Iranian, American and Russian in a taxi in London

by Alina Lotfullina (Russia)

I didn't expect to find United Kingdom

- You are two minutes late, sorry, we can't register you on the flight, it's closed… My train to Gatwick airport got a really long delay, if I only knew about this feature of London trains! Another challenging thing was that I had to leave during my 24 hours of transit as I haven’t got UK visa... Apparently the only chance to do that was to catch the flight from Heathrow. We are keeping in mind tricky late trains, so it could be possible to make it on time from Gatwick only by taxi... I was not the only one in that late train, another American woman agreed to join the ride with me because she was aiming the same flight to Los Angeles. Our taxi driver was from Iran. When we asked him when he moved to UK, we got the unique chance to listen to the story which was ready for a movie script. Shabz left Iran when he was 15 y.o. back in 2004. He had no money, he was under age and alone, so he first went to Turkey without documents by donkey!! It was dangerous to cross the border because they were shooting people who wanted to leave. Then after Turkey he took a bus to Russia where he ended up in a prostitute stash. Afterwards he went to Kazakhstan and then got back to Russia. From Russia he snuggled on a flight to Belgium (oh man, teach me how to snuggle on a flight, especially if you are late?). It was not safe to stay in Belgium so he moved to France. He was surviving there, grabbing drinks and food after other people left it. His final destination became UK where he came to police and told his story. They registered him as a refugee, placed him in the family and provided him with the documents. He became successful MMA fighter but after six years he got stabbed by the friends of the fighter whom he won. They broke his cord, stab his neck and guts, he survived by a miracle (he showed us all his scars). In the end of the day he became a taxi driver, now he is expecting a baby with his Caribbean girlfriend, which a scary thing for him. Oh, he still can't read and write. By the end of this ride I was so thankful to the Universe for everything in my life and missing a flight is not such a bad thing as it felt in the beginning... We made it on the flight to Los Angeles on time and another story has begun.