Illustrations and cartoon by Veronica Bravo, Janet Loehrke, Javier Zarracina and Stephen Beard, USA Today
KABUL, Afghanistan – Every time I blinked awake, I would accommodated my mother’s eyes. My father, my brother and my babyish sister were all asleep, sprawled beyond the attic in my aphotic accommodation on the west bend of Kabul.
They had fled aloof afore the Taliban ransacked their home in Herat, and now we were calm for one added arenaceous sunrise. The Taliban had not yet agape on my door, but we knew they would, the aforementioned way we knew that summer was atrocious and the sky was amber and our freedoms were all a mirage.
I was 27, a bad Muslim, an educated, distinct woman who asked too abounding questions and rarely wore a hijab. I was a animate journalist, a associate of the Shi’a Hazara indigenous group, babe of an Afghan civic soldier. To a Taliban fighter exciting with new power, silencing my articulation would be a gleaming, aureate footfall on the stairway to paradise.
In my dreams, which came every night now, I had approved to fight. I had approved to run. And at last, I’d pushed my way through anarchy and smoke, ashamed by crowds in a atrocious billow adjoin the airport. Easily affective at me. Women were crying. Bullets hammering.
“What is it?” my mother said aback I abashed animate again. She had been up all night, watching over me.
“Just a nightmare,” I told her.
It was time now. I had to get out of Kabul.
Journalist Fatema Hosseini describes her escape from Afghanistan as the Taliban bankrupt in
Staff Video, USA TODAY
It seems absurd that acculturation can be agape aback a few decades in an afternoon, that activity as you apperceive it can collapse afore lunch, but it can, and it did.
Sunday morning, the Taliban were on the bend of Kabul. I best up balmy naan from the bakery, as was my habit, and headed to the ATM because some afraid the banks would close. The ATM was broken, so I waited an hour with a babyish crowd, afresh gave up and headed to the appointment in my accepted jeans, dress, bandage and sneakers.
The streets were crowded. Hundreds of vendors agitated into the alley hawking vegetables and fruits over loudspeakers: “Apple! Melon! Mango! Fresh tomato, 20 per kg!” I weaved through their carts amid women in bright dresses. It charge be one of the loudest cities on Earth.
I anesthetized my admired restaurant, Taj Begum, consistently awash with hookah brume and laughter. It is alleged for an Afghan warrior angel and endemic by the fiercest woman in Kabul. She drives through the streets shouting at the added drivers, all of them men.
In the appointment of Kabul Now, the English-language breadth of the Etilaat-e-Roz account bureau breadth I work, phones were campanology as the Taliban advanced.
My mother alleged me, crying. “Put on your continued dress. The Taliban are everywhere.”
I anticipation she was joking. “Mom, it’s OK! My dress is not that short!” But it was.
She started shouting. “You’re not alert to me!”
A rumor advance that President Ashraf Ghani had larboard the country. Anon no one could focus. Men who came to assignment that morning in apparel came aback afterwards in peran tunban, the acceptable continued shirts and afar trousers. The Taliban were in the presidential alcazar by now, but we didn’t know.
Early in the afternoon, I absitively to go home, but my aide chock-full me. He said I couldn’t leave afterwards a male escort. That’s aback I knew it was real.
I took a car best of the way. The shops, animate aloof that morning, were bankrupt and the streets about empty. At Taj Begum, the buyer had bound the aperture and burst all the hookahs. A barter loaded with Taliban flew by. I absolved the aftermost few account alone. The few men I saw stared at me for a continued time.
At the apartment, I hugged my mom. She said, actual slowly: “Your dress is short.”
This is Fatema’s adventure to tell. I can advice explain how she became the centermost of a military-style accomplishment operation that sprang from a advantageous connection. But no amount how abounding mobilized to abutment her, Fatema’s escape was ultimately up to her.
I’m a London-based all-embracing contributor for USA TODAY. Fatema was a announcer for one of Afghanistan’s arch account agencies and a freelance anchorman for USA TODAY. We generally can’t awning the apple afterwards journalists like Fatema who animate and assignment in the places they address on. They are our eyes aback we can’t be there, and generally our ally aback we can.
Fatema had never lived beneath Taliban rule and didn’t intend to now. Her ancestors larboard for adjoining Iran aback she was 3 months old because of the group’s animality of Harazas and its abhorrent analysis of women. She alternate at 10, afterwards the 2001 U.S. aggression ousted the Taliban from power.
She afterwards interviewed Taliban fighters and appear about women’s lives now and afresh – afresh actuality a time of moral atramentous aback women and adolescent girls were afar from accessible activity and education. Aback they were baffled about for adventuresome to adventure alfresco afterwards a macho guardian, for acid attach polish, for alert to pop music. She has appear from remote, rural areas breadth the Taliban never actually went away.
Her hashtags on Twitter abandoned were abundant to get her killed:
Virtually no one accepted Kabul to abatement so quickly. The Taliban promised to account women’s rights, but their blood-soaked clue almanac appropriate they would not.
I contacted Fatema a little afore apex London time that Sunday. The Taliban had aloof formed up the Afghan banderole at the presidential palace.
“I achievement you are OK,” I wrote in a WhatsApp message. “Tell me how I can help.”
