So to Speak Transcript: Escaping Iran

Note: This is an unedited rush transcript. Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

Pouya Nikmand: Everywhere else, people don't like injustice, but it doesn't even occur to them that they could do something about it. They’re given up. They accept injustice. But Americans, the thing that makes the Americans, in my head, what I really resonate with, they don't take injustice easily. They want to do something about it. Americans, they have this really heightened sense of justice and sense that we could reach a solution; we could reach a better world; we could make people's lives better today; and that just doesn't exist from my experience anywhere else.

Nico Perrino: You're listening to So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast brought to you by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Welcome back to So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech. I'm your host, Nico Perino.

In recent weeks, protests have erupted across Iran over economic and political frustrations. As demonstrations grew, the Iranian government responded by arresting and murdering thousands of protesters. One Iran observer told The Wall Street Journal that the government brought down the iron fist with a speed and ferocity we haven't seen before.

And on January 8th, authorities cut off internet access across most of the country, leaving much of the world in the dark as to what was happening inside its borders. The crackdown seems to have worked for now. The New York Times reports a tense calm has beset the country, with a large number of the security forces deployed in the streets, and massive disappointment and disillusionment among Iranians.

Today I am joined by Pouya Nikmand. He's an Iranian-born writer who escaped Iran at 18, and knows firsthand what it means to live under and fight against the Iranian regime. He writes about those experiences on his Substack, Outliving Iran, where he examines how his experience in Iran shaped his understanding of expression, freedom, and belonging. Pouya, welcome onto the show.

Pouya Nikmand: Thanks for having me, Nico.

Nico Perrino: So, what do you know about what's happening in Iran right now?

Pouya Nikmand: When the internet gets reconnected, just the scale of it will be... just the brutality of it will be visible to the world. They not only machine gunned young protesters on the street, they kidnapped their corpses, and any of the corpses that make it to the hospital, they attack the hospital, shoot the corpses, or if they're not fully dead, shoot the wounded protesters, and then take their bodies hostage. It is a type of barbarism the likes of which we haven't seen since ISIS.

Nico Perrino: And did you think the Iranian regime was always capable of this sort of barbarism?

Pouya Nikmand: Absolutely. To understand Iran, you need to understand that the government functions on two levels. One is the official government, and one is the IRGC. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the name. They are like a paramilitary group. They recruit from civilians, and they teach people from a very young age how to work with guns and be brutal; and they have complete reign to do whatever they want. They work and live and function outside of laws. So, there is nothing that IRGC does that can be can be admissible in a court of law.

So, although the Iranian government itself says we didn't do anything, it's the IRGC. It's the people who were trained since a young age to be in that type of almost like a terrorist group. It is designated as a terrorist group by the US government. They have no morals. They were recruited since a young age, and they just don't feel any remorse killing someone who they think is against Islamic government.

Nico Perrino: That's one of the things I've always wondered about these uprisings and paramilitary forces that often put them down. Aren't the members of the paramilitary force also members of the broader society? Don't they have the same sort of unease about the situation in the society? Wouldn't you think they wouldn't take up arms and shoot these protesters, or shoot their neighbors, or shoot their, in some cases, brothers and sisters?

But it seems like in Iran, if what I'm hearing you say is correct, they have. Now, we don't know all of the facts, but the reports I'm reading from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal suggests there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of murdered protesters going on. Where do things stand now? I've read that there's a tense calm. Are the protests done?

Pouya Nikmand: So, you need to understand, when I'm talking about the people who were in the IRGC bubbles, and they're recruited into the group, you need understand that they fundamentally function in different way as normal people. So, they might say, and they justify their actions based on principles of Islam, and they want to bring global intifada, whatever the way they think about it in religious terms; but on a practical, functional, day-to-day level, they are going on the streets as if they're hunting animals. So, it is a fun game for them.

So, the ideology, the regime, teaches them that if someone is un-Islamic, whatever that means, then they're fair game, a completely fair game, anything. So, a lot of the people who are hired by the morality police, and I've heard of it – Iran has a morality police separate from normal police – they are posted on every street, and they look at people.

They sometimes go in hiding, and just wait for women to show up, to push their hijab back a little bit. They would jump at them. They would run at them, put handcuffs on them, arrest them, take them to the vans. I don't want to jump too quickly to comparisons with having the United States, but it's very similar to what's happening in Minnesota with ICE. They wait for someone to speak with an accent, then they quickly jump at them, and they get some sort of kick out of that.

So, this is how the IRGC militia, the morality police, the people in those bubbles – that's how they function. It's a game. They get a sense of pleasure out of hunting their own people, including their own sisters, for example. They see themselves as first and foremost beholden to the ideology of the regime, and to Islam, than any other identity. So, they do not have a second of hesitation to shoot down a protestor, because that's the way they justify it, is that anyone who's against the government of God is against God, so needs to be killed.

Nico Perrino: How do you end up with a situation like this, with a society in Iran that's as restricted as it is? Has it always been that way? No. Believe it or not, Iran was one of the freest countries outside Europe. It was the flourishing country in Asia, one of the freest, most prosperous country in Asia before the revolution. It was a friend of the West, and people were free to discuss, to speak, even speak against the regime.

