Farrin, whose name had to be changed for security reasons, has lived in hardship since her early childhood. Her mother was a drug addict and her father was a dealer. “He was either in prison or when he was at home, he took so much drugs that we were unable to speak with him,” Farrin remembered.
Her family became so addicted to heroin that they could no longer afford to keep their house and sent their youngest children to beg on the streets. In their drugged state, Farrin’s brother and father verbally abused her and, on two occasions, tried to sell her as a prostitute.
Farrin could not take it anymore. She worked in a clothing shop for infants, earning just $20 per month, before making enough to escape. “I took this money and ran away. I wanted to be anywhere else but with my own family. I also wanted [to commit] suicide.” But, three months later, she found herself back in her family’s home.
“[They found me] and they took my arms and they cried and I thought everything had changed. But, it didn’t take a long time, just one week later, that my brother started talking really bad things about me. The brother told me, ‘You’ve been gone three months away from home, and we don’t know with whom you slept.’ And I said, ‘It wasn’t like that, because… I am still a virgin.”
She ran away again to her aunt’s house, but only to find similar abuse and judgment. Late one night, with her cousin and cousin’s boyfriend, Farrin attempted another escape. Drifting off to sleep in the backseat of the vehicle, all Farrin remembers next was waking up in a hospitable bed. A terrible accident proved fatal to her cousin and the boyfriend, but Farrin had survived. Farrin’s family took her home and she was bedridden for two months. Physical abuse from her brother pursued and, once healthy enough to leave, Farrin escaped for the third time.
Without money, anywhere to go, and not having the ability to walk without crutches, Farrin did whatever she needed to survive, mainly begging for assistance from strangers. Among the first was a Persian man she met in the park. “The Persian guy took me to his home and there were two people, two guys from Afghanistan, and they took me and abused me. It was terrible. I cried and didn’t like it and asked them to stop, but they didn’t stop. After this situation, everywhere I liked to stay at night… they always asked if they were going to be able to use my body.”
Farrin decided that rather than selling her body for a place to sleep, she might as well earn some money. Farrin had become a prostitute. “When I started this, I couldn’t understand this life and it wasn’t the life that I wanted, but I couldn’t go back and I saw no light. Really, really old guys came; they were as old as my grandfather even. And, I was like all the time asking, ‘Why doesn’t the earth open up and eat them, or just take them away?’
“To be able to do what I was doing I started to drink alcohol. After awhile, alcohol didn’t give me rest, so I had to take hashish. After a while I started to take another drug, and so on. I fell from depression into more depression. I was really broken inside, because so many times, many guys started to abuse me and use my body. I started cutting myself. I had no strength or power to do something to the other people, so I took it out on myself. I was looking for something to give me peace, but nothing could give me this peace.”
Looked down upon and cursed, Farrin began making up stories to justify her circumstances and to get the love she craved. “I started to become a liar… I was hungry for love. When somebody told me that he loves me, I just thought that he loves me. I was so hungry for his love and he just touched me and gives me kind words. But, afterwards when he finished his work with my body, he just threw me off, like rubbish.”
Farrin eventually met a woman, who she later found out was a Christian. “She rented this small apartment and the rest of the money they used to buy some stuff that I needed. I was so happy because it was like, ‘It’s my own and I’m going to buy something for myself.’ After five years, it was the first night that there was nobody that used my body. So that problem with my body came to an end.”
However, other problems arose. A brace that was placed in Farrin’s leg that should have been removed after one year was still in her four years later. No longer able to walk, she went to the doctor who told her that she only had two months to remove it or she would be paralyzed. However, Farrin had no way to get the $10,000 needed for the operation. “Every time I went to somebody for help, they always had another idea to use me or abuse me in a bad way.”
The friend who had helped her with an apartment had also told her about Jesus and that only He “can change your life.” Farrin remembered seeing Christians pray during her childhood and decided to give it a try.
“People said that you can take my problems away and you can change my life,” she prayed. After, she went to church and felt, “all [her] problems go away like a mountain was taken away from [her] shoulders.”
The next day, however, worrying about the money, Farrin fell back into depression. “At that time, I didn’t know that it was the devil talking to me. The devil told me, ‘Kill yourself. You are a lonely person, nobody loves you, so kill yourself.’ I tried suicide several times, but Jesus – although I didn’t know that it was Jesus, but now I know – didn’t allow me to die.”
At midnight in the rain, Farrin cried out to God. “I have nowhere I can hide myself and no protection. I have no protection… Please do not allow them to cut my leg. If they cut my leg, what should I do? What am I going to do?”
“I was just crying and asking the Lord, ‘Help me.’ I cried a lot before Him and I just told him that He alone can protect me and I have no other refuge or place where I can hide myself.” Less than a week later, Farrin found out that the Christian friend was willing to pay for the operation and, after the surgery was over, sat beside Farrin at her bedside in the hospital.
The woman invited Farrin to church where a verse struck her core. “They read, ‘All you, that have so much burden and work so much come near to me.’ It was so amazing that God knows me.” But, not long after, afraid of getting too close to her new Christian friends, Farrin took off again and remained out of contact for more than a year. However, loneliness and the temptation to revert back to drug use set in. Miserable and without hope, she again sought the Lord’s help.