If the Taliban came to my apartment, all the affirmation they would charge of my agnostic cachet was appropriate central the advanced door. I covered the bank with photos of my accompany and me accomplishing accustomed things: bistro ice cream. Laughing. Acid asinine glasses. Jumping. Lying on the grass in the sun.
My beard spills out about my face. My lipstick is a adored adumbration of cherry.
The Taliban don’t appetite to see my face. They don’t appetite to see me with accompany from the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh or the acquaintance I did in Dhaka. My apprenticeship and my assignment are aggressive to their ideology. A wisp of beard assuming about my face is an abuse to God.
The Hazara bodies are some of the best afflicted in Afghanistan, and amid the best accelerating about women’s rights and education. Afore he abutting the Afghan Civic Army, my ancestor attentive a library abounding of books he couldn’t read. My mother was a housewife who was amorous about school but who couldn’t abide her apprenticeship because she bare permission from her mother-in-law, and afresh she got abundant with my sister.
I bethink my mom account Disney books to me aback I was 5 and giving me an abandoned anthology so I could archetype what my earlier sister was writing.
She took loans to accelerate me to an all-embracing aerial school, Afghan Turk, the top academy in Afghanistan. There I abstruse Farsi, English, a little Arabic, a little Turkish, a little Pashto. My ancestors and neighbors were worried. “She’s aloof a girl,” they would say. “Investing at this akin will be abortive to her.”
Instead I became a announcer investigating bribery and giving articulation to women. I interviewed a Taliban fighter who told me I should be a acceptable Muslim and abrasion a hijab. He swore the Taliban would booty aback the country, if not in his generation, afresh in his children’s, because they were affronted with abounding hearts.
He smiled and said, “I’ll appear to your house, and advance on your door, and say ‘Hi.’”
My job was to listen, not to argue, but there were some things about which I could not be neutral.
I laughed. “It’s not activity to happen.”
Now I knew the Taliban would be at my aperture in a amount of days. I snatched bottomward the photos, quickly, because I couldn’t buck to attending at them. I took bottomward the song lyric I’d acquaint on the wall: “No one can say what we get to be, so why don’t we carbon the stars? Maybe the apple could be ours.”
I abandoned it all into a bucket. I lit a match. The allowance abounding with smoke.
Fatema emailed me her authorization information, civic ID agenda and a acceptance appliance she’d texted to the U.S. State Department. She’d accustomed a acceptance message but no appliance number, no advice about what came next.
The abandoned defended way out of Kabul was the Hamid Karzai All-embracing Airport. Acreage routes out of Afghanistan were chock-full and alarming in every administration – west to Iran, south and east to Pakistan, arctic to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Kabul is 3½ hours advanced of London time, 8½ hours advanced of Eastern Daylight Time. By now it was the average of the night in Afghanistan, and Fatema bare to rest. But I had one added question. “Would you be able to go afterwards your family?”
She bound wrote back. “I anticipate so.”
Then she beatific two photos.
One was of a photo collage taped to a bank in her apartment, about two dozen snapshots of Fatema animated and bedlam with her ancestors and friends.
The additional photo showed a babyish animate brazier captivated by flames.
The abutting day, Monday, I rose aboriginal and started message-blitzing anyone I could anticipate of with access to Afghanistan or the Average East. Contacts in the U.S. aggressive and associates of Congress. European diplomats, aid workers, journalists. I wrote to chief USA TODAY editors allegorical them that Fatema was ambuscade in her home. They started calling contacts as well.
In Kabul, Fatema hunkered bottomward on the fifth attic of the accommodation block breadth she lived. She started allurement questions for which I had no answer.
Fatema went quiet for several hours.
As the U.S. aborticide aggregate pace, the U.S. had abandoned its Kabul admiral and bags of Afghans streamed into the airport. Women were trampled. Arrant accouchement were handed over airport walls to American soldiers. Terrified Afghans clung to the basic of a U.S. aggressive alike taxiing on the runway, then, as it took off and acquired altitude, abandoned to their deaths one by one. Amid those who died was a able adolescent soccer star; another was a dentist who had afresh accomplished his dream of aperture a dispensary in Kabul.
Guiding Fatema cautiously through an airport spinning out of ascendancy was daunting.
Then came what seemed like a breakthrough. A U.S. Navy assets accessible diplomacy administrator responded to one of my messages.
“Hey Alex, allurement a absolute favor here,” I had texted him, acknowledgment who Fatema was and that we were aggravating to get her abandoned from Afghanistan.
“Absolutely,” he responded.
He added: “It’s activity to be tough.”
He was audition of bodies affianced bottomward by Taliban battery alfresco the airport aggressive gate. He promised nothing, but still, it acquainted like progress.
I’d met Lt. Alex Cornell du Houx, 38, two years ago aboard a U.S. Navy boner patrolling the Persian Gulf. He was my media adviser for the trip, and we had kept in touch. He was acute and dynamic, had served alert in the Maine Abode of Representatives and had a noncombatant job acclamation altitude change. He addled me as addition who could accomplish things happen. Within a few hours, he had an update.
“An absorbing advantage from a acquaintance in the Ukraine gov. They accept a flight with added seats,” he messaged on WhatsApp. “The Ukraine gov has offered a flight and appropriate armament said it is a go.”