We saw, in the span of a couple of years, in a span of about 10 years, all of those achievements, those freedoms were receded, and Iran became a thoroughly religious dictatorship, totalitarian dictatorship, only second to North Korea, in my opinion. And in terms of harshness, ex-judicial killings. So, how do you bring a society from that to this, and how is it that in the new generation, the people just don't choose differently? How is it that they had an Islamic experiment? How is it that when they experimented, they couldn't go back? I think it was because of the censorship.

So, you could not even talk about an alternative to the government that Iran has. You could not even read about an alternative to the Iranian government. You could not express... you could not really criticize anyone in an actual position of power. You could not even talk about another way of life than the particular version of Islam that the government is advocating for.

So, people are born in Iran. Those who saw the days of the previous regime, of the monarchy, they were, they have memories of better days, but people who were born in Iran, they're born without even a sense that the world could be different. To them, the world was like this since day one, and that's how it just cemented itself. It's now almost 50 years since the revolution. Now we have people who are mowing down protesters on the street.

I thoroughly believe that if only it was allowed to talk about a different option for society, to argue for your own beliefs, to argue why what the government is doing is wrong, better people would have been swayed, and not reached a level where they could shoot protesters. They would have been saved earlier in their lives. I think the reason why this is why free speech is so important.

The reason why Iran was just cemented the way it is, because there was just criticism of the regime, criticism like even bringing change, which is simply impossible. Not only impossible in practice, but just even if you talk about it.

Nico Perrino: So, I think it's safe to say there really is no freedom of speech in Iran, if you can go to the streets and pay for it with your life.

Pouya Nikmand: Yeah. So, Nico, Iran is a country that since day one, didn't have freedom of speech. So, not only freedom of speech through writing, but even freedom of speech through your own clothes. It's like the way you clothe yourself, the style that you wear is a way of speaking your beliefs, your personality, and it was not acceptable to show your personality through your clothes.

Men have a little bit of more wiggle room than women, but women especially, they have to wear dark covering hijab, and they cannot express... you have no sense of anyone who believes what, who believes in Islam, who doesn't, who is a Muslim, who's a Christian. Everyone has to dress the same way, and there's a level of suppression of speech that is hard to fathom.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, when I was growing up, you could often tell who someone was by the stores they shopped in, in a shopping mall. The skaters would shop in Vans, for example, and you had goths who shopped in one store, preps who shopped at another store, maybe Abercrombie and Fitch. You could kind of tell something about someone and their identity by what they wore. But what you're saying in Iran is that wasn't a way to express oneself.

Pouya Nikmand: Yeah. For example, you cannot print anything and read it. Some people do it, but it's illegal. In order for you to have the right to read something, it needs to be first checked by the censors and get the permits by the Ministry of Guidance. They want to guide the society what to believe in, what to read, what to consume, and they have total control over the news, over the media, over the expressions of beliefs.

So, even if it’s your friends, you cannot talk about certain things. Someone might hear it, and they might just come one day and kidnap you. So, there's very few times that you will have a trial, whatever. It's most of the time that you just get kidnapped and tortured, and there's just no record of it anywhere.

Nico Perrino: What's it like to live in a society like that, where around any building or through any window, someone's making a deliberate attempt to watch you, so that if you contravene the laws of the land, you could be thrown in jail?

Pouya Nikmand: It feels lonely. It feels extremely lonely, because in that type of society, where it's very much touching on the issue of freedom of speech, you cannot say anything without fear of some sort of reprisal. So, again, because since the system is kind of this two-tiered system, there's government and judiciary, and then there's IRGC militia. Something that even judiciary finds okay, the IRGC doesn't find okay.

Quite literally anything that you might say could be used against you, and you could just disappear one day. When I was in Iran, so, I left Iran in 2017. The moment I turned 18, I left Iran. Iran has changed a lot since then. I will talk about it in a second. But in the Iran that I was in, ordinary people took part in that, as well.

So, it was not only the police, and people were begrudgingly going with it. For example, I had a girlfriend of mine just came to our neighborhood, just to see me, and then we were going to go to a coffee shop, which for that itself was a big issue, worrisome issue. What if morality police saw us together? They would ask us to produce proof of family relations. If there is no family relations, we're going to be lashed.

Nico Perrino: So I'm clear for our listeners, a man and a woman seen in public together, if they are not of the same family, could run afoul of the morality police and the morality laws.

Pouya Nikmand: Yes, and they do. We weren't caught by morality police. We were a couple of times caught, but this particular instance talking about, all of our neighbors were really happy. They were taking pictures of us, and they just spread the news. “Oh, do you know Pouya was talking to a girl? We don't know that girl.” So, it was kind of like a fun and games for people to kind of hunt. “I got you. You're not a good person. You're talked to a woman. You're un-Islamic.”

And so, there has been a lot of reports. This is my personal experience of someone who did not live in Tehran, and came from lower middle class in Iran, where the masses are. Majority of Iranians, when I was in Iran, supported the regime. Even if they wouldn't support the regime explicitly through their actions, basically they did the same thing that the morality police does.

But ever since they've withdrawn their participation, and since 2022, now walking without veil, without hijab on the streets of Iran is completely normalized, whereas the Iran that I got out of, it was unheard of that a woman would not wear a hijab. It was just unheard of. It was something that completely – a different universe.