“I wanted to share my pain with somebody, but there wasn’t anybody. I just wanted to have someone that would take me in their arms and give me a hug, but there was nobody.
“I had the Bible so I started looking into the Psalms to find something that would give me a little bit comfort. I closed the book, but… it was like a magnet. I couldn’t put it away. I wanted it near me. My heart shook in a way. My knees broke and I fell on my knees, and I just cried and said, ‘Jesus, I feel so miserable, horrible, please come and help me, I’m alone. Please help me and bring me out of this situation and this emotion.’ I cried so much, I can’t tell you at what time I fell asleep.”
The next day, Farrin called her Christian friends to tell them what had happened. They had been deeply concerned about her the past year and were so glad to hear she was okay. While Farrin, for the first time, told her friends about her past, she felt a love that she had never experienced before.
“When I started telling them the stories of my real life… I was crying, but they cried more than me. [Everyone else judged me], but they were so loving, giving me their heart and taking me in their arms. I was wondering why they showed so much love.”
With the help of her friends, Farrin slowly started breaking her addictions and cutting off relationships with old boyfriends. Because of their love, Farrin had the strength to begin life anew. Farrin never again questioned the source of that love.
“When they told me that Jesus is God, I just believed this. I never said, ‘It isn’t like this,’ because He has a kindness, a love, something special that draws me close to Him.”
One night, in her loneliness, Farrin again prayed for comfort. “When my prayer finished, I came and prepared a sleeping place. I closed my eyes and fell into a sleep. Do you know who came and cared about me? It was Jesus. It wasn’t a dream because I felt so terrible and my body was hurting and every time when I woke up, I just saw that Jesus is beside me and He is sitting there and caring for me. Do you know what He told me? He told me, ‘You are never, never alone. You were never alone before.’ Do you know when God showed Himself to me? It was at that time when I thought that there was nobody that would care about me. At that time He came and showed Himself to me… He washed, in a way, all the circumstances [of] my childhood away, all the bad things that I experienced in my childhood. I never felt such a love.”
Farrin was never the same again. “A lot of people told me, ‘You are really a joyful, happy girl.’ And my answer to these people is, ‘For twenty-one years I cried. But from the day that I knew Jesus, He put His joy, His happiness, into my heart and still since the day that I met Him, there is no place to be sad.’”
Farrin soon began praying for a godly spouse and it wasn’t long before she met and married Rahim (not real name), a man who, like Farrin, went through tremendous hardship before knowing Jesus.
On September 4, 2010, while worshipping with friends at a house fellowship in Hamadan, Farrin, Rahim, and the others were arrested by Iran’s state security agents for their Christian activity. Farrin was separated from her husband and held in solitary confinement for 11 days.
“I was under such huge pressure that I thought I was sleeping or dreaming. After awhile when [the guards] left me for twenty minutes alone, I started crying and screaming to the Lord. I asked the Lord, ‘Why did you let them to do this with us? If you didn’t want it or didn’t allow it, they couldn’t do this with us.’ Suddenly, I heard the voice of God in my heart, and it reminded me of a prayer I had made, ‘Can’t you remember that you prayed, ‘If you see the strength in me, send me to prison?’ So, He told me, ‘I’m seeing the strength in you and now continue, go on.’” It took awhile for Farrin to see the same strength in herself but, although afraid, she remained faithful to the Lord.
Interrogators demanded that Farrin write down the names of the Christians she knew in return for her and her husband’s release. She took the pen and started to write, but again heard the Lord’s voice, “With whose hands are you going out of this prison? With mine or someone else’s?” Farrin remembered that without Christ, she had no freedom. Therefore, it became clear that she must wait on His timing for her release. A sudden strength swept over her. She told the guards she would not make the confession they wanted.
“What are you going to do? You’re going to kill me? Jesus had already told me in the Bible that to go after Him means there will be persecution.”
Farrin could hardly believe the words coming out of her mouth, but the Lord was giving her the strength He had promised.
When the peace of the Lord came over her, she grew more and more emboldened. About sixty women heard Farrin’s testimony while in prison. One of them gave their life to Jesus.
A guard overheard and was amazed, saying, “God loves you so much.”
“This love of God is also for you,” Farrin responded.
The threats continued. “Everybody told me, ‘Because you’re from an Islamic background and you moved away, they will kill you.’ [But], the words from the Bible came up and I just brought the Scriptures before the Lord, and I also mentioned, ‘God, in your Word it’s written, where two or three people come together and ask you something,’ I know that people are praying for me… there weren’t just two, three, four, or six people, there were more. I just know that all over the world there were people coming together to bring their hearts before God and asking before God to let us go.”
Throughout her entire imprisonment, where inmates are routinely abused, tortured, and raped, no one laid a hand on Farrin. Farrin and Rahim spent eight months in prison. Though being advised to leave the country after their release for their own safety, Farrin and Rahim continue their ministry today among Iranians living abroad. Through it all, Farrin continues to praise God.
“It was the strength of Jesus that brought me forward. And I just want to pronounce and profess that all glory belongs to Him. He didn’t allow me to fall… or to tremble in my faith.”
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