At the age of 15, Elahe Damani fled Iran with her then husband and came to Munich. Here she graduated from secondary school and began training as a dental assistant, which she had to break off for health reasons and because of her now six-year-old daughter. In September, the 22-year-old will begin training as an educator at the Einstein day nursery in Ottobrunn, which is run by Atefeh Naseri from Iran. Damani grew up as a Sunni, but soon felt drawn to the Evangelical Church and converted. She lives – now separated from her husband – with her daughter in a church youth hostel.
I’m looking forward to one day being able to vote in Germany. Because I want to stay here. I’ve never voted in Iran, we’ve always been against the dictatorship. The voices of the opposition are disappearing in Iran and therefore there was hardly any election campaign in my city in southern Iran. My uncle is a devout Sunni. For him his religion is the life line. To this day he has not accepted that I am in Europe. If I were to return to my homeland, where my mother and three brothers live, I would be in danger of death. No matter where I went in Iran, my uncle and his fellow believers would find me because they have people everywhere.
I would only vote for a democratic party, most likely the SPD. Because I and many other refugees are concerned that the good opportunities for refugees, such as school attendance and work, will be more difficult if the AfD wins too many votes and new rules make life more difficult for us. I want to stand up for single mothers. I know what it feels like to have to keep asking friends to pick up the child from kindergarten because you still have to work. I want to work to earn a living, but I also want to look after my daughter. Both must be possible.
I would like the new federal government to show that employers show more understanding for single parents and that they can go home from work in good time because they want to look after their child. There should also be more family-friendly work opportunities. It would also be important, for example, that there are German courses that only take place three times a week, because refugee mothers cannot learn German six days a week when their families need them.
Almost a fifth of the population in the Munich district are not German citizens. Many of these people have lived here for a long time, paying taxes and social security contributions. But even if they are EU citizens, they are not allowed to vote at national level in Germany. At this point, over the next few weeks, some of them will tell you how they look to the federal election.