I wrote aback thanking him, thinking, “We’re about there.” Fatema would go to the airport, the Ukrainians would get her through the gate, she’d get on the plane, and we’d assignment out afterwards how to get her to the U.S.
I got a bulletin from Ukraine’s appropriate armament to arch to the airport Tuesday, but already near, I was alleged off. Go home and delay for word, they said. Out the accessible window of the cab I could aroma the chilly canal, moldering bake-apple from the market, bankrupt abating in the sun. Kabul was a abode of attempt and joy, and it aching to see Taliban fighters rip through in U.S. armored cartage and Ford Ranger-style auto trucks.
That night, I ran into a affiliated changeable policewoman who lived on the aforementioned attic of my building.
“What is your plan?” she asked me.
I shrugged, borderline how abundant to reveal.
“Well, you’d bigger accomplish one because the Taliban accept already started banishment adolescent girls and widows to ally them. They will actually acquisition you, and they will ally you off.”
She wasn’t wrong. This summer, aback the Taliban took over Badakhshan, Takhar and Baman, breadth I was born, they ordered bounded leaders to accommodate a account of girls over 15 for alliance with Taliban fighters. It’s a barbarous activity of abduction and babyish afterwards babyish afterwards baby.
It fabricated me affronted that the policewoman was so apathetic about my future. Policewomen are role models for girls in Afghanistan.
“I will never become a Taliban wife,” I replied. “I would rather die, and if I accept to annihilate that actuality too, so be it.”
I will never become a Taliban wife. I would rather die, and if I accept to annihilate that actuality too, so be it.
My animation is a acclaim to my parents. Best women in Afghanistan are affiliated off by arrangement. As a little girl, I never played in aerial heels and a veil. I didn’t dream about my bells day. In my country, aback you are affiliated you are owned. My grandmother, my mother, my aunts – none of them got to accept the men they married.
In our family’s photo album, folio afterwards folio shows brides clutching bouquets. Following tradition, but additionally because they were miserable, not one of them is smiling. They beam at the camera with comatose eyes.
When I was young, I was promised to my cousin, and my sister was promised to addition cousin. Our parents abiding it with their parents. That’s the custom, and interfamily alliance is normal. I couldn’t angle my cousin, though. He was consistently aggravating to allocution about asinine things, and his mom wasn’t nice to mine. Once, aback he was visiting, I snuck up on him in his beddy-bye and sewed his pajamas into the mattress. Addition time, I asked him to bung in a fan that had adulterated wiring. The electric shock launched him beyond the room.
As my sister affronted 13 and her bells drew close, she told my parents, “If article happens to me in this marriage, you are responsible.” My parents agreed not to force either of us to marry. Our families didn’t allocution for years.
Now, I am 27. I still couldn’t brainstorm myself in a bells veil.
I logged on about 3 a.m. London time. Fatema said it had been a difficult night.
Alex beatific a alternation of instructions by WhatsApp. The Taliban weren’t aloof at the airport gates – they were attention the anchorage that led to the airport.
Alex said he would be on duke as Fatema fabricated her way aback to the airport.
I foolishly beatific a bulletin to the Ukrainian appropriate armament soldier who would be answerable with award her and accepting her through the gate. I anticipation about sending him a continued account of the questions Fatema capital answered, but I edited myself and aloof thanked him for his efforts.
“No drama,” he wrote back. “Will try my best to accompany her.”
My mom sat on the attic acid abstracts that told the adventure of our family’s achievements.
My dad’s aggressive training, photos in his army uniform, ID cards. My sister’s certificates for courses in computers, QuickBooks, English. My brother’s certificates from English classes and battle training, alike aboriginal aid. If they were accounting in English, they articular us as bodies who ability accept formed with foreigners.
The acid went on for days. We would sit in the apartment and my dad would say, “If I were the Taliban …” and he’d name article that ability account trouble. Afterwards my mom would say, “If I were the Taliban …” and bethink article else.
While she cut she did not talk. The certificates were laminated thick, and the scissors struggled through them. Wednesday, she cut through the night. At some point, she fell comatose with the scissors in her hand, blisters ascent on her fingers.
The debris of our lives abounding a debris bag.
I had austere my photos, but I couldn’t accompany myself to bake my anamnesis anthology that I’d kept aback 2009. It was spiral-bound with roses on the awning and a burst lock, and my accompany active it anniversary year, like a yearbook.
It was abounding with stickers of Disney princesses, but I knew abandoned the belief of Snow White and Cinderella. Central were my assets and balladry in Farsi and English, a broiled flower, aloof one blade left.
“I accept a activity you will be addition able someday,” one acquaintance wrote in 2014. “You are able and smart. Don’t decay your activity away.”
I gave it to my mom. “I don’t accept the affection to bake it,” I said. “Maybe you can.”
I had a pocket-sized Quran. I was so analytical about Islam, so I apprehend it from the aboriginal folio all the way through, underlining passages, authoritative notes. Maybe, I anticipation as I read, a hijab was not so abundant a accurate blind as an ethical one. Maybe aback the Quran says “As to the thief, macho or female, cut off his or her hands,” it’s not a binding sentence but an affinity for teaching analytic consequences. And how was it accessible that addition ballad with no bright translation, Chapter 4, ballad 34, has led to so abundant accustomed carelessness adjoin women, aback it makes clear that men should account their wives and assure them? “Men shall booty abounding affliction of women with the bounties Allah has bestowed on them …”
Is this what God capital for us?
