In Search of Safety Read online

  WELCOME TO NEBRASKA, WELCOME HOME

  PART I: ARRIVE

  Fraidoon | COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Afghanistan | ETHNIC GROUP: Tajik

  Map: Afghanistan

  1. The First Day of My Life

  2. Fraidoon

  3. Fred

  4. Who Would Marry Someone with a Fatwa on His Head?

  5. Coming to America, the Hard Way

  6. The Black Hole of Red Tape

  PART II: BIRTH

  Nathan | COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Myanmar/Thailand | ETHNIC GROUP: Karen

  Map: Myanmar and Thailand

  7. Flip-Flops, Rice, Soccer

  8. TV, Hamburgers, Football

  PART III: RUN

  Nyarout | COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: South Sudan | ETHNIC GROUP: Nuer

  Map: South Sudan and Ethiopia

  9. In Africa

  10. In America

  PART IV: SURVIVE

  Shireen | COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Northern Iraq | ETHNIC GROUP: Yazidi

  Map: Northern Iraq

  11. Captured

  12. For Sale

  13. The Black Hole of Captivity

  14. After

  PART V: HOME

  Dieudonné | COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Burundi | ETHNIC GROUP: Hutu and Tutsi

  Map: Burundi and Tanzania

  15. Early One Morning

  16. Heaven

  17. Umoja

  PART VI: NOTES AND RESOURCES

  The Refugee Process

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska

  About the Yazda Cultural Center

  Chapter Notes

  Time Lines

  Resources

  Refugees are people who are forced to leave their country because they are being persecuted. From 1980 to 2018, the number of refugees resettled in the United States each year was between 50,000 and 100,000 people. In 2019, that number dropped to 30,000 people, and in 2020 it dropped again to 18,000. Many of them are from Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, Bosnia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some have resettled in the Midwest because housing there is reasonably priced and jobs are relatively plentiful. The five refugees featured in In Search of Safety are from Afghanistan, Myanmar, South Sudan, Iraq, and Burundi. One refugee had been a translator for the U.S. military. Another recently escaped the horrors of captivity by fundamentalist militants. And three spent years in refugee

  camps, growing up in countries other than their homeland. They all survived wars. They all were carefully screened by several security organizations, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United States State Department, and the United States Department of Homeland Security. They have all been resettled in the state of Nebraska, where they have been warmly welcomed.

  This book tells their stories.

  Lutheran Family Services is one of many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) around the United States that arrange the resettlement of refugees. They organize volunteers to set up homes for newly arrived persons or families. In each case, an American individual or family acts as a sponsor. They help the new immigrants find jobs, shop, learn English (if necessary), arrange for the children’s schooling, set up doctor’s appointments, and do whatever else is needed to acclimate the new arrivals to American culture. I am grateful to them for their support with this project and for their dedication to the refugees who come seeking safety and shelter.

  From 1984, when I was born, until July 16, 2017, when I arrived in the United States, I never lived in a place where there was no war. The year I was born, the Russians had been fighting in my country for five years. My father was a battalion commander in the Afghan National Army. The Afghan National Army was supported by the Soviet Union. They were fighting the Mujahideen, about fifteen separate guerrilla military parties, who were backed by Western countries, especially the United States. The Mujahideen did not like the fact that my father joined the Afghan National Army. For revenge, they killed his father, my grandfather. Yeah. They killed him, just because my father chose to serve his country.

  In 1989, when the Russians left my country, my father thought the fighting was over. For this reason, he resigned from the military. He opened his own shop, a general store. But no, the fighting was not over. Civil war began when the fifteen Mujahideen parties fought each other for power. Many people were killed; many cities were destroyed. We thought that the fighting would never be over. We thought that we would never have peace in my country. We lost hope.

  Seven years later, in 1996, when I was twelve, another group of fighters showed up. They called themselves Taliban. They were against the Mujahideen. They were against the Afghan army. They were against the government. They were against everybody.

  The Taliban were a mix of mostly Pashtun Afghans, Pakistanis, Chechens, and Arabs. First they took over Kandahar Province, in the south, and from there they moved throughout the country. Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, joined up with the Taliban as well.

  The United States had given my country Stinger antiaircraft missiles to fight the Russians. When the Taliban took over, Pakistani militia, “advisers,” collected the military equipment and took it to their country. But they left enough equipment for the Taliban to destroy my country, to destroy our national heritage. Once the Taliban took over, we began to miss the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen changed from bad people who fight to good people who help.

  I was fourteen years old when the Taliban reached my city. We lived in the middle of Kabul. Kabul was usually a safer place than the rest of the provinces. But the morning the Taliban took over Kabul, we heard big fighting all around the city. My family had to decide what to do next. My dad didn’t want to leave. He said, “We don’t want to go to Iran or Pakistan. We are from Afghanistan. This is our country. This is our homeland, so we will not leave. If we are dying, we’re going to die here.” See, if you leave, it’s a shame on you because people will think you didn’t want to defend your country. For this reason, we thought we would stay forever.

