My idea of Kabul on August 15 is like a beautiful painting that collapsed overnight. Kabul is being destroyed for me every day since then. Not only are those, besides the city, the people of Kabul also devastated. In that collapse, a generation that had just hoped for the country collapsed. Now, every-single individual of the society in every corner of our world tastes a piece of misery and homelessness.
For the citizens of Afghanistan, history repeats itself every few years. We experience the misery of our past once again. And how bitter and overwhelming this experience is.
That tumultuous Sunday still overwhelms me. Whenever I close my eyes, the city of Kabul passes. I had not read that painful scene in any book. And these were images of the destruction and collapse of Kabul.
I say to myself every day I wish what I saw was a bitter and black nightmare. But I know that is not the case, and what I saw is a painful reality.
I was on leave for a while because of my trip to Turkey. But my husband, Farzad Farnood, was going to the office. Even on the day of the fall of Kabul, he was at the office when he suddenly called me saying: “I’m on my way …” It was as if everything was over. And that was the reality. Of course, our loss was different from the loss of the president. We lost the country, and he just lost power. A nation that has just acquired values that are respected and necessary in today’s world. The value that I wish at least my daughter Prochista would one day witness their true meaning, but it did not happen.
I saw the end of the hopes and aspirations of our generation in the face of Farzad. When he reached the door of the house, he was looking at me. With a great deal of concern, his figure told me of the collapse of Kabul on Sunday. Without saying a word, we both knew that tomorrow would begin the misery. And so the same day and the next day, the people of Kabul rushed to Kabul airport hoping to escape the Taliban and even tied themselves to the wings of giant planes unprecedented in world history. The released videos showed groups of young people sitting under the wings of military planes while flying. Perhaps the world and the Americans had forgotten 9/11. But the Afghan people had not forgotten the Taliban’s floggings, executions, wall-tapping, and stoning, and therefore preferred dying when falling from the planes rather than staying under the Taliban. Kabul is being destroyed for me every day since then. Not only are that, besides Kabul, the people of Kabul are also devastated. In that collapse, a generation that had just hoped for the country collapsed. Now, every-single individual of the society in every corner of our world tastes a piece of misery and statelessness.
We spent more than a week under Taliban rule. Every day, Kabul was losing its color and shine under that horrible white flag, and its people were becoming more and more displaced. People were so distrustful of each other for saving their lives that they said nothing about their exit and the roadmap they found to escape. And this tragic event took place even among family members and close friends. And this part of my escape was more painful for me than anything else. At Kabul Airport, there are dozens of hidden stories about the loss of children, old women, and old men, which are still hidden today due to the media’s lack of attention to the issue, or families are reluctant to tell about the tragedy.
On the second day of the fall, a friend of Farzad, who had come to Kabul with his family from Sheberghan, came to our house in the Taimani area. In the evening, we all left the house under the pretext of eating ice cream to see how Kabul was doing. The timekeeping bazaar had lost its usual bustle, the absence of women on the roads of Kabul had diminished the beauty of the city, and later this rugged landscape could be seen in every part of Kabul. The Shahr-e Naw area seemed to be closed, the clothing shops, restaurants, and cafes of the city were all empty of boys and girls. But in the same two days after the fall, everything seemed to be destroyed by a negative impulse.
Seeing the beginning of the tragedy, we also decided to leave Kabul. Some of my friends and Farzad promised to work together to get us out of Kabul in one possible way. But at the same time, Farzad’s friends, who had come from Sheberghan and Sar-e-Pul, occasionally went to the airport. But because it was so difficult to get through the airport, they then returned with a world of despair. One of those days, Farzad and I were on our way to Bush Bazaar to get our travel supplies, and then we went back to the place where Farzad’s mother lived, through the newly opened road of the former Ministry of Interior. But as we were entering the courtyard, we came across a friend of ours who had just arrived from Kabul airport and looked very upset and confused, as if he had returned from war. He told us frustrating and horrible stories from around Kabul airport that when he heard them, the hair on our bodies straightened and tears flowed in our eyes. Although every day began and ended with bad news, this friend’s career was something that at least our generation had not encountered up close. To cheer up this friend of ours and to give him a break, we took him and another friend to Tymany in our apartment. But we were so exhausted.
