Minn Post
KAYSERI, Turkey — It’s a humid summer night in Kayseri. Several busloads of Iranians trundle through the dusk. Grandparents, toddlers, thirty-somethings and gangly teenage couples stand in the aisles, sit on laps. All are refugees.
The caravan stops in front a nondescript high-rise with a small disco on the ground floor. Tobacco water pipes coil in wait on the terrace as DJs set up inside.
Nasrin Sabokpa, a 26-year-old lesbian, is here with her mom and two gay friends. Sabokpa and her friends are several of the hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) refugees that have left Iran with help from an “underground railroad” spanning from Iran to Turkey and then across the globe, from Canada and the United States to Europe and Australia. For now, they’re registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ankara, and waiting. Waiting for the next move, the next life, a fresh start.