But me and my friends were that way, and it felt like we were completely alone in a world of people who were bought into the regime. And ever since I left Iran, it seemed like more and more people who were like us spoke publicly, and they paid for it. They were punished for it. Some of them were killed for it. But society changed.

Nico Perrino: Before I drill down deeper into your story, I do want to ask, what was the change? So, you leave in 2017. You said by 2022, it had become somewhat normalized to not wear the hijab. What happened in those five years?

Pouya Nikmand: So, there was a movement against a compulsory hijab in Iran that started on Facebook in 2014, and it was pretty much an undercurrent for about eight years, until the one brave woman – her name is Vida Movahed – she removed her hijab publicly on a busy street in Tehran. Since then, after that, immediately the movement took off. And when a young Iranian girl named Mahsa Amini was killed in 2022 for not wearing a job properly, and in the eyes of the morality police. It was a seismic change that happened in Iran.

To just give you a sense of how seismic the change was, I haven't been back in Iran ever since, but I have friends. I have family there. They tell me that ever since, Iran feels much of a lighter place, much of a happier place. People are happier. People are now listening to music, whereas when I was back in Iran, listening to music, it was like a big deal that you had to hide.

To give you a sense of the sweeping change that happened in Iran, my own grandfather, I think he's 75 right now. When I remembered him, the grandfather that I remembered, he was staunchly supportive of regime. He was enforcing hijab laws by himself. So, if he saw a girl that didn't cover herself to his satisfaction, he would threaten to beat them on the street. So, he was not a good person. Last time I talked to him was two years ago.

My mom told a story about him that he is now going around his neighborhood defending girls who are being harassed for not wearing hijab from the people who are still wanting to harass them, saying that they have the right to whatever they want, to wear whatever they want. It's none of your business.

And when I talked to him on the phone, I said, “Congratulations. I'm so happy that you changed your mind.” And he said, “I never changed my mind. I was always like that. I was never supportive of the regime.” When society changes, people who used to be supportive of evil, they change their position and sometimes deny it.

But I'm still, either way, happy that Iran has changed seismically, a seismic change since I left Iran. And it is now a place that is ready for freedom, ready for democracy, for secularism, and for just healthy relations with the rest of the world.

Nico Perrino: Let's talk about your background now. You write in your Substack, Outliving Iran, “I was born into a poor, ultra-religious family in the slums of North Esfahan in Iran, one of the bleakest places in the world.” Tell us about your early life there.

Pouya Nikmand: My grandfather was a serf. Serfdom was abolished in Iran in 1960s. So, he and my parents, we were always called like we were a serf family, and we lived in the slum with other really poor people. It was where religious rule was absolutely enforced by everyone, and where there was also a lot of poverty. For example, we couldn't afford to eat meat, ever. We had soy instead. We didn't have a TV. Eventually, we got a TV, and that's how my life changed. But it was a really, really poor existence.

Nico Perrino: Did you have any siblings?

Pouya Nikmand: I have a 10-year-old brother.

Nico Perrino: And what was it like growing up with him?

Pouya Nikmand: I was 14 when he was born, so, I raised him until I left Iran. This is a part of my life that is a part of my soul, that has left a hole in my soul that never has revealed itself, because when you raise a child for four years, you bond with them; and I had to leave Iran, because I knew I couldn't survive in Iran anymore, and I had to leave him behind, and I haven't seen him for eight years. I don't want to really think of it. I could start crying already.

But yeah, there are lots of problems in Iran. He is in need of medical help. There are no doctors in Iran that could help him. So, it happened three years ago, when he called, during the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022. He called me and he said he had seen a girl got shot in the head and die in front of our house, and he saw that through the window.

And now, when he's going to school, there's blood everywhere on the street. And I didn't talk to him, but some of the videos of where I live... I just cannot imagine what that would do to a 10-year-old child.

Nico Perrino: What was school like?

Pouya Nikmand: School is, in Iran – at least the schools that I attended – they're modeled after a military camp. So, we have to make military formations, and the rules are applied really strictly, for example. We cannot read any other material other than the approved books, but that's not really about our school in Iran.

We do not have the rights to read whatever we want. Anything printed is illegal until it gets a permit by the guidance ministry. The sensors have to go through it and make sure it's Islamic enough; it's not going to corrupt your soul. I just didn't find anything interesting in my textbooks. So, through the internet, I would print articles about science, about construction.

One of my articles I wrote about, the day that I took an article about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. And so, this is school, and I got into trouble for it very, very frequently. We were inquisitioned about our beliefs, and if our teachers didn't believe we were Muslim, deep in our heart, they would expel us from the school, and I got so close to being expelled every time.

Nico Perrino: Is the internet censored in Iran?

Pouya Nikmand: Yes.

Nico Perrino: It is? But you were still able to access things about the West, that exposed you to the West. I remember it was maybe over a decade ago that I read a book called Reading Lolita in Tehran, I don't know if you've ever read that book, but it was about some of the secret groups where people would read these Western texts that were prohibited from being read, at least officially, in Iran, and that always stuck with me.

