A young boy fights discrimination to stay in school
Our arrival is well timed, he says, as he has just finished his home work. “It was Farsi and I have been working on it since I left school this afternoon,” he added. It is now 8:30 at night. Farsi is not Aref’s favourite subject. He prefers mathematics and says he wants to be a doctor. Aref has to work particularly hard at his lessons because he needs to catch up. This is because for over a year he was more or less excluded by his teachers. They made him sit at a desk on the edge of the class and he was never spoken to or included in any activity. What was Aref’s misdemeanour? Excessive disobedience? No. His crime was having AIDS. Though Aref knows the word, he does not yet know what it means and only partly understands why he has to swallow so many pills at every meal. This deadpan little boy - who is a comedian and likes to regale his guests with jokes - contracted the HIV virus before he was even born. His mother was infected by her husband, Nasser, a scientist working on Iran’s nuclear program and as a professor at Tehran University. It is not known how Nasser contracted HIV but his wife Zohreh suspects he caught it from a prostitute when he was studying for his PhD in India. Though Nasser was fired from both his jobs because he was HIV-positive, he only had to endure the stigma attached to the virus for a short while, until his body withered and he died. Aref, however, must learn to cope with the stigma all his life. Already he faces discrimination. Nasser’s death created gossip amongst people in the local community, in west Tehran. When Aref tried to return to school a few days after the funeral, the head teacher banned him from class. “You are playing with the lives of thousands of young children if you bring Aref to school,” the principal told Zohreh. “GET HIM OUT!” On Aref’s behalf, Doctor Haghani, head of the state clinic that treated his father, intervened. She told the school they were breaking the law and that all children have the right to go to school. She said this despite the fact that there is no specific law in Iran that protects the education of children who have HIV. After much persuasion, the principal eventually backed down and Aref returned to school, though no one spoke to him. The next year, Aref was barred from class again. Now it was the parents who were protesting his presence. Husbandless and with no income beyond a small state pension, Aref’s mother was in despair. To her, it was unthinkable that Aref was not going to be educated, but she could not afford to move to a new district or pay for Aref to attend a private school. So she appealed to Dr. Haghani again – and a parents’ HIV/AIDS briefing was arranged. Since then, Aref has made some friends; he swaps jokes with them and plays hide-and-seek during break time. His mother says his grades are starting to improve too, though he is not yet doing justice to the fast mind he has inherited from his father. “It’s imperative that those who work in HIV/AIDS prevention not only advocate for national guidelines and policies that give protection to people living with HIV, but also raise awareness of the disease among the general public,” said Renato Linsangan, UNICEF’s HIV/AIDS officer in Iran. “In this way stigma and discrimination surrounding the virus will decrease.” As we leave, Aref insists on walking ‘the two ladies’ to their car just to make sure they are OK. He has time for one last joke. He stands erect at the door and solemnly shakes our hands – he considers himself the man of the house.
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