Watch: Iranian ‘Cardiologist’ Would Rather Be Homeless In Mellieħa Than Live In Ħal Far Open Centre
Disillusioned by the conditions in the Ħal Far open centre, a 60-year-old Iranian man claiming to be a cardiologist has taken to living in the fields of Mellieħa as he awaits political asylum.
“I have been living in the countryside for a year and a month but no one has helped me out,” Jack Rad told a passer-by in a video sent to Lovin Malta.
“I have no benefits in Malta and I don’t know where I stand psychologically. I don’t have any clothes or money and I don’t know how to survive in this country.”
Jack told Lovin Malta that he graduated as a cardiologist from an Iranian university in 1985 but left the country for South America a few years later using a false passport.
He spent the next three decades living in several countries across South and Central America, including with Christian missionaries, where he said he worked as a doctor without ever getting paid a cent.
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“People in South America treat you very well and don’t look at your passport if you’re a doctor,” he said.
After decades on the continent, he decided to move to Australia to stay with a friend, catching a ship from Panama that was meant to take him Down Under via Norway. However, after stopping off at Norway, the ship moved southwards to Malta and dropped him off here.
“I was double-crossed,” he claimed
In Malta, Jack got in touch with AWAS, applied for political asylum and was sent to the Ħal Far open centre. He applied for asylum on religious grounds, warning he cannot go back to Iran because he will be killed for being a Catholic.
However, he felt uncomfortable at the open centre, warning that it was extremely cramped and many migrants would smoke, drink and take drugs.
Eventually, he was given a bed at a homeless shelter but again felt uncomfortable, seeing as the other homeless people were much younger and came from different cultures, and decided to live a vagabond life.
Jack's Mellieħa home
“I’ve been living by myself for the first year, in Nadur and other parts of Gozo and the L-Aħrax area of Mellieħa, always in the countryside because people complain in cities,” he said.
With very few possessions besides the clothes on his back and a tent donated to him by a stranger, Jack relies on the generosity of people, who donate him food and let him use their chargers to charge his phone.
“I never beg for food though. If they’re good people they will understand me and help me out, and I bless everyone who has given me food. I eat every few days… some Maltese people are very good.”
To keep clean, Jack makes use of a nearby hotel shower, pretending to be a tourist.
Besides that, Jack said he spends his day studying on his phone, running and praying.
Jack said he has spoken to the police, as well as a number of local councils, churches and government authorities, but with his refugee status still pending and few space at shelters, no solution has been found.
Until then, the Iranian national is content to live in his tent, relying on the generosity of strangers and praying to God that his situation will improve.
“Only your own mind can destroy you,” he said stoically.
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