The lengths that people would go, and the risks that people would take, to have the freedom to read whatever they want. In the West, we almost take it for granted that you can read whatever you want, but there are some societies where you can't. You write in your Substack that you loved and knew everything about America. What was it about America that drew you to it?

Pouya Nikmand: The first footage of America that I saw in my life was in a CD that had videos of – it was from ‘90s, the English as a second language teaching books, and it was made to teach you how to order at a restaurant. So, I was learning English when I was 10. Sorry, when I 10, this is around when I was 12. It was a picture of New York, in New York City. They would go to restaurant, and I still remember two guys.

One would order a hamburger, the other would order carrot juice, and they ate half of the hamburger, drank half of the carrot juice, and they were like, “Bills, please,” and they paid, and left. And that was a moment where I was like, “Wait, they are leaving their food behind?” We were so poor that I couldn't get the concept of us... you’re so rich, and there's so much prosperity that you can just leave food behind; don't even worry about it.

It's not only whether you can afford food tomorrow or not, which is a real problem, even for rich people in Iran. But how do you know there are going to be carrots in the market, in a month from now, in a week from now? So, we had a second freezer where we just froze all kinds of things, because you don't know when the food's going to run out. So, that was the first interaction that I had, but everything really about my fascination with the world outside Iran started.

When I was 10, I bought a bootleg CD. It was the latest Pixar movie. It was Ratatouille. It was the first, first cartoon that I watched, and it was the first foreign movie that I watched; and it completely blew me away, and to this day, I can attribute everything that I am to that movie, the fact that I'm here sitting with you, to that movie. That movie completely shaped who I am. Violence and then theft and everything was really, really common in the slum that I lived in.

Nico Perrino: Violence and stuff.

Pouya Nikmand: Yeah, and I it was just something that everyone did and kids did too. So, I did, too. I stole, I stole from my classmates whenever I could. I stole from the shops to sneak something out with me, and didn't see anything particularly bad about it. But in the movie... so, the movie is about a rat who ends up becoming a chef in Paris. The rat has this conscience, in the form of Chef Gusteau, that says, “Remy, what are you doing? You're not a thief. You're a chef. A thief takes. A chef makes.” I started thinking in... wait, yeah, the entire problem is rats versus human. Rats just not only live poor and filthy, but they just only take things, and consume things. But humans, the movie says, I know I'm supposed to hate humans, but there's something about them. They don't just eat food. They create things. Just look at what they do with food. There's just something deeper to them. And that was a kind of perfect analogy between the life that I was living in Iran, and the life that free people live in the West.

Nico Perrino: And Remy, if I'm remembering the movie correctly, he wants to escape to Paris, which is the homeland of culinary excellence; and I believe that Chef Cousteau had a restaurant in Paris. In some ways, that's also comparable to you. You were in Iran, and you wanted to escape to somewhere else. Remy, of course, succeeds in escaping, and becoming what he wants to become. When did you ever first get the sense that you might be able to escape Iran?

Pouya Nikmand: I always thought that. After watching that movie, when I was 11, I asked my mom, “So, if there's such a place as Paris, why isn't everyone living in Paris?” So, I just couldn't imagine. They're just so much better than us. Why aren't we just all moving there? And in due time, I just learned that there are immigration laws, and it's extremely difficult to immigrate.

But I always grew up with the conviction that there was just nothing really that much different between me as an Iranian person, than to someone in Silicon Valley, or someone in Paris. It's just I happen to be spawned here in this country, and they spawned in a better place; and it's just a matter of time before I joined them.

But everyone around me, my parents, but even the better people in Iran, there was a sense of, “Well, it's freedom, enjoyment of life, money, just some most basic rights that we take for granted, they're not made for us. They're made for the foreigners. So, they're made for the [inaudible] [00:31:03] they're more made for American. And we were kind of born in a caste. We’re permanently cut off from that.

They knew that people in the West were living a better life, including the people who were Islamists, including people who were contributing to the terrorism. They knew that the West was doing better, but they looked at it through what I call Islamic identity lens. I'm a Muslim. What does any of it have to do with me? Whether it's Silicon Valley, whether it's freedom, what does any of it have to do with me? I'm meant to institute an Islamic caliphate.

That's what I'm meant to do. Or maybe if they don't want to do that, I'm just meant to stay in Iran. But Ratatouille is the opposite of that. Everyone would say that rat doesn't belong in a kitchen. But eventually, even though he encountered lot of obstacles, eventually became a chef. So, I grew up always with this sense. I got what I got from the movie, that whatever obstacles, just figure it out.

Nico Perrino: But were you religious before seeing this movie? Did you view everything through that lens before reading Remy and Ratatouille?

Pouya Nikmand: I renounced religion pretty soon after watching the movie. So, I think the reason why most people are religious is that you need some kind of philosophy, some kind of story of what you're supposed to do with your life, to make sense of the world, and some kind of compass. That's why people gravitate towards religion, and need religion, but Ratatouille was my compass. Since the age of 10, nothing else really stuck. So, I just decided that I'm not a Muslim anymore at the of 12.

Nico Perrino: How did you get out?

