s name and she said; I said, “Yes.”

“I wanted us to step away from the main classroom door for a moment. I stood with my back to the door so the children wouldn’t see, and suddenly tears filled her face. “My husband is Afghan and addicted. I work in a Hussainiya until late. My daughter speaks highly of you at home. Please take care of her,” she said, tears streaming down her face. I was at a loss. The mother of one of my best students was revealing the bitterness of their life. A little girl who loved to study so she wouldn’t suffer the same fate as her parents. A little girl who loved to study not just for herself, but for others as well.”

Think about the meaning of this last sentence, you didn’t understand it correctly. Be patient and read until the end…

I looked and promised. The mother of the girl left. But that day, the whole time in class, I thought about the tearful eyes of that mother and I didn’t have the courage to look at her daughter.

An Afghan immigrant, who has fled from war, has come to Iran. An immigrant who, due to the linguistic kinship, has formed a bond with the people of the host country. Years of living alongside the people of the host country, not only teaches them their culture, but also creates closeness and familiarity. These immigrants, who can be seen in the middle and upper parts of the city, only in labor jobs and daily wages in building construction and other centers and activities at that level, become close neighbors in the lower parts of the city and in neighborhoods where poverty is rampant.

The poor neighborhoods of small border cities are filled with Iranian families who have unfortunate daughters in need of money. Some of their heads of household are addicts and when a Iranian or Afghan smuggler approaches them, they are willing to marry off their daughters to them in order to provide for their daily needs. In the best case scenario, the issue ends with a marriage. Sometimes, it becomes even more tragic…

About our story, that was the bitter tale. A father who was addicted had married off his young daughter to a drug-dealing Afghan immigrant who was also an addict. He was able to get rid of his daughter’s burden and also fulfill his drug needs through this marriage. The young girl was talented and full of creativity, but deprived of her identity.

My class with these girls and boys was a creativity class. Each session, everyone was supposed to choose a topic. We had coordinated with a group of philanthropists in the field of children to provide a library for these children. Each session, a topic was discussed and talked about. Minds were curious and got to work.

Despite not having official identity documents in Iran, these children were being educated through the efforts and support of civil activists and based on the curriculum of the literacy movement. The forces working in this center and similar centers were all volunteers who had a social concern and had dedicated themselves to such work. However, despite the efforts of these civil activists, a large number of girls and boys remained uneducated due to their concern for income. The bitter story of child labor is evident when we simply go to a crossroads and see them.

These types of marriages, if not forced (out of fear of losing honor due to violation or taking a friend as a bride for material or money), and sometimes by choice in the form of ordinary and normal marriages in Iranian society, create children who, because they are born to a non-Iranian father, do not have the permission to have an Iranian identity and birth certificate; this is even more difficult when they are born and raised in Iran and then, due to lack of identity and citizenship, are deprived of all rights, or become the source of crime, or flee across borders to countries like Turkey or elsewhere (like the recent influx of refugees into Central Europe) in search of a place to have a human identity and citizenship.

During my time at that center, another story came into my view, and this time I saw this problem and dilemma more clearly.

She was a little girl, about 10 years old. That week, when I was in class, she was there. She answered a question and was asked to write something for the next session. But the next session, when I went to class, she wasn’t there. I asked her classmates. They all looked down. Finally, one of them said that her father was Afghan and her mother was Iranian, and they were from Khairabad-e Varamin. Her parents had gone to Afghanistan and since they didn’t have a proper home or means to support themselves, they had taken the girl to her mother’s relatives in Khairabad-e Varamin in the middle of her studies.

The girl, who had inherited her features more from her mother, did not have a birth certificate but was extremely talented and always seeking new knowledge in every session. Intelligent, diligent, and polite. Among the other girls and boys who would often challenge their teachers, she was very calm, composed, and dignified. It was as if she had been told that this is the proper way to behave in class and one must not follow the popular saying of “climbing straight up the wall!” However, in the middle of her studies, this girl was forced to go to her mother’s relatives in Khayrabad. A place where there was no news of education and a thousand types of corruption and tragedy awaited her.

I was not feeling well. I got angry and went to the center’s social worker for help. Fortunately, with their efforts, after a few weeks, the little girl returned. One of the local Afghan families took responsibility for her housing and she stayed. As long as I was there, she was fine. What happened after, only God knows.