  The Taliban said that they would bring us peace. Talib is the Arabic word for “student.” [Taliban is the plural.] A talib is a student of a religious school, what we call a madrasa. Some people thought they might be real taliban, real students of the madrasa, because they knew a lot of good things about Islam: religion, humanity, respect. We thought that they might do good things for the people. But we soon learned that these taliban were not students of Islam. I’m sure they were not able to read or pray like true religious Muslims do. Their top leaders told them to do something, and like sheep they did whatever they heard from their leaders.

  We were told that the Taliban collected students from religious schools and sent them to fight jihad, to fight for human rights. This was completely wrong. This was not true. They never fought for the people; they never fought for the country. They were fighting for their own benefit. They were trying to cheat the people. We learned this in a matter of days.

  We walked around the city, trying to find out what kind of people are these Taliban. We saw maybe two, three, hundred military vehicles with heavy equipment. The Taliban were walking around with machine guns and military equipment, but they didn’t have uniforms. They never held up the flag of Afghanistan; they never wore a patch on their arm so that we knew where they were from. They were just a bunch of dirty people. Full of mud. We call what they wore man jammies, big, wide pants. They also wore turbans and had long beards.

  At least the Mujahideen wore regular pants and uniforms. They were clean. The Taliban were a completely dirty and nasty people. They didn’t know anything about respect for humans — not for kids, not for females. Nothing. Very quickly the Taliban’s faces completely changed. They went from being humans to
being animals. They got wild. And they started killing people. They didn’t want to talk with us. They wanted to kill us. These people were mostly Pashtuns from the southern provinces, who, in one hour, completely changed our lives in Kabul.

  Kabul had two TV stations. The stations broadcast music, news, cartoons for the kids, and other programs. After a few nights, the Taliban announced, “We’re going to close the TV stations.” They said that we cannot play our music anymore. They played their own music, which had no meaning for anybody. Their songs were not our songs. Their music was even in a different language, Pashto.

  We’re Tajik. We speak Dari at home. Pashto became the second language for my family.

  The Taliban said that kids could not see cartoons anymore. They said that these things are illegal in Islam, and we were not allowed to watch them. Islam does not say that. I’m Muslim. I know that this is completely wrong.

  They asked everybody to get ready for jihad. “What jihad?” we asked.

  “It was time to kill the enemy,” they said. The enemy was the Northern Alliance, one of the Mujahideen parties.

  At this time, I was in the eighth grade. I remember my teacher telling us, “From now on, do not wear white socks. The Taliban flag is white. If you wear white socks, this means you disrespect their flag, and they’re going to beat you up. Tell your mom and sister not to wear pants or anything white.” All women had to cover their face. No women were allowed outside the house without a male family member accompanying them. A widow could not go out to shop for food for herself. What was she to do? Starve because she couldn’t shop for food? Females were no longer allowed to go to school.

  Before the Taliban, women had jobs just like men. They were in the army; they were lawyers and doctors and teachers, even bus drivers. The Taliban would no longer let the women work. They said that we don’t need female doctors anymore. Someone told them, “If your wife is pregnant, you need a female doctor.” So they let the female doctors stay in the hospital. But they did not let females teach, become pilots, or work in any Afghani organizations. Suddenly my sisters and my mother had to stay home. They couldn’t do anything.

  One of our favorite sports in Afghanistan is football [soccer]. The Taliban said, “No, you’re not allowed.” Why? “Because it’s against Islam. The ball you’re kicking represents the head of our prophet. Long, long ago, infidels fought with the Muslim people. They cut off Muslim leaders’ heads and played with them as you would a ball. This means if you play with a ball, you’re not a Muslim, because you’re playing with the head of that prophet.” This is completely wrong. They just made up some story for their own benefit. They turned our football stadium into a slaughterhouse.

  Okay, we’re not playing football. We’re not going to let our mom and sisters go outside. We’re not watching TV anymore. We will live in a dark age of fear, and it’s going to be forever.

  Then they said, “You guys are not allowed to play cards. It’s gambling.” I played cards with my dad all the time. I played with my sisters all the time. Our favorite games were King and Thief. We had nothing else to do. My dad was either at his shop or at home. I was half day at school.

  Once we couldn’t play cards, we secretly bought a TV and a VCR. We hid it somewhere in our house. When it was dark, we’d cover all the windows with cloth, take out the TV, and watch a movie. We didn’t let anybody but the family watch. We were afraid that if our neighbors knew that we had a TV, they might tell the Taliban. Some people did tell the Taliban about their neighbors. “This house has cards.” “That house has a TV.” The Taliban would come into the house and break the TV. Then they would put the TV box over the person’s head and a cord around his neck. They would walk him around the city like a dog on a leash. The man had to shout to the onlookers: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was watching TV, and the Taliban catch me. If you do like me, you will get punished like I did.”

  But then the Taliban made a mistake. They never told us that we could not learn English. Private English courses were given after school, and because I had nothing to do, I studied English. My regular school classes were from 6:30 a.m. to noon, and my English class was from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., every day but Friday.