Pouya Nikmand: So, navigating immigration laws are extremely difficult, and they are nothing short of impossible for people who are poor. So, you can Google the Green Card game, and you can see how difficult it is to just become eligible for a green card. But forget about that. Just for any country, just even getting a student visa, which is the easiest way out for a young person, requires at least $30,000.00 in your bank account when you apply.

Nico Perrino: And this is US dollars, even for an Iranian.

Pouya Nikmand: Yes.

Nico Perrino: So, that'd be a of money for an Iranian.

Pouya Nikmand: To give you a sense of... an average worker earns 10 cents an hour in Iran. So, you're supposed to have $30,000 in your bank account to get the visa, and we simply didn't have that. I thought of giving up, and I thought it's just simply impossible. What's the point of trying? But one of my friends, she gave me a pep talk, and she said, “You don't know that it's impossible until you try.”

So, I went ahead and I asked a bunch of people who had gotten visas recently which embassy is easiest for an Iranian to get a visa, and it just sounded like the South Korean embassy was the most lenient. The American visa is the ultimate, most difficult visa for anyone in the world to get, the most strict. Then, there comes the Europeans, and then on that list of strictness, South Korea came much later. So, I knew that I had the best chance to go to South Korea. So, I applied for a South Korean visa, not being eligible for it on paper.

And when I went to the embassy, I was anorexic, a little boy, 18-year-old boy who was desperate to get out of Iran. I was under life threats. I couldn't even eat that much. I was just doing terribly when I was in Iran. I showed up to the doors of the embassy, and they said, “What do you want?” and I said, “I'm here to apply for a visa.” And they said, “You're not eligible. You don't have the money. What do you want us to do?” They shut the door in front of me.

Then, I just stood there until they opened the door, and took my documents from me, and probably felt pity for me, because they looked at me through the window; and two weeks later, I got a visa. They were not supposed to give me that visa. And the reason why, the reason why they require $30,000 in your bank account before they give you a visa is that how immigration system works in just developed countries generally – so, it's very, very similar, similar to the United States, as well – is that you do not have the right to work.

So, if you are coming here, then you have to have enough money to support you for however many years you're staying here, because foreigners are not given the right to work. When I left and went to Seoul, South Korea, it was amazing. I loved the city, and I thought I was free, finally. And I learned that actually, I had only $500.00 in my pocket. I'm ready to go work, do whatever is necessary.

I actually learned that foreigners need something called a work permit, and I thought it was like a driver's license to just fill a form, and just show who you are, and then get the permit. But it turns out that is extremely difficult to get. That only applies to certain people, certain categories, and I was ineligible for it, and I was turned down. That's how it happened at 18, when I left Iran to seek freedom. I was now free, but I was starving.

Nico Perrino: What did you plan to do when you got to South Korea? You were on a student visa, you say. What did you want to study? What were your passions? It sounds like you were interested in creating things. You were looking at the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Were you interested in science and mathematics, and things of that nature?

Pouya Nikmand: I had a plethora of interests, but I was really awestruck. So, with regards to comfort and knowledge and morality, we here in the West are like fish in water. We don't understand how much material abundance, how much moral abundance, how much abundance of knowledge that we have, and how good we live compared to someone who was not born in an environment like this, inheriting all the benefits from the posterity. So, even the most obvious things to you, just as I used the example of the carrot juice, the most obvious things to you were really, really revolutionary and surprising for me.

So, I loved in particular – I still love the Silicon Valley, and all the innovation that happens there. I always found it really, really inspiring, and I always wanted to be the pioneer of a field. Human life, I think I learned from Ratatouille, and I believe now, that is about creation. Just like Remy wanted to create food, and don't want to steal, he wanted to make a better life, make a better world, add something to this world.

So, there's a scene in the movie where Remy's father, the rat, shows him all the dead rats that humans have killed, to deter him from going near humans. Remy says, “No, I don't believe you that this is the only thing that future has in store for us. We can bring change, and I want to create things. I want to be a chef,” and he walks away and goes back to the restaurant. That kind of gave me a feel of I want to be the first person from my family, from my background, who go to just any field.

My particular interest was chemistry – I still love chemistry a lot – and be a great chemist, the best that I can be, and just work in universities to push knowledge forward, or work in Silicon Valley to bring the next new technology. That element of people creating new things, bringing a better day, that only existed here.

Nico Perrino: So, you're in South Korea, and you don't have money. You got $500.00. You can't work. It's not like going to the DMV, as you say. You can't just get a work permit. It's hard. How do you survive?

Pouya Nikmand: I had to beg people on the streets for food. I was very poor before, but I experienced real, crushing poverty. I had poverty that you just genuinely do not have food to eat; don't know what to do when your stomach growls. And I couldn't just camp on the street and beg people for money, because police might see and deport me. So, I would just on the street, approach people and ask them, “Hey, I'm really hungry. Can you please buy me food?” And that's how I survived.

Nico Perrino: But you eventually leave South Korea. How does that happen?

Pouya Nikmand: So, I spent a couple of months through alms.

Nico Perrino: Through what?

Pouya Nikmand: Alms, basically asking people for food, and my visa was expiring. I got a few months long visa. It was just a student visa.

Nico Perrino: And what year was this?

