Arzhang Pezhman's London theatre play Ostan: On asylum seeking, profit over people and complicated Kurdishness

It’s a play that has been years in the making, but whose performance has arguably never been more pertinent.

British-Iranian writer Arzhang Pezhman began writing Ostan, a Farsi word meaning province or state, almost a decade ago, a seed sown in his mind when he read the story of the Iraqi immigrant owner of a car wash in Yorkshire who paid drivers to smuggle other immigrants into the UK.

In the years since, mainstream British politics lurched right; rhetoric around migrants and refugees became even more dehumanising, and “solutions” that might have seemed ludicrous only a decade ago (Rwanda deportation scheme, Bibby Stockholm) were conceived.

In this summer’s far-right riots, asylum seekers were a prime target, with hotels housing asylum seekers attacked and even torched.

In the meantime, the country’s asylum application backlog reached an all-time high last year, with more than 200,000 cases currently “in progress” – quadruple the number from ten years ago.

Those in desperate search of a better life continue to make the sometimes deadly journey across the Channel, with governments largely indifferent to such tragic loss and people smugglers keen to line their own pockets.

It is in this political reality that Pezhman takes us to an outdoor car wash on the outskirts of London and introduces us to Rebin (Ojan Genc), an Iraqi Kurd stuck in the UK immigration system for almost 10 years.

The car wash’s other Kurdish workers have come and gone, able to secure settled status in the UK or elsewhere, while Rebin is in purgatory, unable to work legally or return home due to fear of persecution. 

Rebin is at the end of his tether, his frustration made painfully palpable to the audience by Genc. His encounters with the Home Office have worn him down; he is left on hold, his surname is repeatedly mispronounced by its staff, and his government-appointed solicitor is leaving him hanging.

He cannot depend on his coping mechanisms either; the music he listens to at work cuts out due to the car wash’s hazardous wiring, and a faltering internet connection at home turns his online gaming experience into a pixel jumble the audience sees on screens above the stage.

He is ready to burst during conversations with new worker Gorkan (Serkan Avlik), a Turkish-Kurdish teenager who has just arrived in the UK.

Where the audience might expect kinship between two young Kurds whose future is at the mercy of the British state, there is almost immediate confrontation when Rebin is ticked off by Gorkan’s emphatic affirmations of his Kurdishness and his bold claim that he is the grandson of Abdullah Ocalan, a founding member of the guerilla Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

An all-out fight is only prevented thanks to mediation from Destan (played by Mohsen Ghaffari), a middle-aged Iranian Kurd who oversees the car wash’s day-to-day operations.

It is Kurds who keep this car wash going, but a Persian man who owns it.

Its floor is ridden with holes and it is in desperate need of new frontage, not to mention the potentially lethal wiring.

But instead of making the premises safe and presentable, Shapur (Dana Haqjoo) is concerned only with the pursuit of profit, setting his sights on a far more lucrative operation – paying drivers of cars and commercial vehicles alike to smuggle migrants and refugees into the UK.

Feigning concern for those who make the perilous boat journeys, Shapur says car boots are much safer than boats – and he’ll be able to put those who make it to the UK to work at one of the many car washes he owns.

Through the tension and disunity between Destan, Gorkan and Rebin, Pezhman sensitively depicts the complicated interactions that members of a uniquely fragmented population like the Kurds have.

Split across four countries for more than a century, distinct political and social movements have been created as a result of and in response to the oppression they have experienced in different states, and particular wounds and insecurities around Kurdish identity have formed.

Gorkan and Rebin contest each other’s Kurdishness; Rebin insists on an Iraqi Kurdish identity, to Gorkan’s revulsion; Rebin tells Destan that his working relationship with Shapur makes him “more Iranian than Kurdish”.

Shapur, who behind the scenes calls Kurds dirty-handed “mongrels”, is all too aware of these schisms, and can exploit them for his own gain.

In further representation of this fragmented identity, Pezhman weaves multiple languages into the dialogue, with Arabic, English, Farsi, and the Kurmanji and Sorani dialects of Kurdish all heard in the play’s 90-minute span.

Gorkan and Rebin in particular are given impressive depth and character, all the more needed in a political climate where asylum seekers are so dehumanised.

Gorkan has a puppy-like boundlessness that Avlik performs touchingly. He is deeply curious about the world; he blasts French hip-hop out of the car wash’s speakers, and his knowledge of world history belies his years.

He tries hard to carve out a clear ethnic and familial narrative for himself (what better way to do that than to claim Ocalan, a godfather of sorts to the Kurdish liberation struggle, as a member of your family?) and is learning how to articulate himself through poetry and rap.

Rebin’s disdain for Gorkan’s pride in his Kurdish identity is due partly to being worn down by the asylum process, yes, but as the play unfolds, we learn he is also desperate to escape his own family history, particularly his parents’ collaboration with the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein – a collaboration that Kurds from any part of Kurdistan would consider treachery.

Brief moments of detente between the two, like their successful sabotaging of a rival car wash or the vulnerable moment they share after Rebin opens up about the violent revenge attacks his family faced after the fall of Saddam, are rare and soothing.

As things take a turn for the worse for Rebin at play’s end, Pezhman seems to ask us: how are we apportioning blame?

As with the “small boat” smugglers whose mugshots accompany national headlines, it is easy for the audience to place blame on the treatment of asylum seekers like Rebin on Shapur (who Hajpour renders appropriately loathsome).

Just like the people smugglers who have profited from the desperation of people seeking asylum, Shapur, himself once in need of safe passage, is willing to put the lives of others at grave risk in pursuit of profit.

It might take us a little longer, or a little more thought, to attach blame for the ill fate of Rebin and other asylum seekers to the state and its policies; Shapur is no doubt a villain, but what of the decision-makers that hold the longer-term fate of asylum seekers in their hands?

Ostan is running at Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, London until 12 October.

Bilingual captioned performances (English and Sorani, English and Kurmanji, English and Farsi) will run from 10-12 October.

Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab

Follow her on X: @shahlasomar