After eleven o’clock at night, a friend of mine from the United States called me and informed me of his cooperation to flee from Kabul. He insisted that we can coordinate with their families in any way possible and enter Kabul Airport tomorrow morning, at 4 o’clock, via Camp Baran and Zhowandon TV Alley. He gave us a password, saying that the person who will meet us is a US Army soldier named “Alex”.
I shared the flow with Farzad, and together we decided to leave Kabul with whatever danger and threat we faced. Because the Taliban had checkpoints in Kabul and there was no hope of getting rid of the Taliban. Farzad, on the other hand, was afraid that the Taliban would harm him because of his writings and his work in the media, and I risked my life to work at the embassy and in cultural and civic institutions for women.
Meanwhile, two months before the fall of Kabul, Farzad and I had a lengthy interview with AFP in our home, in which a part of my interview was recently broadcast on Al Jazeera, in which I spoke out against the Taliban and called them terrorists. All of this put our lives in danger. We consulted with the guests at night, but they did not agree; Because they were aware of the situation around the airport. However, one of them came with us around the airport. At first glance at my four surroundings, I realized that there is a big threat in our fifty meters and passing through it requires a strong heart. The crowd there, the presence of women and children, the noise pollution, and worst of all, every few steps a man would come with his family and apologize, “Don’t go ahead, the children are lost in front of our eyes … please don’t go … please don’t go.”
Their excuses were from the heart of the men; but again, we kept moving. The men of the family, numbering about ten, formed a human shield, and we walked with the children in that circle so that we would not be harmed any further. As we approached the middle bridge, one of us went downstairs to go and see if “Alex” had come, and then he came and told us to lower ourselves one by one. We formed the same circle again. The place was a swamp emptying the airport toilets, hotels, and restaurant junks around the airport. The atmosphere was full of barbed wire, broken glass, empty cans, and metals. Up to our knees in that lagoon, we went, and every wave that came towards us was accompanied by five to six hundred people, there was no oxygen, and sometimes the children fell into the water at the hands of their parents.
My daughter Prochista was screaming; because she was scared. Farzad cried and begged a big, tall man walking beside us to take Prochista from my arms and lift him to find some air to breathe. He did it. Meanwhile, “Alex” heard our voices screaming “Alex help us.”
Meanwhile, women and children looked at the soldiers and shouted for help; but foreign soldiers threatened to drop sound bombs on them or shoot with their weapons. But again, people were attacking them. In the end, the Taliban sometimes beat men with sticks to prevent them from approaching women. I saw a woman who had risen from the atmosphere and was about to pass the foreigners towards the airport, who was kicked in the chest and thrown back. In some cases, the child was on one side and his mother was on the other side. In many cases, the mother was gone, the child was left, or half of the families were gone, the other half was left. We passed; but when we looked behind us, crowds of people struggling remained on the other side of the wall in the mud and among the noise pollution. I wish one could take them all out. But it was a situation where everyone was trying to save their lives.
After registering and seeing Farzad’s press card, we lined up in separate queues. Then a car approached and took us to an unknown location inside the airport. Then we informed our family and friends by phone calls that we were inside the airport. The farewell that marked the bitterest moment in my life and I will never forget. We left our loved ones with the house and the place where we built with so many difficulties. A bitter and unfortunate event that we did not even imagine has happened to us.
On the evening of the same day that we had to board the plane after the biometrics while entering the plane, a huge explosion occurred near the airport, the same route that we had passed a few hours before. The explosion caused the flights to stop for an indefinite period, and we spent the night outdoors under a wall. The sit-ups in the middle of the night and the wind and dirt were bothering the children, and the air was getting colder by the minute. Some of us slept and some were awake until morning. Farzad walked and woke up all night, and I put my eyelids on top of each other.
The next day, at ten o’clock, the process started again, and after a while, we were transferred to the “H Kaya” camp. We sat for three hours until the giant plane arrived and we got on it. But we still did not know where we were going; we just knew we were going from here. But the end was not clear. The plane was on and everyone was sitting together, a picture I will never forget. This was the last image of the day that drove us away from the country, of the values we had put together for twenty years. I thought that this is the beginning of another repetition of sorrow called the West, the end of which is not known. At the same time, I was subconsciously repeating this verse of Hafiz in my mind “Our story is not over yet/everything that has no beginning does not end.”
[box type=”info” align=”alignleft” class=”” width=””]Katayoun Ahmadi’s Story, Hasht-e Subh Persian[/box]