ABSTRACT
On 8 July 2008 an Associated Press reporter asked the US Presidential candidate Senator John McCain why, despite the US sanctions against Iran, the US cigarette exports to Iran grew more than tenfold during President Bush's presidency. McCain responded, ‘Maybe that's a way of killing them’ (Bradley 2008). There is an uncanny relation of sorts between McCain's racist statement, disguised under the cloak of a light joke and the following sobering quote from Mahtab, an Iranian transgender refugee applicant in Turkey:
My life is not like a cigarette that you can smoke and then put away, as I will live and suffer in its ashes. We are (we live). The world has a forgettable mind, and I will be forgotten very quickly. I might get to Canada, or I might not. But I will never forget that all my rights were taken away from me and there are even no selected individuals who I can blame for this. From now on, I want to build my life.
(Mahtab, Interviewed by the Iranian Queer Organization)