Pouya Nikmand: This was in 2017. When you become so miserable that you have to approach people, I mostly approached tourists, because they were safer. They wouldn't call the police on me. My eyes were sunk in. I was thin, I looked absolutely miserable. And when you're weak like that, when you're in the depths of poverty and misery, you will become taken advantage of really quickly. It turned out... at the time,

I didn't know what was going on, but I realized later that there was a prostitution market, that people who were destitute, they were selling their own bodies. And people, for example, who were living in South Korea illegally from Southeast Asian countries, like Thailand, and there were people, tourists that would buy them. And it just happened that one of the people that I approached for food was the type of person who would buy young, sometimes underage boys.

So, he immediately said, “How much?” I thought he wants to give me money. How much? I realized that no, actually, at some point realized actually he wants to buy me. He pulled me closer to him. And this, we're talking about like almost a 50-year-old man. I was 18. He pulls me closer to him, just sticks his hand under my shirt. I was just frozen. I'm having a seizure. And I just run away from him, and he starts following me. And then, he sad, “Didn't you say you were hungry? Let's eat food.”

So, he takes me to a restaurant. I was really afraid of this guy, and he realizes, actually, this person is not a prostitute. He realizes, the 50-year-old man realizes that this person is not a prostitute, and I tell him – I don't know. I was just too naïve. I was just glad to be able to talk to a person. I tell him my life story, that I'm like an immigrant. I'm afraid of being deported back to Iran, because my visa's expiring. I don't know what to do. I'm hungry. And he offers to buy me. Not for the night; like says, “Okay, just come to Poland.”

Nico Perrino: And this is a Polish man?

Pouya Nikmand: So, he was a Polish businessman. Yes, he was a Polish businessman. And I said, “I need a visa.” He said, “I have connections in the government.” So, he was like a very, very powerful Polish businessman that had connections all over the government. I just accepted this offer.

I accepted this offer knowing that he was a bad person, but I thought, “What do I have to lose? I'm almost dying here,” and when I make it to Poland, the first thing I'm going to do is just I'm going to escape. I go to Germany, go to Netherlands, and seek asylum there. So, I have an asylum case, I'm gay, and I will be able to make it work; so, this person cannot touch me.

It turns out, when I arrived in Poland, in Europe, that the asylum laws are such that... Europe was back then going through a refugee crisis during 2018, and they had changed the laws, changed the rules, and basically seeking asylum for me was impossible, and I didn't know that. But the person who had trafficked me into Europe knew that. And I...

Nico Perrino: It’s okay. Take your time.

Pouya Nikmand: I feel like we didn't cover enough, yet, the reasons why I had to escape Iran, because it is like. We see the fact that they're mowing down protesters, how evil the regime is, but that is just cherry on top of the difficulties of living in Iran, how scary it is to live in Iran. Iran is where dreams go to die. Iran is where people are just fighting for survival. Everyone is fighting for survival. There is no security.

You cannot tell yourself, “Okay, I'm going to become a doctor,” and become a doctor. There is no way. There is no way. And so, that type of life was just so grueling, and so scary. Also, being gay in Iran is punishable by death. So, I was also afraid of that. But so, I basically looked at going back to Iran as like accepting death. I was not able to live in Iran. I'm still not able to.

So, I make it to Europe. The trafficker takes me to an apartment that he had rented. He says, “I got this apartment for you. You can live here.” Then, pretty soon, one day he comes. He is drunk, and he says, “I was a good host for you. You need now to be a good guest,” and he basically pushes me to the bedroom, and locks the door on me, and tells me that if I move, he'll have me deported.

We're talking about... I'm not going to reveal any names, because I don't want him in my life, but we're talking about like an Epstein-level corruption. It just happened that I was 18, so, it was technically... it was rape, so, it wasn't legal, but... yeah. So, he knew the situation that I was in, and he took advantage of that.

It goes on for a year and a half. And the moment that I'm able to go back to Iran, I get some sort of permit that allows me to travel after a year and a half. I go back to Iran. This is 2019, and I see my parents, and I see, first of all, my friends, how terribly they are doing. So, I had a group of friends that... when you're in an environment of complete censorship, you cannot... especially if it's a religious one, you cannot talk about your values, because it will be difficult.

Through a secret, online group on Telegram, I found there were a bunch of other young people my age who were into American music, and that was like a crazy thing, as if we were selling heroin online or something like that. We were always afraid, in hiding, and we came out to each other like, “Hey, do you also listen to American music?” “Yes, I love American music. Have you watched American music awards? Yes, we have.” And through that Telegram group, at the age of 14, I discover other like-minded people in Iran.

The feeling of utter loneliness in the environment of censorship just goes away. We bond together. So, particularly, it's me and a couple of my friends who are in Tehran. I would go there to visit them, and we called ourselves the Brooklyn Babies.

Nico Perrino: BBs?

Pouya Nikmand: Yeah, the Brooklyn Babies. And the reason for that was we just decided we just loved the American culture so much that we just wanted to live as if we were born in Brooklyn. Again, it's really difficult for someone who was born in a free country to understand what Brooklyn meant for us. Brooklyn is just like a normal city, a normal part of New York. So, they are the people who mean the most to me. They're like my own brothers and sisters. And it turns out that most of us were gay, as well. We find out, and we're supporting each other.