  Then the Taliban did something that most people liked. They said that no one could steal things from somebody else’s house. “If we catch that person, we will punish him severely. If you steal once, we will put you in jail and beat you up. If you steal a second time, we will cut off your left hand. If you steal a third time, we will cut off your right leg.”

  Back when my dad was a battalion commander in the Afghan National Army, the government sent him to Russia for more training and he learned the language. When the Taliban took over, they damaged the Russian military equipment and needed someone who knew how to fix it. Someone said, “That guy over there, he reads and speaks Russian. He knows a lot about the tanks.” My father refused to help them.

  After a few years — I don’t remember the specific date — the Taliban attacked our house in the middle of the night and took my father away from us. My mother was pregnant at that time. My mom was so upset, she got sick, and we took her to the hospital. Some of our relatives went with us because my father was not home to take care of her. She gave birth to a boy. We brought him home the next morning. (Today, my brother is in his second year in college.)

  I was still in school, but I tried to keep my dad’s shop open, but it was too difficult. I sold the shop to a man who till this day has not given us all the money. I was a little kid. I didn’t know how to get the money from the people who bought the shop. My mom didn’t pay attention to such things. She said, “I don’t care about the money. I just need everyone to be alive.” We were in a very bad situation. My uncle stepped in and supported our family.

  About two months after my father’s abduction, my sister, who was twelve or thirteen, was looking out the window. A taxi stopped in front of our house. A man who looked a little bit like my father got out. My sister did not recognize this man. My father was a big guy, but the man who got out from the taxi was a skinny guy. “Hey, Mom,” my sister said, “I see a guy outside our house. He looks a little like Father.”

  “Your father’s gone,” my mother told her. “He’s not coming back, because they kidnapped him.” We had had no news of my father’s whereabouts. Finally my older sister, who was sixteen, looked outside. She screamed, “Oh, that’s my father!” There was a great excitement.

  Our father looked completely different. He was so skinny because they didn’t give him food. They punished him a lot. They beat him. They kept him in a cell — all this because he would not fix their Russian equipment.

  My father later told us that one of the top commanders of the Taliban picked up his weapon, put it to his head, and said, “I’m going to kill you right now. You have to fix my equipment.”

  My father would not back down. “No. I can’t, because I don’t know how to do it. I resigned from my job long time ago. I forgot everything.” They didn’t believe him and put him in jail.

  One day, the Taliban and prisoners were eating lunch. My father asked a Taliban guard to relieve him from lunch for prayer time. Being Muslim, he prays five times a day. The guard said, “Okay. Go pray and then come back to the jail.”

  My father actually told him, “I’m not coming back. I’m running away.” The Taliban laughed and said, “He’s lying. He has nowhere to run.”

  As soon as my father was outside and alone, he climbed over the wall and stopped a taxi. He told his story to the taxi driver. “I’m going to help you,” the driver said. “I’ll take you away from here.” The driver would not charge him any money, which was a good thing, because he had no money.

  I don’t know where the taxi driver dropped him off. I only know it was far away from the Taliban prison, and far away from us. He walked for five or six days from that location to home. He had no money, no friends, no family, no car, nothing. Some villagers gave him food and water as he walked from village to village.
Once he reached Kabul, a taxi brought him home. We paid the driver.

  We did not tell anyone that my father was home. Whenever someone asked, we said that we didn’t know where he was. Some Taliban came to our house and asked, “Where’s your father?” We said, “You took our father.” Every day someone came to our house and asked for my father. “You took him. We don’t know where our father is.” We didn’t even let our relatives know where he was. We didn’t hide him in our house, because we knew that he would get caught there. We sent him to our best friend’s house. A month later, the entire family moved to a new location.

  Before 9/11, there was 9/9. Two Arab “reporters” who worked for Al-Qaeda came to Afghanistan to talk with the top Mujahideen Northern Alliance leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud. They had a bomb hidden in their camera. As soon as they started to interview him, they blew up the bomb and killed Massoud. I liked Massoud. He was a great guy. The Americans liked him too. That killing shocked the world. It was the first suicide attack in Afghanistan.

  Two days later, we heard that Al-Qaeda hit the World Trade Center in New York with airplanes. Al-Qaeda was working with the Taliban. A lot of innocent people were killed for no reason. Everybody was shocked.

  When we heard that the United States was going to help the Northern Alliance fight against the Taliban, we worried that maybe the United States will bomb everywhere in the country. Maybe they will kill us as well.

  The United States started bombing Kabul, not the whole city, just specific places where the Taliban lived. A small group of American Special Forces was already here, working with the Northern Alliance. Afghans told the Americans where to drop the bombs. One bomb missed and hit in the middle of someone’s house. Seventeen innocent people were killed. The rest of the bombs hit their targets.

  Once the U.S. dropped bombs on the Taliban, we thought we would soon be free. That’s when my father came out from hiding. Yeah. We went back to our own neighborhood. People asked, “Where have you been?” My father told them what had happened to him.