After escaping from Kabul, an Afghan family started a long climb to America

Muhammad spent his first night in the US struggling to breathe in the emergency room of a Virginia hospital. He was overcome by concern about his wife Aaliya, who was barred from boarding his flight from Kabul due to visa problems. With only minutes to set its course, she and Muhammad agreed to separate. He used to take the children to America alone.

Leaving his wife in the chaos of Kabul airport was difficult for Muhammad, who asked that only his family’s first names be used. He found out that he had a panic attack. In the following weeks, more will follow.

The sudden separation of families is one of the many challenges facing thousands of Afghans in the US and other parts of the world. So are new languages ​​and customs, and tasks of finding work, school, transportation and housing.

“Life is great in America. There’s safety. My kids can get an education without fear,” said Muhammad, the only English-speaking family member.

Yet the turmoil surrounding the move and those he left behind is revealed in horrific episodes of the emergency room. “I wish I could control my mind,” he said.

Muhammad, 33, worked in information technology for the US military at the airfield in his hometown of Kandahar.

For the past two decades, until the Taliban seized power in August, the US and its allies have been the main employers in Afghanistan, hiring contractors to provide security, logistics and other military aid. Muhammad’s IT job landed him a comfortable 5 bedroom house in the city.

It also came with risks. Friends had warned him from the beginning that working with the US military made him a target of militants. He nevertheless rode to serve in the military with a friend who drove a military vehicle to a US base.

One morning, he said, three men on motorcycles stopped and asked where he was going. He lied and said that he was going to exchange the money.

“We know everything about you,” said Muhammad, recalling the men. “For 10 minutes, my body was trembling with fear.”

In 2017, he applied for a special immigrant visa, known as SIV, a program launched to shelter people at risk of retaliation for helping America in the war. Muhammad said he did not want to leave his home and extended family, but he was concerned about the future of his children in Afghanistan.

After coming under pressure from lawmakers and veterans’ groups to expedite the visa process and remove SIV applicants, the Biden administration launched Operation Ally Refuge in July. At the time, the State Department had a backlog of about 20,000 pending applications, representing 100,000 people, according to congressional officials and families’ advocates. In a hasty exit after the fall of Kabul, most of the SIV applicants and their families were left behind.

About 50,000 Afghan families have arrived in the US, where most have been placed in temporary accommodation at military bases during immigration processes.

Muhammad mentioned in his visa application photographs of him posing with American soldiers, as well as the awards he had won from US officers for his years of service. He included threatening letters from the Taliban asking him to step down.

He received a notice on 22 July to travel to Kabul, where he and his family were waiting for a flight. On August 12, Muhammad and the children flew to Doha, Qatar, their first stop on their way to Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

fitting in

Muhammad and children aged 5 to 15 arrived at the airport in Rochester on August 15, the day former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and Kabul fell to rebels.

He chose Rochester because of his longstanding association with Keeping Our Promise, a non-profit group based in the area. Ellen Smith, director, was in contact with Muhammad during the long-distance SIV application process and offered to support his family upon his arrival. Since 2014, the massive volunteer group has helped resettle more than 100 Afghan, Iraqi and Kurdish families in Rochester – about 400 men, women and children in total.

Ms. Smith was waiting for the family at the airport. After landing, Muhammad felt his heartbeat again. He felt that he was suffocating and he was having trouble breathing. They went to the hospital, and doctors prescribed medicine for anxiety.

On the same day, Aaliya finds out that her visa is ready. He made it through Taliban checkpoints in Kabul and flew from Qatar to the US, aided by other Afghan families and the United Nations International Organization for Migration. She arrived at Rochester Airport on 17 August. For a few sobering minutes, she could not find her family. She went outside and then returned inside the terminal before she finally saw them waiting for her.

Ms Smith, a former journalist, said she helped her first Afghan family after seeing an appeal on Facebook in 2014. Word spread, attracting more families as well as volunteers. “It was literally friends getting friends, getting friends,” she said, “and it still is.”

The first six to 12 months are the hardest for families to come, Ms Smith said. There are logistical matters like enrolling in English courses, applying for Social Security numbers, and registering kids at school. There is also the challenge of fitting in.

Muhammad said that he felt that many of the items the family brought from home were worthless. No one in Rochester wore the long, loose-fitting traditional Kandahar dress.