They perish one by one. Some of them commit suicide, and others could become so depressed that they're not themselves anymore. They environment, the day-to-day life of you waking up and you having the threats of death over your shoulders.

Every time you walk on the streets, you don't know whether someone's going to tap your shoulder and put you in a van, with obviously no charges brought, or whatever, and just suddenly you're in jail, and suddenly you're tortured; and a lot of them are raped, as well. So, it's that, and also the economic hardship of their life that just grinds you down.

I had that beloved group of friends, and I lost them, one by one. And when I went back to Iran in 2019, I saw how far they've gone. They've gone really close to depression. To this day, I have kind of survivor's guilt, that it just happened to be luck that I was able to escape and they weren't. You see the people who were able to emigrate here. You don't see the ones who died. And I'm one of the people who was supposed to die, but through some lucky coincidences... I also worked a lot for it, but I was able to come here.

Nico Perrino: Do you go back to Poland after you return to Iran?

Pouya Nikmand: I think about it a lot. Yes, I did. I thought about it a lot when I was in Iran. When I went back to Iran, I learned that my father actually was promoted in the economic foundation, like shady economic foundation that was part of actually IRGC. So, he was not a combatant; he was not a terrorist; he just was the CEO of a farm, the farms of the country. And he was promoted to CEO all of a sudden.

I don't know what he did, and we were now doing really well in Iran, suddenly. My father bought two homes. He had a car. And everyone just said, “Don't go back. You just get a job here. Your father can immediately give you a managerial job from the beginning,” because in Iran, how the system works is completely nepotism. You do not apply to a job. You get appointed to a job.

Nico Perrino: It's not merit-based.

Pouya Nikmand: It's not merit-based at all. So, everyone thought that I should stay. I thought a lot about it, because when I was in Europe – so, I was in Europe for five years – when I was in Europe, just the brutality of what happened to me... I was held as a slave, basically. I was beaten as a slave.

Later, when I came here, I started reading about American slavery. I started reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, my personal hero. And I realized, oh my god, so much of what they say actually resonated with me. Obviously, not to compare. That was a different time, and they went under more difficult hardships than I did. But there was complete and utter ownership and complete, utter impunity. Whatever he could do, he did.

And the 50-year-old man we're talking about, he was extremely rich and powerful. He had wives and kids, and he was closeted. So, he just imported a slave, and he was just using me as... anyway, so, I was beaten regularly. I was raped hundreds of times. It's just really, just too difficult to even speak about.

Nico Perrino: How do you escape it?

Pouya Nikmand: How I escape it is, so, when I'm there, I pursue education in Europe. So, when I graduate from university, I apply to a bunch of job opportunities, a bunch of other places, and it just happened that I got into the University of Texas at Austin as a researcher. So, this was after four years, and I was elated. I was like, “I'm leaving all this behind. I'm not going to be a slave anymore. I'm coming to America.” But this was during the Biden years, where the travel ban was lifted.

So, there was a ban from people from Muslim countries entering the United States, which we have now again. Trump reinstated it. I applied for a visa, and I was first time rejected for no reason. Second time, the visa officer lady said, “Everything looks good. Just come back in two weeks or something. We're going to have your visa ready.” They don't get back to me.

It takes a year before they get back to me, and I learned that they put me on a security screening, which is completely understandable. There are lots of bad people in Iran. You don't want a bad person to enter the country, but... I don't know why it took a year, because I left Iran the moment I turned 18. The moment I could, I left Iran, and I never had any ties to any terrorist group, or anything like that.

Nico Perrino: They might have seen that your father had a connection, albeit tenuous, to the IRGC.

Pouya Nikmand: Yeah. And so, during that time, before I apply, I'm like, “I don't need this person anymore. This person cannot do anything to me anymore,” so, I escape from that apartment. I'm really afraid that police is going to come to me, because he was a really powerful person. He could just bring charges against me, or do whatever. He didn't. And I had only a few weeks left of my visa, and because of the way he trafficked me, he arranged a student visa for me. It's just for it to be temporary. So, it has to be renewed every now and then, and that's how he kept his grip.

And I became undocumented in Europe, because I had to wait for the US embassy to make a decision. And it took a year, and I was undocumented. I've never been undocumented in the United States, thankfully, but I can tell you that being undocumented in the West is more difficult and more terrifying than being gay in Iran. When you don't know any footsteps, any footsteps that you hear, you don't know whether it's the immigration police that are going to come take you away or not.

At most, in Iran, if you're gay, just stay in your room, don't do anything, don't ever post anything, don't say anything, don't appear anywhere; you're going to be relatively safe. But as an undocumented person, you're never safe. At any point, they could barge in and take you away. You don't have any offense. It just functions completely different than even being charged with a crime, and you're just out.

And for me, deportation was basically tantamount to execution. So, just imagine being somewhere that at any point you could just be killed, and could be sent somewhere where they would kill you. It was a really dark time.

Nico Perrino: You arrive in Texas. What did that feel like?

Pouya Nikmand: It's amazing. I've ever since moved to Washington, D.C., where we are now.

Nico Perrino: And what year did you arrive in Texas?