Once, my mom adopted my Quran and cool aback she saw all my notes. “Why did you do that? You anticipation it was your cartoon book? You shouldn’t do that!”
“Mom,” I said, “I accept questions.”
I couldn’t accompany myself to bake it or bandy it away. That acquainted wrong, and agnostic the angelic book is amiss by death. If anyone begin it, they would appear afterwards me, because they don’t abide questions. Not about Islam.
I accept a activity you will be addition able someday. You are able and smart. Don’t decay your activity away.
No one knows whose estimation of Islam is appropriate – but the Taliban’s skewed, agitator adaptation is actually wrong.
I took the Quran to the abbey abutting door. The anniversary of Ashura was activity on, which commemorates the affliction of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s a day of aching for Shi’a people, my people.
When I entered the aboideau at the mosque, some men chock-full me. They said I bare to go through the abate access for women. “I don’t appetite to interrupt,” I said. “I aloof appetite to accord abroad this book.” I added some money on top so they wouldn’t attending at it too closely.
On Twitter, the Taliban were celebrating. I was disgusted, but I had to focus on extenuative my own activity now. I deleted the app.
I didn’t pray. Not then, not alike later, in the affliction moments. I acquainted ashamed to about-face to God aback I bare something, alike admitting I never doubted He was there.
Alex was animate with Iryna Andrukh, a colonel in Ukraine’s military, to get Fatema on a Ukrainian Air Force jet to Kyiv. They met in 2019 at NATO Academy in southern Germany, on a cafeteria breach from a cerebral operations class.
Alex was accurate not to say too abundant about Iryna appropriate away. But I eventually begin out that she was 33, a accomplished psychologist, awfully adherent to her somewhat ample sausage dog alleged Joy.
During the acme of Ukraine’s contempo battle with Russia, Iryna absolved beyond a battlefield caught and adjourned the absolution of Ukrainian hostages. Iryna was a war hero.
Alex had accomplished out to Iryna as he and I were brainstorming account to advice Fatema.
Iryna told Alex, “Oh, we’re sending this alike to Kabul to get our people. Maybe we could accomplish this a altruistic task.” She got a accepted to accept it.
I knew little about the Ukrainian appropriate armament soldier who Iryna said would abetment Fatema on the ground. Alex would say abandoned that he had been deployed to Afghanistan abounding times. Iryna would not acknowledge annihilation about him afar from his aboriginal name, which has been afflicted in this adventure to assure his identity. Iryna said that if anyone was the appropriate actuality for this mission, it was Ivan.
It was accepting backward in Kabul, Alex had one added bulletin for Fatema: “Please be adjustable if the Appropriate Armament alarm you and acquaint you to go to addition location. They accept not landed and don’t apperceive the absolute situation.”
“OK,” Fatema replied. It was 10:30 p.m. in Kabul. “I will try to be.”
My mother woke me at 4 a.m. She captivated a bandage beyond my back, barometer the distance, and sewed my university authority into the scarf, in a pouch. It was the one affidavit she couldn’t buck to cut. I affronted the bandage beyond my back. She sewed addition bandage into a belt that captivated my authorization and a adamantine drive absolute some of my work. I affronted it about my waist. Over that I put on a sleeveless dress and a jean jacket. I put on a continued chador that belonged to my mother. It covered my arch and high body, abrogation allowance for aloof my face, and I had to clamp it bound beneath my button and at my waist to accumulate it on.
I had no abstraction if I would see my ancestors again. We hoped eventually they could blooper beyond the bound to Pakistan or access a acceptance to India. I approved not to cry. On the accomplish alfresco I told my mother, “Take my advance and be strong.”
I wore a haversack and agitated a medium-size suitcase. The acclimate had accomplished aloft 90 degrees all anniversary and I was overdressed, but my mother had told me, “It’s aloof one day.”
My brother and brother-in-law came with me, because I bare an escort now anytime I larboard the house. Traffic grew acute as we neared the airport. Afterwards Twitter, I hadn’t accomplished the airport was such a mess. My buzz abstracts affiliation was slow, and the breadth was animate with Taliban fighters analytic cars and axis bodies away.
Kim was calling but I couldn’t answer. The cab disciplinarian was allurement too abounding questions, and I didn’t appetite him to apprehend me speaking English. I hid the buzz beneath my chador to type.
“Cnt talk”
Fatema’s letters were distressing.
“Heavy crowds and trapped in jam.”
“The Taliban opened fire.”
At anniversary of the bisected dozen entrances to the airport, the Taliban had erected checkpoints that travelers had to canyon afore they could ability barricades controlled by U.S. and NATO forces.
The Taliban were acting as enforcers. They appeared to accept lists of bodies they actually did not appetite to let leave Afghanistan: politicians, judges, helicopter pilots who spent years bombing Taliban positions, high-profile animal rights defenders, critics like Fatema from the media. They additionally were aggravating to accumulate some ambiguous adjustment about the airport and avert tens of bags of bodies aggravating to flee. Others were able bullies and opportunists who saw a adventitious to accost a bribe, apply influence, apply power.
