Stepping Through Time

By Mujtaba Jalali

Years ago, when I was registered as a “foreigner” student at an elementary school in Iran, during a class of sociology I heard the strange phrase ‘Global Village’. I thought of those as goofy words. For a twelve-year old boy it seemed ridiculous at the time, but I grew up and I get it now. I can feel it so straight through my skin and flesh nowadays.

Kids are playing with wooden horses in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.

For me the history of mankind begins in December, 1979. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which caused a mass migration, included my parents and grandparents. They came to Iran to seek refuge. Eventually my parents met there, and years later I opened my eyes to this little world, Global Village.

It sounds totally nonsensical to me now, but as a child who was born into a society full of tension, I spent all my youth searching for my true identity and origin. My thoughts kept flying back in time, returning to memories, trying to understand the meaning of war, consequences and causalities. All to answer this question: where is my home?

LEFT and at RIGHT: Hundreds of Syrian and Afghan refugees are waiting for a train to pick them up to go towards the Hungarian border. Serbia, September 2015.

My life itself, from the beginning, was a result of war and I myself became a victim of a war many miles away. I do believe the world is getting small and smaller, contracting not just geographically but chronologically. In twenty-five years I have experienced migration across the dimensions of both time and space, and most recently I learned a lot in the 2015 refugee crisis.

Burial of Afghan young men who were killed in the Syrian war. Mashhad, Iran, 2015.

Five years ago, when the Iranian government started recruiting impoverished Afghan refugees in Iran as cannon fodder to support Bashar Al-Assad in the Syrian conflict, I decided to cover the story and I did it for almost three years. But after being threatened seriously by the regime I had no other choice except to leave the country.

I had never expected to someday experience the process of immigration myself, but I did it and it was an incredibly painful and sad experience. I joined a small group of three Afghan refugees in Tehran to cross the Turkish border during a night with no moonlight. It was the start of a long, long journey.

Top: Ahmad, Ali and Ahmad are three Afghan guys who are looking for their dreams and goals in the West. When I joined this small group of refugees in the park, we were all waiting anxiously for a taxi coordinated by the smuggler in Tehran to take us to the Turkish border. | BOTTOM LEFT: Iranian human smugglers in Tehran are embedding Afghan refugees in a car to go to the border city of Urmia. At the time of the refugee crisis, Iranian police forces were suspicious of any Afghan passengers. By car it’s an 8–9 hour long journey from Tehran to Urmia. Sometimes Afghan refugees have to spend all this travel inside a trunk with some short breaks in the middle. | BOTTOM RIGHT: An Afghan refugee is sleeping outside a stable in a village near Urmia, Iran, the day before crossing the Turkish border. All photographed in August 2015.

When I arrived in Paris, France after a month, I couldn’t believe that only this short amount of time had passed. What I had experienced in that journey was like two years serving on a battlefield. I just couldn’t believe it.

I have been taking pictures of refugees all along the way with my new iPhone, the most modern and paradoxical object in front of my eyes in comparison to the situation I found myself in: things that I was witnessing through the lens of my smart phone could have been a scene of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, or the Second World War’s refugee crisis, or the mass migration of Afghans to Pakistan and Iran after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

LEFT: Refugees walk near Senta, close to the border between Serbia and Hungary, September 2015. | RIGHT: Ahmad, an Afghan refugee is looking for an apple in a garden to eat as a meal in a village near the Iran-Turkey border. They are waiting for human smugglers to pass them over the border at midnight. ارومیه / Urmia, August 2015

As if I had a time machine, all along the way I could see my own parents. Little kids in front of my camera were struggling to pass the borders, to cross the sea to seek safety. And, probably, I’m myself the father of a son who asks himself: “Where is my home?”

A refugee is waiting for a ship in the marina of Mytilini, Greece, 2015.

Mujtaba Jalali is a photographer currently residing in Amsterdam.

Edited by Katja Heinemann for @EverydayMigration.