Pouya Nikmand: I arrived there in December, 2022. So, there are lots of things about America that surprised me, and the first thing that was immediately... I had just never seen a diverse.... I had traveled around Europe, and I had seen places with diverse, different skin colors and people from different backgrounds, but the harmony that people with different skin colors had in the United States was unmatched to me. There was just no sense of caste or difference between... or at least comparatively so from everywhere else that I've seen, between people of different races, and that really just took me for a second to process that.

But the biggest shock that I experienced with America and American people is this. So, I've had a really difficult life, and I did not hide it. I told people, when I was in South Korea, when I was in Europe, what I was going through. And in Europe, they would say, “Oh, that sucks. That is life? What can be done. I'm sorry.”

In South Korea, they were like... for example, I told my teacher. I had a Korean teacher. And so, I told my teacher about that. My teacher was really, really affected. She started crying. She held my hand, hugged me; she wished there was something she could do for me, and then, that was it.

But in America... so, when I was undocumented in Europe, I got to talk to some Americans online, and the moment... they hadn't even heard my full story, that I was being abused, and then taken as a slave. The moment they heard that predicament, that I was in danger of being deported back to Iran, they were like, from an ocean away, “What can we do to help you? Do you need money?” They were immediately wanting to.

This is how I will put it. Everywhere else, people don't like injustice, it doesn't even occur to them that they could do something about it. They're given up. They accept injustice. But Americans, the thing that makes the Americans in my head, what I really resonate with, they don't take injustice easily. They want to do something about it. Americans, they have this really heightened sense of justice, and a sense that we could reach a solution. We could reach a better world. We could make people's lives better today, and that just doesn't exist from my experience anywhere else.

Nico Perrino: So, what do you make of the current moment, then? You had mentioned ICE in Minnesota, and we're having this clash in America right now over immigration. Do you still feel like America is that country, that when it sees injustice, it can't help but do something about it?

Pouya Nikmand: Nico, I am here as an immigrant. I have a green card, and I did everything legally, and I should be safe. I never broke any laws. I was always truthful. And I paid so much to come here. I paid with my blood. I went through the most horrific things, the most hopeless days. I had to keep myself alive for a percentage chance that I could come to the United States and live here.

Now that I'm here, there was an article published by Politico last month that's from whistleblowers, that the Trump administration is hatching a plan to deport two million people from Muslim-majority countries who entered under Biden. Legal or illegal, it doesn't matter. If you are from a Muslim majority country and you entered under Biden, you're deported. And they're working on it right now, as we speak. So, it means that ICE could just come and pick me up at any moment, and send me back to Iran to die.

Nico Perrino: As our listeners will know, FIRE is right now engaged in an effort to challenge the Trump administration's effort to deport non-citizens, green card holders, visa holders, for example, for expressing their beliefs. They've very clearly done so in a number of cases. I don't know how familiar you are with that, but if you are, why do you still feel like you must speak out? Why do you feel like you must sit here with me today, and tell your story?

Pouya Nikmand: The thing about being under duress, being under a complete and utter... just not having a basic sense of security, and being afraid of speaking up, is being afraid of... not having a sense of security makes you dumb. Literally, you usually wake up; you're happy; you have a lot of ideas; you have new ideas about your work, and you go to gym; your life is going on, and you have a happy relationship.

When you realize that you're under threat, and at any moment, it all could be taken away from you, the ideas go away. The happiness goes away. You slump down. You become depressed. It literally sinks you down, like an anchor. And that's how I've been feeling since early December, when I read that article that Trump administration is looking at the plan, and at any moment, they could execute the plan.

And I thought, okay, I need to go on hiding. I need to keep my head down, never talk about my story, just close my Substack, for this to go away. I decided that that is not the life. I paid so much to come here, Nico. I admired America for such a long time. It was a long time in my life. Basically, my life since I was 10.

To sit down, and to hide, and to not want to speak up against it means that I've accepted that America is not the idealized image that I had in my mind. It is to accept that America is not a good country, that Americans are not better than this, and to accept that the world is like Iran, like you can never escape it.

And I'd rather be deported back to Iran and die, and speak up, than live in fear for another three years, or how many other years are left. I want to live my life to the max. I want to squeeze life to this last bit of juice, and I am very much against being silent; and I've just decided that I'm not afraid anymore. If coming on this show means that I'm not more visible to ICE, or someone in the Trump administration who hates me for some reason, let that be it. There are enough good Americans out there that will be on my side.

Nico Perrino: Well, Pouya, it's an incredible story, both tragic and inspiring, and I hope our listeners will be inspired from this conversation to go check out your Substack. It's called Outliving Iran. We're going to put a link to it in the show notes. It's an ongoing writing project of yours that will continue to be updated. And so, I again urge people to check it out.

I am Nico Perino, and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my FIRE colleagues, including Bruce Jones, Ronald Baez, Jackson Fleagle, and Scott Rogers. This podcast is produced by Emily Beamen.

To learn more about So to Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or Substack page, both of which feature video versions of this conversation, and you can follow us on X by searching for the handle Free Speech Talk. Feedback can be sent to sotospeak@thefire.org. Again, that’s sotospeak@thefire.org, and if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify to help us attract new listeners to the show.

Until next time, thanks again, everyone, for listening. And the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE and the flame logo are registered trademarks of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

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Duration: 68 minutes