The taxi driver pulled away from the airport going towards
our hotel. We had just landed at the airport in Warsaw, Poland. I looked behind
and told one of my colleagues, “I love Poland!” She laughed out loud, wondering
how I could express love for a place which I had barely spent an hour in!!! That
was my first of two trips to Poland, where I served as a trainer with the
United States Institute of Peace (USIP). I wondered why I showed such a level
of enthusiasm for Poland!
After I came back from Warsaw I decided to revisit all I
knew about Poland, which was limited to my knowledge of the great Polish
football teams of the 70s and 80s, and the players Lato and Boniek and Hitler’s
invasion of Poland in 1939 and its bitter aftermath. But as I read more, I
learnt about a part of Polish history that I had been part of and never
realized it. For that I had to go back to the city of my birth, Ahvaz, located
in southwest Iran…
When I was a kid growing up in Ahvaz, we used to frequently
visit my dad’s cousin, Sultan Khanum, whose son, Mehrdad was one of my best
friends. I enjoyed visiting them, mainly because I could play with Mehrdad and
eat Sultan Khanum’s tah-dig (it’s a crunchy/burnt part of rice, found at the
bottom of the pot, loved by most Iranians), which was unhealthy, oily and
absolutely delicious!!! The neighborhood they lived in was called Camp Polo.
Polo in farsi means Rice, so I always thought that the area was called Polo
because Sultan Khanum lived there and made her delicious rice. No one seemed to
know why the area was called Camp Polo.
The mystery of why the area was called Camp Polo was solved
when I decided to learn about Polish history. Camp Polo was the short form for
Camp Polonia!! It had nothing to do with Sultan Khanum’s rice making skills, or
anything related to tahdig! Camp Polo, was an area where hundreds of Polish
women and children were brought in and given refuge during World War II. They
were part of the Polish population that had escaped Hitler’s invasion and then
enslaved by Stalin. After Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union, these
Polish prisoners were freed and made their way to Iran. They had escaped
Hitler, lost their belongings and their nation, put in prison and enslaved by Stalin.
Their condition was desperate, and miserable. Millions died, before and after
being freed. They felt abandoned, lost and hopeless, and finally in the middle
of this darkness, they found respite and hope in the most unlikely of places, Iran.
The people of Iran, themselves, void of resources and caught in the upheaval of
local and global conflict, embraced the Polish refugees, men, women and
children and gave them something that they had not seen for years, Humanity!
In a time when camps were being set up all over Europe to
exterminate humanity, in this ancient land of Iran, camps were set up to revive
it. Camp Polonia in Ahvaz was one of them. Within months, those who survived
the arduous journey, were once again allowed to be humans, their bodies and
souls reborn.
To this day Camp Polo triggers within me wonderful memories of my hometown, great rice, tahdig and my childhood friend. But now, it also reminds me that, in one of the darkest time in human history, this simple neighborhood in Ahvaz became a place of hope for a people wronged by history.
No comments:
Post a Comment