SOROUSH Sadeghzadeh came to the UK 12 years ago as an asylum-seeker fleeing religious persecution in his native country, Iran. He now lives in Teesside, where he manages the Middlesbrough Foodbank, and considers the town home.

I’d been married for less than three weeks when my father took me aside and said that it was no longer safe for me to stay in Iran. At 18 years old I had already suffered years of persecution because of my Christian faith.

As a teenager I was arrested many times, harshly interrogated and tortured. Each time I was arrested my father spoke to officials on my behalf and bailed me out, but the day he came to tell me to leave, we’d separately received warnings that next time would be different.

We both knew these threats were serious and what the consequences would be if I stayed. When we spoke, my father had already made travel arrangements for my wife, Mahvash, and me to leave the country, and the next day we boarded a plane, knowing we might never return.

While waiting for our case for asylum to be heard, we were dispersed to Middlesbrough, where we were given a flat and a weekly allowance to live on. Next door lived another family who had also come to the UK seeking asylum.

We were safe, but at the same time life felt very strange. In Iran we’d grown used to being followed and having every telephone conversation monitored.

Here nobody was following us and we didn’t need to worry about how we might make a private telephone call. We could walk into a church and pray whenever we wanted.

Sometimes I’d look around at other people in the church and wonder if they realised just what wonderful freedoms they had; if they were aware of the risks people take in some other parts of the world to be able to come together to pray and worship God.

Although grateful to be safe, we felt somewhat useless and hoped that we might find a church where we could settle and contribute. One day Mahvash mentioned this to a man she met while in Middlesbrough town centre.

Although she didn’t know it before they spoke, the man was one of the leaders of Jubilee Church Teesside. He invited us to go along and on the following Sunday someone from the church picked us up at our house and drove us to the service.

I remember thinking how comfortable it was.

In Iran sometimes we would walk miles into the mountains to worship, because in the winter we knew that no one would want to follow us there – it was too cold.

The welcome we received made us feel as though we were already part of the church. For the first time since arriving in the UK, I felt like we belonged, as if we had found a family who cared for us.

Being away from our families and not having that support was difficult. It was clear that we were very different to most of the people around us. We looked different and we spoke differently.

I remember being on a bus on the way to Middlesbrough town centre when my phone rang – it was my family calling from Iran. I answered and naturally started speaking in my native tongue, but almost as soon as I spoke I became aware of people turning to look at me.

For some people our difference must have seemed threatening because we hadn’t been in our new home long when someone threw a brick through the window. Sadly, this incident wasn’t a one-off. Once we had been granted asylum and were allowed to work we bought a car, but almost as soon as we brought it home, it was smashed.

This vandalism didn’t happen to everyone in the street, so we wanted to find out the reasons behind it. Why us? Was it that particular people didn’t like us, because if it was we didn’t know who it could be or who we could have offended?

We had made good friends with many people in the area where we lived and most of our neighbours were very friendly towards us. When we asked why this was happening, our friends said it might be because we are different. They helped us to get the police involved, who explained that it was nothing personal or anything we’d done. These were crimes of racial hatred and we’d been targeted for no other reason than we were different.

Through Jubilee Church we were introduced to the charity Open Door North East, a Christian charity serving asylum seekers and refugees in the Tees Valley region.

When we told them what was happening they tried to give us some support in how to deal with it, but as the harassment escalated it was clear that we needed to move away from the situation, so they helped us to find another house in a different part of Teesside. The emotional as well as the practical support we got from Open Door meant a lot to us at that time.

My work at Middlesbrough Food Bank is similar to the work I did at Open Door in that it’s the kind of job where you need to be fully committed with your heart to be able to give it the best you can. It is a big operation.

Each week we put together about 100 emergency food parcels, which are then distributed across the town via churches and other organisations that rely on the charity to offer support to people in crisis.

I am now 32 years old and have lived in the UK for 12 years. I pray that one day I will be able to visit Iran because it is where I grew up and all my childhood memories are there. At the same time, it is difficult to call it home because Teesside is our home now and even the thought of moving away from here brings tears to my eyes.

For us, Teesside is our home because God has made it home to us.

If we’d had a choice at the beginning, we probably wouldn’t have chosen to live here; now we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, and that is because of the church and people. They have welcomed and loved us despite our differences.

  • Extract reproduced with permission from John Sentamu’s Agape Love Stories (Darton, Longman and Todd, £9.99)