Bay Window: When you arrived in the United States, did anyone ask you why you were afraid to go back?

Khaled Zeggai: Nobody asked me. Nobody even asked me my name. They just said you go back.

Bay Window: Why come to the United States instead of going to another country and why come to the Bay Area?

Khaled Zeggai: I wanted to come to the United States regardless of what area. I didn't know what states were here. I thought it was a country based on human rights and it was based on justice. I used to think that America represents innocents. But when I came to the airport I was surprised. I was surprised beyond my imagination.

Bay Window: No one had told you that it might be tough to get into the country as an asylum seeker?

Khaled Zeggai: No, nobody told me. If I had even heard that, I would hear something like you're going to go back to your country or you might be refused as an asylum candidate, I would not have come here. If I'd known that there was a chance of one percent that I would not be granted asylum, I would not have come here. I had exhausted my mental situation, my finances, just to have some rights. I would have died anywhere in Asia rather than be here and face the possibility of going back home. It is not that simple to send people back to their country. In Malaysia and Korea they do not send people back to their homes.

Bay Window: You've been living in a jail cell for six months, can you talk about what that's been like?

Khaled Zeggai: Jail is jail no matter what. Jail is jail even if you have a movie theater or if you have a kitchen: jail is jail. They put you in a room, they lock you up all day long, you can go out for two hours. There is nothing to distract you from what had happened to you and the places that you'd gone to and the things that had happened to you in the past.

Bay Window: Is there anyone to talk to here? Are you very lonely? Can you talk to anyone?

Khaled Zeggai: There is a friend of mine, he's my roommate, an American guy. But not everybody in jails are good. It's difficult to find somebody decent. The people who are in there, some of them are criminals who are in drug cases or crimes. But thank god there is always some nice people regardless of what has happened to them.

Bay Window: With all that you've been through since you came to America, are you sorry that you came?

Khaled Zeggai: Yes. Very much. Very much. I've hurt myself and that will make me always remember what America had done for me.

Bay Window: Why did you leave Algeria, what were you fleeing?

Khaled Zeggai: I fled from the killing, from the massacres, from the slaughter of the people. The treason. Jailing people without good reason for it. Killing innocent people, killing kids, children. It's a country where your father and your mother can be beaten in front of you and you can't do anything about it. This is not a country.

Bay Window: What are his personal experience with violence there?

Khaled Zeggai: I used to work for the ex-president of Algeria. And the Islamic armed groups wanted me to help assassinate him. And I refused. I never killed anybody and I will never be able. And I'd rather be killed myself than kill anybody. They tried to get me to help them time after time and I felt it's better for me to leave the country. Because if I don't help kill him then I will die myself.

Bay Window: Were you ever in prison?

Khaled Zeggai: The Algerian government accused me of being a terrorist but I'm not a terrorist. And they accused my parents. They killed some of my people. Some people disappeared for like five or ten years and there was no word of them. The Algerian government does not treat people fairly. If they just smelled Islam in you, they would try to eat you up. They're traitors, they kill their own people and they use their people. They change right to wrong.

Bay Window: Were you ever in police custody?

Khaled Zeggai: I was stopped by the police like almost two hundred times. Every time it's kicking, beating, cussing, torturing. They might make you drink urine. You cannot imagine what they would do to you. They could put a pen in your eye and take your eye out. We don't have police. The Italian mafia of the 1930s is better than the police that we have.

Bay Window: Let's talk about the family that you left behind. Who did you leave and do you ever hope, will you ever be able to see them again?

Khaled Zeggai: I would love to see my mother, but not in Algeria. My brothers, my sisters, my aunts and uncles. They're still in Algeria. A lot of them died with an Islamic group. Some people were killed by the bombs. Some of them are in jail. Some people have been tortured by the government.

Bay Window: When you are granted asylum, what are your hopes for your life in America?

Khaled Zeggai: What would I hope for? I don't have a taste for life much anymore. I don't know. I hope to be doing good. And to meet more decent people on this earth. Anything else, I cannot guarantee for myself. God is big.

back to top