A Walk to Russia
Immigrant Teen Saida Sadat Wins Literary Award
Posted: Monday 28th September 2009 07:14
Saida Sadat was presented with a Young Writer’s Award at the annual Island Literary Award ceremony held at the Confederation Center of the Arts on September 19th, 2009. Her story A Walk to Russia is an autobiographical story of her family’s near-deportation and then escape from Kazakhstan to Russia six years ago.
Saida is a refugee from Afghanistan who is now happily living in Charlottetown with her parents and 4 siblings. In May of 2003 Saida, her father, her pregnant mother and siblings, then aged five to ten, had to make a daring escape to Russia in fear that they would be deported or imprisoned in Kazakhstan, like many people displaced by the war in Afghanistan who have been denied asylum in neighbouring countries.
They left in the middle of the night with minimal food, water and possessions and walked barefoot all night through the woods guided simply by their instincts. Since the border was patrolled by armed soldiers whose assignment was to arrest illegal immigrants, the family walked on top of a steep embankment out of sight. After her pregnant mother stumbled several times and eventually fell off the embankment they decided to move down to the less-hidden and easier to navigate path below. Her father was leading the way with his youngest child, too young to walk the distance by himself, hoisted on top of his shoulders. Saida and her sister were flanked by her mother and older brother keeping a watchful eye on either side. Saida recalls, “It was the most terrifying moment of my life, me and my older sister clung together for our lives.” At dawn, dishevelled and exhausted, the family arrived in a town in Russia where a police officer asked to see her father’s identification, which he did not have. Her younger brother, then only five, jumped on the police officer crying for his father to be released. Feeling bad for the courageous boy, the officer let him go with a warning. Later that day her mother sold her wedding ring so that they could pay for a place to stay for the night, a loaf of bread and some tea. Her father sold his cell phone which got him enough money to buy one ticket to Moscow, where there was a job waiting for him. Fearing that if he left his family behind, he may never see them again he risked taking the entire family on the train with only one ticket. By some miracle, the train attendant turned a blind eye and allowed the family to make it safely to Moscow on one ticket, where they stayed for four difficult years until being accepted to enter Canada as refugees.