Once at the airport, Fatema had to airing accomplished three airport gates: the capital terminal gate, afresh the Abbey Gate, and assuredly the East Gate, breadth we hoped the Ukrainians would be attractive for her.
“Proceed with caution,” Alex said. “Coordinate with the appropriate armament on the ground.”
I got out of the taxi, and appropriate abroad I absent my brother, who had my suitcase, in the crowd. A active chased him and he was gone. My brother-in-law had gone aback home.
When I accomplished the aboriginal checkpoint, I faced a huge army – men lined up on one side, women on the added – and fought my way through. At the front, two militants were crazily advance people, lashing them with whips and battlefront bullets into the air.
“My brother. My brother is there, let me pass,” I shouted in Farsi. I was activity to acquaint them I was aggravating to ability my brother on the inside. Usually aback I lie my adenoids turns red, but I couldn’t anguish about that now.
Two militants controlled the line. One of them angrily shoved me back, cursing me. For some reason, I couldn’t booty my eyes off of his face – his crazy, annoyed eyes lined in kohl – which fabricated him furious.
“You’re shameless!” he shouted. “Look bottomward if you allocution to me!” He swore to God that he would annihilate me. He shoved me with the base of his rifle. He aloft his arm to whip me, but his aide chock-full him in Pashto.
His aide looked at me and said, “This is your abandoned chance.”
I ran advanced through the checkpoint, abrogation them arguing. I heard the aboriginal one shouting that I would be comatose if he anytime saw me again.
Sweat was active bottomward my back, and I was so agog my argot acquainted adhesive in my mouth.
I fabricated it to the additional checkpoint, breadth NATO troops were continuing on the wall, casting bottomward baptize bottles. The Taliban commanders were aperture the bottles and cloudburst baptize on people. We bare to be bubbler it.
A Taliban active was acclimation bodies to sit, but I didn’t accept his language. I pushed advanced and saw him accession his whip. I dodged it and it hit the woman abaft me on her shoulder. It tore her dress, tore her flesh. I saw article white in her accept and her claret and heard her crying. I couldn’t move, so I aloof sat, appropriate in advanced of the soldier. About me, bodies were shouting that it was my fault. As abundant as I capital to, I could not about-face and tend to her or anyone else, because I would be attempt or lashed, and I’d never accomplish it to the gate.
“Can you let me pass?” I asked in Farsi.
“Where do you appetite to go?”
“The added side. My brother is there. I appetite to booty him aback home.”
I charge accept looked so anemic and thirsty. He could about apprehend me because my articulation was ashore in my dry throat. “Just let me go.”
Fatema’s calls kept dropping, and she approved to bandy SIM cards to get a bigger connection. I was calling. Alex was calling. Ivan was aggravating to ability her.
“Stay able Fatema,” I wrote. “You can do it.”
Alex was tracking Fatema’s breadth in real-time via WhatsApp maps and relaying those maps and added advice to the Ukrainians.
She was now alfresco Kabul airport’s East Gate. A amount accumulation of editors was ecology WhatsApp throughout the night. None of us could do much, but we couldn’t beddy-bye either. No newsroom I accept anytime been in has a bearings room, but this acquainted like one.
BACKSTORY: There’s no guidebook for accepting reporters, drivers and interpreters out of a collapsed Afghanistan
Fatema beatific an audio message: “I anticipate I’m bristles account abroad from the gate, but the abode is brimming and they started aperture blaze so I can’t go abreast it.”
Then just, “I charge help.”
Alex asked, “Did they blaze in the air or at people?”
There was no response.
The East Aboideau doors were alpine and solid gray, and the soldiers were shouting from the walls that they couldn’t accessible them unless bodies backed up. Addition asked me for my documents, and aback I said I had a passport, he befuddled his head.
“Everyone actuality has a passport,” he said. “It agency nothing. You accept to accept a document.”
Only Ukrainians were accepting through this gate, it seemed.
Alex told me to break there so Ivan could acquisition me. I wandered about aggravating to get a signal.
“Can anyone advice with this please,” I typed. “am so abutting to adopted troops.”
No signal. No signal. Afresh the buzz rang and Ivan said “Go to Arctic Gate.” He afraid up afore I could answer. I had no abstraction breadth the Arctic Aboideau was, but I could not appreciate that I had to face that active at the checkpoint afresh – the one who capital me dead. I had appear this far and it was abortive now.
I approached the skinny, affronted Talib at the checkpoint I had aloof crossed.
“My brother’s not here,” I told him. “I accept to go back.”
He knew I was lying. “You’re the one who wants to leave,” he said. “You’re shameless. There is no way back.”
He acicular his gun at me. “Speak addition word, and I’ll shoot you dead.”
I was stuck. I acquainted so aghast and abandoned that I couldn’t stop my tears. I affronted away.
“Where is the Arctic Gate? Breadth is the Arctic Gate?” I kept allurement people. “Is there addition way out of here?”
People had been cat-and-mouse actuality night afterwards night with no aliment or water. I was so agog and I didn’t accept the audacity to ask anyone for water. They wore days of dust on their faces. Mothers were crying. There were bags of suitcases, abandoned. The Taliban were acrimonious through them.
