Mína Norlin

“I came there with an Iraqi passport from Czechoslovakia and declared on being an Iranian. But I had no proof of it, just the fake passport. I waited a year for them to give me asylum, and after a few more years I also applied for Swedish citizenship. There was no problem at the time, they just asked me to get rid of my Iranian citizenship immediately, because at that time it was not yet allowed to have two at the same time. So, I took courage and went to the Iranian embassy. I told them about my problem that was about who I was. But I couldn't prove it with any paper. The Embassy worker spoke to me, he always asked me a question and then went to discuss it behind the door. So, in my opinion it took a long time, because I was there for almost an hour. I knew they knew who I was, but they played a game with me that they didn't know. This of course suited me because I did not want to enter into any political confrontations. In the end, the clerk came to me and told me that if I had no paper on who I was and asked to cancel my citizenship without a document, he would cancel it without a document. It sounded incredible to me and I also needed to convince the Swedish police. So, I asked him to give me his contact details and to confirm it to the police. I don't know how it ended up between the police and the embassy, but they gave me my citizenship later.”

“It was like a little death to me because I didn't want to leave. I still thought it was a misunderstanding that I would be back. The first thing I did was going to the Czechoslovak Embassy and asking for an explanation. According to some paragraphs, they told me that I was not entitled to it. I came there with Czech, Russian and a little French. Everyone around spoke Swedish or English and I just didn't like them. I didn't like anything there. It took me a long time. It took me about a year. I didn't like that country either, and I didn't like those people, even though they were great. It is true that no other country would accept me like this, but that was my internal setup. I just wanted to be in Prague, in the Czech Republic.”

“When he visiting us in Sweden in the eighty-six, he needed to extend his visa. He was officially there as my guest, so we had to go to the police together. There I found out that they knew who my dad was and what his position was. On that basis, they offered him police protection. He refused and exaggerated that he was not Palme. He said this because Palme was shot on the street in Stockholm the year before when he went from a cinema. He also had no protection with him. But it is true that at that time I did not realize that dad lived dangerously.”