Days passed. An issue arose that forced me to separate from the center. My separation was related to a detention that, after being released from it, the loved ones at the center were afraid of using my services. They had every right to be. The presence of someone with a history of security encounters could be detrimental to a center that wants to do real work. In any case, I spent a year sitting on the sidelines.

After a year, I went to another center and started working with these children again. One day, one of the same girls who was 13 or 14 years old came to the center. She saw me and we talked a lot. She said that on Mondays, they sit together with the group of girls and boys and read philosophy. They have started with simple philosophy books and read and discuss them. I knew they didn’t understand much, but their effort to understand and read was admirable. An effort that maybe I didn’t have when I was their age.

These girls and boys, as children, had not experienced a normal childhood in Iranian society. They had tasted more pain. As they themselves said, those classes became a driving force for their education. They read and understood that besides what Saadi Shirazi interpreted as eating, sleeping, anger, and desire, there are other matters as well. Matters that require thinking and contemplation. The writer himself is a product of the era of reforms. At the beginning of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, he became a high school student and in the early days of his second term, a university student. I myself can understand the impact of reading materials and encouragement to read during the first term of Khatami’s presidency. I myself was 14 or 15 years old during that time of adolescence. When I compare the year 78 to my year 75, I realize that it was a step towards sparking contemplation in these children and teenagers.

“These were shining talents that the writer saw with their own eyes. If they had an official and legal identity, and if they could go through the country’s official educational courses and enter university, they would surely have remained as excellent students and thinkers. But! The narrow-mindedness of the rulers and decision-makers prevents this from happening.”

I had been out of the country for two years. One day on Facebook, I saw a message: “Hello sir! How are you sir! Do you remember us sir?!” It was clear from the type of message that it was from one of my old students. I replied. I realized it was one of these girls. She had given up on continuing her life in Iran and had arrived in one of the Scandinavian countries with her family through Turkey. She was finishing her last years of high school and wanted to become a student. She wanted to study political science. She considered herself Afghan (despite having an Iranian mother and growing up in Iran) and wanted to be useful for the future of Afghanistan’s politics.

We have caused so much harm to the little girl in Iran, deprived her of her basic rights as a child, that despite living in this country for years, she does not consider herself Iranian. This dissatisfaction and anger in childhood is created in the hearts of that child and hundreds and thousands like her due to the wrong thoughts, decisions, and actions of the rulers.

Let me conclude the story and the thread of conversation about those girls and boys with a different narrative.

After the creativity class for children aged 9 to 11, it occurred to me to invite children aged 7 to 8 who have just started learning to a similar class. Of course, this class for these children had to be done in a more special way.

It was decided that instead of assigning each person a topic and writing, among these young students, only one topic will be presented and then with discussion and teaching of how to have a conversation, the initial seeds of curiosity and thinking will be planted in them.

A few sessions have passed. Gathering all those underprivileged children who were coming from the destructive tensions of society and family was not an easy task. We also tried holding classes with the help of another volunteer friend. Yet again, we were faced with the challenges of mischievousness and disorder of these children.

Undoubtedly, one day in the older class (9 to 11 year olds), I brought up the topic. Two 11-year-old girls volunteered to help. One of them was the same one whose mother had cried in front of the door, and the other was the one who had sent a message after I left Iran, reminding me.

We continued the class with the younger ones with these two eleven-year-old girls. Miraculously, after a few sessions, the class became calm. We were able to do our work. But… something happened that I must tell you, I believed in these children! One day after one of these classes with the students, I was sitting in a corner of the class, taking a break. To my right, these two girls were sitting as helpers at the desks, talking to each other. I closed my eyes to rest, but my ears were still listening. Suddenly, I heard these two eleven-year-old girls talking about how to optimize the class for the students. They were discussing what we could do to make the class better for them.

I stood up and quietly left the class. One of my friends saw me. He saw the excitement in my eyes and asked for the reason. I said, “We did what we had to do.”

The excuses and justifications of the government that avoids giving identity to these children, the legislation that claims the cost of having a birth certificate for these children, has not even dealt with them for a day; these mountains of talent and energy complexes that, with proper guidance, can and could have been extremely beneficial for any place that accepts them.

The topic is children and education. The writer also has a background in teaching at schools in the northernmost parts of Tehran. The students who come in the morning with a driver and go back with a driver at night. If I were to compare, both in terms of understanding and learning, as well as manners, respect, and loyalty to the teacher, I would definitely prefer those children at the center.

There are many stories. Good and bad. Painful and joyful. But perhaps it is time to emerge from our selfishness and see ourselves and others from under the rubble.