Someone said that aback the gates opened before, bodies were trampled in the rush. So abounding injuries. So abounding accouchement underfoot. God knows whether they were alive.
I could not absorb time talking to these people. I had to leave. I had been told the alike would leave at 1, and it was accomplished 12:30 p.m.
I beatific an audio bulletin to the editors adage I was headed to the Arctic Gate. “I achievement they delay for me.”
A man told me to chase the aqueduct about the far bend of the airport, afresh get a auto to the Arctic Gate, which was about a bisected hour away. I blindly did what he said. My adamantine drive was dabbling into my hip; my mom affronted it so bound about my waist. I opened the belt and put it in my backpack.
I absolved fast to get out while I approved to argument my brother and brother-in-law. Aback I aloft my arch I begin myself amid a accumulation of armed Taliban who were staring at me. They could accept chock-full me to analysis my buzz or alike exhausted me to death, but I was too exhausted to care.
I accomplished a awash breadth and approached a shopkeeper to advice me get a taxi.
“Go aback home,” he told me. He said he could acquaint I formed with foreigners, but the Taliban wouldn’t acquisition out about me if I would be an acquiescent babe and break at home and abrasion a burqa.
I had never exhausted a burqa, and I couldn’t buck audition that anymore, so I started to cry. I cried so loud bodies backed away.
I climbed into a auto with a crazy disciplinarian who kept exaggerating that the Taliban were his relatives. He chock-full in advanced of a abbey breadth a accumulation of Taliban were sitting. He formed bottomward the window to say hi to them, and the Taliban looked at me angrily. I didn’t apperceive why he would do that – aloof to alarm me?
We collection for 20 account afore we accomplished a accessible road. He asked me to booty him with me. He would carelessness the auto and escape with me. The anchorage were ambagious and narrow.
Then I saw a assurance that apprehend “Welcome to Bagram.” This isn’t the way to the airport, I thought. I’ve been abducted.
I was not activity to be forcibly affiliated to a Taliban soldier and animate always in fear. I would not be a Taliban sex slave. I would adopt to die. I started attractive for article I could use to cut my wrist in case the affliction happened. I couldn’t acquisition any glass. I accomplished if I had to I could use stones. Afresh the car chock-full again, and the disciplinarian acicular out the flags for Turkey and Afghanistan at the Arctic airport gate, 10 account abroad by foot.
It was accomplished 1 p.m. now, and I was still – afresh – on the amiss ancillary of a Taliban checkpoint.
Alex beatific a video blow assuming several dozen heavily armed Ukrainian appropriate armament soldiers in commando-style ammo affidavit vests, helmets and appearance aggregate on the aggressive ancillary of the Arctic Gate. They appeared to be advancing to move adjoin the checkpoint.
“Ivan is animate his way to her,” Alex said.
Your browser does not abutment the video tag.
Fatema texted, “Tell him am on the added side. The Afghan troop side. I can’t cantankerous it. They accessible fire.” Afresh two arrant emojis.
She larboard articulation memos, but it was adamantine to apprehend her over the gunfire.
At the checkpoint, bodies were sitting because the Taliban had warned that if anyone stood they would be shot. Men and women were awash together. I was duck-walking to break low. I had to accumulate affective forward. I had to focus.
I saw a woman with her duke boring on the ground, and bodies were dispatch on it. It seemed broken from her shoulder. I glanced at her and afresh a breach gas brazier landed in advanced of me. I took a absolute hit. Bodies started active and pushing, and tears were alive out of my eyes. My arch acquainted heavy.
I got trapped in the average of a ample family. The woman was so mad, but I couldn’t acquaint who was allotment of the ancestors and who was not. She pushed me back. So I approved to boring move through them in a crouch. I couldn’t angle because the Taliban would shoot. They were whipping bodies who got close. Afresh bodies got mad about the breach gas and started running.
Once I stood, a man accomplished about and affective me adamantine amid my legs. I couldn’t move advanced because he was avaricious me, and I couldn’t sit because his duke was amid my legs, and I couldn’t break continuing because bullets were zipping over my head. I couldn’t move his hand. His ancestors watched the assault. A woman smacked me on my aback and said: “Sit down! They’re activity to shoot you!”
I thought, OK, Fatema, you’re activity to die here, but this is torture.
I stood taller and shouted, “I appetite to get out!”
A Talib inches abroad emptied his gun abutting to my ear. I went deaf. Addition woman beside me was hit by bullets. I could see the shells falling. I didn’t cartel attending back. The Talib pushed me adamantine and I stumbled out of the crowd. Everything went black.
When I woke up I was by the roadside, and addition was giving me water. “It’s salty,” he said. I drank it all.
I arrested my phone. Somehow my brother was on the line. I told him: “Bring baptize and booty me aback home.”
For me it was over.
“I cnt,” she texted.
“I will die. They accessible fire. And bandy breach gas.”
From 8,000 afar away, Alex accomplished out to calm her.
“Pls abeyance and anticipate of article you love.”
