Asylum III

This is the third part in a series of posts about a friend of mine seeking religious asylum in the West. Part I is here. Part II is here.

Again, time passed so slowly in the cold detention hall. My heart was breaking as I watched my wife shiver from the cold. I prayed, “Lord, we are in need of your touch. We need a miracle of yours. Please make it easy on my wife.” I can’t remember the moment I fell asleep in my chair. I only remember my wife waking me up saying, “…I was flying in such a peaceful and warm dream! It was a wonderful dream. The Lord was telling me that we will get out today. You’ll see. We’ll got today. God is telling me so.” We didn’t see the woman again that night. As I thought about that woman and the coming interview, I figured it meant that God was going to send us a miracle.

At 9 am, the woman appeared again holding two files. Officer B, the friendly officer from the day before, was with her. He opened the door, looked into the hall and when he saw us, he said “Once I saw your names, I was shocked! I really can’t understand why you are still here, but I’m going to find out now!”

After ten minutes, a new woman came and called my wife. They were done for almost an hour. When the door finally opened again, I saw my wife looking refreshed and hold a sandwich. It turned out that the tough woman who went to “look for a translator” the night before didn’t meet with my wife. Instead, a nice and sweet lady did the interview. Why? For no other reason than the plans of our faithful and gentle Lord. There were times when the new lady was tough with my wife, but she told her “I am sorry but this is my job.”

Officer B. came again and said, “Guys, I am really sorry what happened. Ever since I came today I’ve been working hard on getting you out of here. Just give us some more time.” I think, my wife and I, will remember those words till we die. This time we couldn’t hold back our tears of happiness. We closed our eyes and prayed for him to stay in our story. Then he took us to another hall, gave us temporary ID’s, and explained to us what will happen once we left from there.

He said. “Some one will come to pick you up at 5pm. You’ll go into the city, have a good sleep and tomorrow you’ll be moved north will you’ll learn more details. You should wait in the detention hall until the someone comes to get you, but I feel so bad about your spending the night here last night that I’m letting you go now if you promise to be at the assembly point on time.”

B. took us to collect our bags, and at the gate of the holding area he said to the security guards, “Say bye to these nice people!” Everybody said bye! It was really funny and made us laugh. Then he told the guards to keep the woman who interviewed me posted.

We followed him to the arrival area.Huge emotions were storming in our hearts. We were thankful to God, happy and anxious for the chance to witness for our almighty Lord regarding what had happened to us.

At the arrival area, B. said, “This is as far as I can go with you. I wish you all the luck in the world!” As he walked away smiling he say “Make sure that you’re at the assembly point at 5pm! Don’t let me down!”

My wife and I stood there looking at each other wondering if it had all been a dream. We started walking around the airport just to be sure that we were really out. We found a corner, sat down and prayed. All I could say was, “Thank you Lord!” over and over again.

At 4pm, we were standing at the assembly area, and at 4:15 two guys came and told us, “Let’s go!” We walked with them, and very nice and gentle guy took us to a van, which took us out of the airport.It took almost one hour to reach an amazing, old church that had been turned into a huge house for refugees. In this place we had another touch from our faithful and gentle Lord that I will tell you about in my next email.

Asylum I

This is the first in a series of posts about a friend of mine. I met him here in the host country early in his conversion from the dominant religion of the region to Christianity. He’s since fled the country with his wife.

The following is adapted from an e-mail. I’ve omitted information which might compromise their safety and I’ve cleaned up the English for readability. For the sake of the narrative, I’ve preserved his voice. This is a true story.

The flight was delayed three hours. Those three hours were so long, so heavy and tough. We were so tired and sleepy, and still affected by the stress we were under until we could leave in peace. All we did was pray and pray. We were both so worried but we didn’t show each other how we really felt. Honestly, I thought that things would not go well but we had no other choice. As I took a nap in my chair, the sound of my wife crying woke me up. She was shaking. I tried to be strong. I hugged her saying “Don’t worry.” We prayed again. I was praying in my heart to my Savior:“Lord, you have been with since I was a Muslim. You brought A. into my path to teach me the faith. You were with me when my family was angry with me. You were with me when I lived on the streets in a foreign country. You used me to bring my wife into your kingdom. You were with us in an amazing way last month. Please, help us now. Your children need you.” I didn’t yet feel that things would be fine, but believe me, I felt like the Lord told me that there was a lesson in this  experience that we both needed to learn. As we boarded the plane, the security guard asked to check our passports and visas. I wondered if he could see how anxious we were.

The flight was almost seven hours long. We couldn’t eat anything during the flight. I kept praying. My wife read the Bible. I could sleep only for an hour at a time. She was awake the whole flight. We didn’t talk to each other even though I hugged her closely. Yes we were scared, so scared, when we should have trusted the Lord’s promises in our life. When we finally landed in our new host country, I said in my heart, “Lord, could this trip have been any longer?”

We went out of the plane hand in hand, afraid of what might happen. We walked with everybody to passport control, where we waited in the line with almost one hundred other passengers. Fifteen minutes later, we moved to the counter to have our passports stamped. When we reached the lady at the counter, I opened the two passports, and told her, “We want to apply for asylum!” The lady looked at us both and said, “Oh God, what a day! Ok don’t worry, come with me.” She picked up two small forms and took us to a separate place in the passport control area. She left and five minutes later returned holding what appeared to be two files. An officer was with her. Holding up my passport, he came to me and asked “Is this your document?” I said that it was. The woman looked at my wife and asked “Who is she?” I told her. She signed the two forms and then disappeared with the officer for a while. We were treated so rudely by the woman and the officer that my wife started crying silently. I wanted to cry too.

to be continued…