Ms. Smith arranged for the family to visit Saints Place Clothing Closet, a non-profit that helps refugees in Western attire. There, bags full of American clothing and toys lie in the aisles. Recently 5-year-old Omid pulled out a plush toy from the Lion King and hugged it tightly. His 13-year-old sister Fatima dazzled in fashion jewellery. Alia tried on a flowing skirt.

While his family plowed through donated clothing, Muhammad was on his cellphone with relatives in Afghanistan. He said that his mother, who lives with his sister’s family, makes him shed tears every night. Relatives have told that their house in Kandahar has been robbed twice by the Taliban.

Muhammad and his family are eligible for government benefits typically given to refugees admitted to the US, which include several months of health care and financial assistance to buy food, along with help finding and furnishing a home.

Some of the work is done by non-profit groups, including the Catholic Family Center, which helped move Muhammad and his family into a three-story Victorian home in a part of town where the homes sell for less than $100,000. .

Muhammad does not like to see men drinking and smoking marijuana on the steps of neighboring houses. He said that he is afraid of letting his children play outside. His wife shares those fears but has no regrets.

“In Kandahar, when we sent the children to school,” she said, “we weren’t sure they would come back alive.”

escape guilt

On August 31, Muhammad carried out his third terror attack. That day the last American soldiers left Afghanistan, closing the door on his younger brother, Aminullah.

His brother also served in the US military airfield in Kandahar and was kidnapped by the Taliban in April. He escaped injuries after being freed by Afghan forces. Aminullah, a qualified visa applicant, along with his wife and 5-year-old son waited among the crowd outside the gates of Kabul airport when terrorists took the city.

Muhammad was often on the phone with his brother and those advocating for Aminullah and family to go inside the airport gate. He said he felt responsible for Aminullah after his father was fatally shot in 2018, an attack the family blamed on the Taliban.

The sin of leaving Aminullah behind is painful. “When my father was dying, he asked me to take care of his brother,” said Muhammad. “I am also like his father now, not just his brother.”

Now, he said, he doesn’t know when they’ll see each other again.

Muhammad’s most recent terror attack took place on 8 September. Aaliya cried in the emergency room while waiting for the family. A doctor now prescribed medicine after his case and referred Muhammad to a psychiatrist.

Local officials say they expect more Afghan families to need mental-health support. Nicholas Stefanovic, director of the Monroe County Veterans Service Agency in Rochester, said Afghans would be offered some of the same services that veterans use.

Ms Smith, concerned about Muhammad, asked one of the city’s more experienced Afghan families to check on him. The next morning, the father of the family awoke to missed calls from Muhammad, who had his fourth panic attack.

Muhammad’s children are more easily adopted. They chase each other around the house and laugh. American volunteers bring their children, and they play together despite the language divide. All the family friends and relatives back home tell the kids that they are lucky to be in America.

The children say they miss their grandmothers and cousins ​​in Afghanistan.

Saifullah, the eldest, is relieved from the fight to go to school without interruption. The 15-year-old boy has seen the blasts and heard gunshots. “There was no education or future for me,” he said in Kandahar. He plans to follow in his father’s footsteps and study to become a computer engineer.

“I want to be an engineer!” said 11-year-old Rahmatullah, and his sisters laughed. Fatima wants to become a teacher; 8-year-old Amina wants to become a nurse and give birth to children. They all shout suggestions when Omid, the youngest, is asked about his plans for life in America “Doctor!” he said.

The kids started going to school last week, and Muhammad went along to help translate and settle them. He has his own ambitions. “I’ll work as an electrician, or any line of work as a mechanic, and I’ll work hard to get online certification in information technology,” he said, adding that he took a class to get his driver’s license. Signed up for.

At home, Alia and Fatima prepare the same meal as Kandahar, with chicken on the side of a plate of rice and flatbreads similar to Afghan naan. Lettuce and tomatoes are arranged on small plates. Mandarin oranges sit peeled and quartered. The large dining table accommodates the entire family, though none of the donated chairs matched.

Aaliya is concerned about her husband’s health and misses home, she said, but is grateful to be in America. She cannot read or write because the Taliban regime in the 1990s kept girls out of schools in Kandahar when she was growing up. Now, she said, she plans to learn English.