Dancing in my bedchamber to Bollywood songs, singing so loud I balloon myself. Actuality abandoned beneath my own roof. The aboriginal chaw of a acerb kiwi. The breakable cockle of a daffodil. Meditating on the rooftop in the morning stillness. The complete of my babyish sister Mobina’s laugh. The adventuresomeness I feel in the morning aback I leave the abode attractive the way I want. Arguing in the restaurant until afterwards dark, walking home in the abandoned streets. The adaptation of me I am building. The new backbone in my voice. Steaming coffee in my boss’ office. Chunky peanut butter. Pomegranate seeds. Wednesdays. Storm clouds acquisition on Mobina’s face, afresh abbreviating into laughter. The adroit exhausted of my fingers on keys, a adventure unspooling afore me. My mom’s ash sabzi soup. Racing up the Ghoriq abundance to see the sunrise. The aroma of boiling clay afterwards a rain. My admired access from Azadi, a book about India. The appellation agency Freedom:
An hour went by.
“The gas went to my eyes,” she assuredly wrote. “I cannot stop my tears. They kept firing.”
Alex responded, “It’s OK, let the tears flow. Do not run blindly about and focus on your breathing.”
He afresh messaged me privately: “I’ve been added fatigued out over this night than actuality in Afghanistan myself.”
Alex additionally explained that Iryna’s aggressive bang-up in Kyiv, the baronial Ukrainian accepted who had accustomed the mission to abstract Fatema, was now talking anon with the Taliban to accommodate a way accomplished this checkpoint. It appeared that Gen. Kyrylo O. Budanov, who had spent abundant of his career as an clandestine intelligence administrator abaft adversary lines, was able to pay the Taliban if it came to it.
Alex texted videos of scenes at the gate. In one, families apple-polish as battery rings out and agee camera angles show civilians abject by abbreviate walls, atrocious for any protection. Another showed a boy, crying, sitting on a man’s shoulders. Less than a bottom away, a soldier with an advance burglarize briefly consoles him by affecting his button with one duke afore cutting into the air with the other.
Fatema texted us: “The adopted troops accumulate battlefront and application the breach gas. Amuse ask them to appear and get (me) soon.”
I could try to go home but had annihilation to go aback to. The Taliban would exhausted me or annihilate me or own me. There was annihilation to repair. We accept organizations adherent to women’s rights, but the ability and bribery are too accepted to acquiesce accurate gains. Women like me booty all the risks. Our advance was not real. It was a balloon that popped.
The buzz rang. It was Ivan, cogent me to accommodated up with a guy who would booty me closer. Afterwards a few account of analytic I begin him. He took me to a abode breadth abounding Ukrainian families were cat-and-mouse to get through the gate. I saw the Ukrainian banderole acceleration from the adopted troops’ side. “It’s time to move,” I said, and pushed forward.
There was no solid wall, abandoned a wire fence, so the NATO troops feared a suicide bomber, and aback we got too abutting to the wires, both the Taliban and adopted troops opened fire. Aback I looked abaft me, I saw abandoned one family. The blow were gone. I don’t apperceive where.
Closer to the wire, afterpiece to the Taliban. One approved to advance me back. I looked at him directly, aloof a man about my age, with aphotic eyes like mine. The words caked out afore I could stop them. “We ability be the aforementioned age, but God, you are so violent. You don’t charge to exhausted bodies up, you don’t charge to annihilate them. These are our people.”
We ability be the aforementioned age, but God, you are so violent. You don’t charge to exhausted bodies up, you don’t charge to annihilate them. These are our people…
He looked as if he were listening, but he was accepting mad. He shoved me. But all my abhorrence was gone.
“Look at those troops on the added side,” I told him. “They are cat-and-mouse for me and watching us now. If you exhausted me up, they will appear afterwards you.”
He let me afterpiece to the wires, breadth I stood as alpine as I could, aerial my easily to the sky and screamed,
“Ivan! Ivan! It’s Fatema! It’s Fatema!”
He was continuing appropriate in advanced of me on the added ancillary of the fence, and beatific one of his armament alfresco to get me. This soldier bisected agitated me, bisected abject me, and I stepped over God knows how abounding on the way through the gate.
“Am in,” she texted. “Am safe.”
Ukraine’s Air Force alike backward in Kabul two added canicule as Ukrainian appropriate armament approved to accomplishment added of its nationals and others who bare help.
As we waited for the alike to depart, Iryna beatific us updates.
“She is smiling, safe and not hungry,” Iryna captioned a photo of Fatema continuing alfresco abreast a addition of Ukraine’s Air Force jet at Kabul’s airport.
Fatema beams in a blooming dress, leggings and jean jacket. No hijab.
We got into a aggressive plane. It was alveolate with seats forth the carelessness but no seatbelts. We were accustomed bales of aggressive aliment that tasted acceptable to me but fabricated some bodies sick.
The aboriginal night, we slept warm, sitting up in our seats, but the additional night there were added people, so we ran out of amplitude and blankets. A Ukrainian soldier lent me his coat, which I acclimated to awning me as I slept. Aback I woke, it was gone. He bare it for work.
Every distinct commuter in the alike agitated their exhaustions, sorrows and comatose dreams with them. The aforementioned was with me.
I saw an old woman with annoyed eyes whose abandoned ambition charge accept been to absorb the aftermost years of her activity at home. How would she alpha over in a acreage with no memories?
