I Will Not Return

The novel I Will Not Return, published in Turkey by Mevlana Publications in February 2025, portrays the suffering and difficult lives of refugees in the country.

I wrote the following on the back cover of my novel I Will Not Return:

This book is the story of the diaspora, a story of dispersion and displacement. It is a sorrowful tale of roots torn from their native soil and carried aimlessly by the wind…

Diaspora is the name given to the pain of exile. It is the story of a tree that stretches its branches across distant lands while forever carrying the soil of its birthplace in its heart. Diaspora means that the geography of the human soul cannot be confined within the official borders of the world.

They are the bearers of a history hidden inside their small suitcases; the bearers of tears that flow in their mother tongues and smiles that find expression in thousands of different languages and dialects.

This novel tells the story of an Afghan man who sets out on the road with his wife and two young children in the hope of finding a more peaceful life, unaware that this journey will not be the beginning of peace, but an entry into a vortex of uncertainty and displacement. When their residency in Iran is revoked, he is faced with a terrifying choice and is forced to leave for Turkey—a place that is neither a beginning nor an end, but a merciless limbo between hope and despair.

In the deadly maze of exile, he struggles to save his children, only to be struck by a truth more bitter than all the wounds he has endured: a refugee has no home anywhere in the world.

This book is not merely the story of migration; it also reflects Afghanistan’s wounded history, the Iranian people’s protest movement in 2009, a brief look at the Pahlavi era, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rights denied to women in Iran, and the helplessness of asylum seekers trapped in the grip of the bureaucracy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Turkey.

It also portrays the unending pain of asylum seekers caught in the game of politics and the sweeping changes introduced by Turkey’s Directorate General of Migration Management in 2018. Finally, it recounts how an order to open the Greek border sent the lives of thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers into a storm of death.

A gripping, harrowing, and merciless story that gives voice to the bitter truth endured by thousands of displaced people.

Is there hope at the end of this journey? Can one escape their fate? You will find the answers in this book.