I count my blessings every time I am around my parents and family. They accept me for who I am and my sexuality is not an issue at all. Having a family that loves you for you is all I have known. So when I hear of stories like Danial's, it makes all the petty little things just disappear.
Here's Danial's story as covered by BuzzFeed.com
DENIZLI, Turkey — There was only one way Danial could think of to get out of Iran: He would have to sell his kidney.
He got the idea from fliers offering cash for organs, which he had seen pasted to walls in the northern Tehran neighborhood of Tajrish. Danial had vague memories of them tacked near the bus stop where he’d get off to go to his painting classes. Those classes were how he kept his dream of becoming an artist alive, despite the fact that he’d never been allowed to go to school.
His situation felt hopeless. His mother had confronted him about being gay one December morning in 2013. By noon he had fled the family home, taking nothing but the clothes on his back and 50,000 rials — about $2 — in his pocket. His boyfriend lived in the city of Isfahan six hours to the south, but it wouldn’t be safe for them to stay together even if he could afford a bus ticket. Danial had a job at a glass factory in southern Tehran — he still has scars on his emaciated body from where the furnaces burned him — but it didn’t pay enough for him to rent an apartment on his own, let alone escape across the border into Turkey.
“I had no way forward, no way backwards — I just wanted to escape from that place,” Danial said.
For most Iranians, getting to Turkey would be as simple as buying a plane ticket, which can cost less than $200; a few hundred LGBT Iranians make this trip every year because it’s an easy jumping-off point to a new life in the West. Iranian passport holders don’t need a visa to enter Turkey, and the United Nations fast-tracks LGBT refugees for resettlement because it considers them especially vulnerable.
But Danial couldn’t get an Iranian passport. He was the son of an Afghan, one of the estimated 3 million who have come to Iran since the 1980s, fleeing decades of war and looking for work. The Iranian government wants them out; it generally doesn’t grant their children citizenship and deliberately makes it hard for them to access basic services — that’s why Danial hadn’t gone to school. Without documents, Danial could only get to Turkey by hiring smugglers to sneak him across the border, which would cost a seemingly impossible amount: around $1,000.
Selling his kidney turned out to be harder than Danial had hoped. He initially marched into a government-run clinic on Valiasr Street in the heart of Tehran and announced he wanted to sell his kidney, but they wouldn’t even let him past the front door because he had no ID to prove he was an adult.
Then he got a break, of sorts. A man followed him out of the clinic and introduced himself as the uncle of an 8-year-old boy who needed a kidney transplant. They had a short conversation establishing that Danial had a compatible blood type, and the man offered him 50 million rials, about $1,700.
“I had no other options, so I accepted,” Danial said. – BuzzFeed.com
For more of Danial's story, go over to BuzzFeed.com . Does he make it to the West? To Turkey? Out of Turkey? What other struggles did he face? What does he think of the U.N.? And what is his opinion of how refugees are processed and treated?
Could you imagine doing any of this? Have you had to do anything like this?
Several times a week we at Instinct Magazine receive messages from our readers asking for help from all over the world. They ask us for assistance to get out of their countries, ask us to publish stories that we unfortunately cannot corroborate, they desire to have someone listen to their story or plight, and some messages ask us to help them end their lives. It's heart breaking and it's true. It's a horrific world out there.
We wish Danial and all the others seeking help, a better life, understanding, and love a quick and safe journey to happiness.
Thanks again BuzzFeed for helping tell Danial, who is one of 10's of thousands, share his story.