I saw a woman six months’ pregnant, who ability accept hoped to accord bearing to her babyish in a developing country breadth the adolescent bearing was aggravating to accomplish change possible.
And I saw the children, of course, whose ancient memories ability be the daydream of the abatement of their citizenry to the Taliban.
One boy on the plane, maybe 5, was cogent his adolescent brother: “Don’t cry, or the Taliban will come.”
Fatema absolved out of the arrivals terminal blinking into the sun at Kyiv’s Boryspil All-embracing Airport at 9:30 a.m. Sunday bounded time. Iryna beatific a photo of the two of them together, all advanced smiles and adored relief.
They went aback to Iryna’s apartment. Fatema promptly fell asleep.
Iryna said that in two canicule she herself would be activity to Kabul as allotment of a new Ukrainian appropriate armament mission to try to carelessness added Afghans. Fatema could break in her apartment.
“Give me added names,” Iryna said. “We will try to accompany them here.”
USA TODAY gave 17 names of journalists, ally and their families. And, of course, Fatema’s parents, Sayed Amin and Masuma, her brother, Abulfazl, and her babyish sister, Mobina.
I told my parents: Be ready, be ready, lighten your suitcases. Mom had one accomplished attache abounding of kitchen being and one accomplished attache of broiled herbs. I said, “You accept to bandy every distinct affair away!” They were in the average of banquet aback I alleged and told them they had 30 account to accommodated the bus.
“You’re so late!” I kept saying. “The bus is activity to leave!”
The bus was congenital for 25 and captivated 45. Alex, through a acquaintance in the German military, had sourced an Afghan bus disciplinarian accommodating to aces up the accumulation and amphitheater the airport until acquaintance could be accustomed with Iryna and the Ukrainians. In exchange, the bus disciplinarian and his ancestors would be accustomed to accompany the flight out of Kabul. The bus concluded up sitting in advanced of the airport overnight, as Taliban militants prowled the breadth and issued assorted threats. My brother texted and said: “Mom can’t breathe. Bodies are sitting on top of anniversary other. Mobina is crying. She’s exhausted.”
Kim came to see me in Ukraine. He was tracking my ancestors on WhatsApp. We knew they were through the aboideau at the airport aback we heard that a suicide adviser detonated an atomic belt, killing array of people. Images from the airport showed smoke ascent in advanced of planes on the runway.
I approved texting my family but got no replies. For a moment I anticipation I’d absent them.
Kim aimlessly messaged Alex. “Are they in the air?”
I afraid my phone. I could do nothing. There was so abundant confusion.
“Yes,” Alex assuredly said.
After my ancestors was safe in the Ukraine, afterwards I’d hugged my mom and kissed Mobina’s face and anybody had slept, my mom and I talked about the things we larboard behind.
She’d had to carelessness the herbs and her down-covered kitchen slippers. I absent dresses I couldn’t pack.
“I brought those,” she said. I couldn’t accept it. I’d larboard them in a accumulation on the floor.
“My journal,” I said, canonizing that I’d asked her to bake it. “I brought that too,” she said.
That was my mom, salvaging what she could. She forgot my brother’s underwear, but she saved my purest memories, the ones breadth I begin my voice.
I was the aboriginal Afghan Alex abandoned from Kabul. Afterward, still in his noncombatant capacity, he formed with Iryna and added contacts to accomplishment 500 more. His captivation started with that buzz alarm from Kim.
My ancestors charcoal in Kyiv. Their alike aerial off from the Kabul aerodrome account afore ISIS-K terrorists agitated out a suicide bombing at the airport gate, killing at atomic 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. soldiers in the affliction accident of activity in Afghanistan for American troops aback 2011.
After the U.S. withdrawal, Taliban fighters exhausted two of my colleagues at Etilaat-e-Roz who were accoutrement a beef over women’s rights. They were hospitalized. The Taliban accept been apparent in my Kabul neighborhood. Video shows them advance a woman and banishment men into the trunks of cars.
The Taliban has anchored their ascendancy of women’s freedoms. Aback Afghanistan’s new apprenticeship admiral ordered all macho agents and acceptance aback to academy in backward September, there was no acknowledgment of changeable educators and pupils. The Taliban’s new government has no women in it.
VETTED CHARITIES: How to advice Afghan refugees
On Sept. 11, I flew from Kyiv to Doha, Qatar, to Dulles All-embracing Airport alfresco Washington, D.C., the actual airport where, 20 years ago, a jet took off loaded with cartage and hijackers and fuel. Shortly afterwards my alike arrived, the airport captivated a moment of blackout appearance the time the aboriginal alike hit the arctic belfry of the Apple Trade Centermost at 8:46 a.m.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I don’t anticipate so. Twenty years, about to the minute.
Followers of Osama bin Laden and others are still in Pakistan and Afghanistan, acclimation and recruiting. Women are afraid beneath atramentous cloth. Adolescent girls are hemorrhaging in childbirth. We still accept a apple to win, and some allotment of that action belongs to me.
Fatema Hosseini continues to address on Afghanistan and the Taliban for the British account aggregation Newsquest, a USA TODAY affiliate.
SUBSCRIBE: To abutment journalists like Fatema and Kim and get added belief that matter, subscribe to USA TODAY
How To Write Baby Record Book – How To Write Baby Record Book
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