23
Jun
This is the second of two articles published to mark Refugee Week, which celebrates the "contribution, creativity and resilience" of refugees around the world. In the first article, published yesterday, we met some of the people tasked with helping refugees to build new lives after resettlement in the Harrogate district.
Nahid Hamidi is happy. She lives with her family in Harrogate, her children are in school and nursery, and her restaurant business is thriving.
In fact, things seem to be going so well that it's hard to imagine just how far she has come, and how much she has been through to get where she is.
Nahid, her husband Jamil and her two young daughters were among the 10,000 Afghans airlifted out of Kabul after the Taliban overran the country in August 2021.
They arrived in Harrogate in November 2021, emotionally exhausted and unsure what the future here would hold. But they knew it was better than the alternative: a precarious life in Afghanistan, constantly at risk of harm from the Taliban.
That's because Jamil is a marked man there. He worked for two years as an interpreter with the British Army, stopping only when he was badly injured by a Taliban car-bomb.
Nahid told the Stray Ferret:
My husband is really brave. During the war, a British soldier was killed by the Taliban. My husband wanted to take the body to the camp, because he said, 'These men came to Afghanistan to help the Afghan people. If I leave his body to the Taliban, they will cut it or take it away, but if I take the body to the camp and we send it to the UK, at least his family will be able to see it'.
The Taliban shouted on the speaker: 'Leave the body! Leave the body!' But my husband made a great effort to collect it and bring it to the camp.
After that, the Taliban kept looking for my husband, because it would have been a big achievement for the Taliban to have a British dead body. When they saw that he had parked near a shop to buy something, they put a bomb in his car, and when he got in, the bomb went off. He was lucky that he only lost one of his heels. It was a big bomb, and he could have died.
Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan province, where Nahid and her family lived.
In early 2021, the Taliban were gaining ground, so Jamil was granted a visa to come to Britain through the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). But Nahid, who was trained in ICT and ran her own charity, was reluctant to come. She says:
I'd never left my country, and it would be the first time I ever crossed the border. I didn't want to leave my family. I told my husband, 'I'm like a queen here: I have a good job, I have my dream house, I have goals, I have lots of family and friends around, I have my two beautiful daughters, and I don't want to leave my country – I want to stay and help my people'.
But it was too dangerous to stay, so they made preparations to leave their home in the northern Badakhshan province and head for the capital, Kabul. By this time, Nahid was pregnant and was advised to fly rather than risk the 12-hour car journey. With great difficulty and expense, she secured a flight on a UN plane, while Jamil followed by car. She says:
It was very dangerous. The route was completely blocked by the Taliban. They had checkpoints everywhere, and if they found that you were working with the British...
So Jamil had to disguise himself and wear traditional clothes, instead of trousers and shirt, and he had to hide his documents somewhere safe.
Nahid with some of the women and children who were helped by her charity
It was when Nahid got to the capital that a twist of fate wrecked their escape plans. But it wasn't gunmen that caused the trouble – it was a virus.
Nahid says:
When I arrived in Kabul, they asked me for a covid test and it came up positive, so I had to stay in a quarantine hotel for 14 days. On the day we went back to the lab [for another test], the Taliban took over Kabul.
That was August 15, 2021, and by then TV news crews were beaming scenes of the chaos around the world as Kabul Airport was besieged by thousands of Afghans desperate to catch a flight out of the country before the Taliban strengthened its grip.
Nahid says:
We stayed for 10 days after the Taliban took over, and it was a really bad time. There was no food, no water, and it was really hard with my children. There was a [sewage] ditch that was really dirty. I was lucky that my nose was closed because of covid – I couldn't smell it!
Eventually, one night we went out at two o'clock in the morning. My husband had also worked with a Dutch organisation, so he went to try to find either a Dutch or British soldier. Finally, with the help of a Dutch soldier, we crossed the ditch and got into the airport.
Passed on to British soldiers, Jamil, Nahid and their girls were eventually put on a military transport plane out of the country.
Nahid says:
It was full of people and we all had to sit on the floor. It was really hot and uncomfortable. All I had was a small bag of nappies for my children. We left everything in Afghanistan.
When we left Kabul, it was the last night before all the foreign countries left Afghanistan, and when the door of the aircraft closed, we just started crying: we're safe now.
Refugees boarded planes from Kabul in the middle of the night. Picture: Ministry of Defence.
After a night spent on the floor of Dubai Airport, the family was flown to London and put up in a hotel under quarantine for 21 days. They were then moved to Scarborough, before finally being resettled in Harrogate.
Now, three years after leaving their home in Badakhshan, Nahid and her family are building a life in very different surroundings from the ones they were used to.
In Afghanistan Nahid ran her own charity, helping women prisoners and orphans and running a “social guest house” for people from remote districts visiting the provincial capital to access healthcare. She is now drawing on her skills and managerial experience to run her pop-up restaurant business, The Afghan Kitchen, which employs six Afghan refugees and has garnered good reviews.
Some of the pregnant women Nahid cared for in Afghanistan had to walk for seven days over the mountains to get medical help.
The process of resettlement is well underway, but it’s far from complete. Her husband, Jamil, has been working but is currently recuperating following a major operation on his injured foot, 14 years after he was nearly assassinated for helping British troops.
Back in Afghanistan, family members are still in danger due to their connections with Allied forces, and communication is sporadic.
Nahid says:
Right now, I'm really fine. I'm perhaps not 100% settled, but maybe 50%. I have a job, a house, I don't have any financial problems, and the good thing is that my daughters are in school. In Afghanistan they wouldn't be allowed to go to school.
I have to say, I'll always be thankful to the government of the UK. If they hadn't invited us to come to this country, I'm sure our lives would have been in danger. And I’ve never had any negative experiences with British people – they’re really friendly and supportive.
But the thing I miss most – the other 50% – is that I'm physically here, but mentally in Afghanistan. I miss my mum.
Maybe some day everything will change and the Taliban will be gone, and I'll be able to see my family again.
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