Nine days motivate to freedom: An Afghan’s tale
The fairway card that Atifa and her brother at possibility of win motivate into the U.S. the old day additionally put their lives at possibility motivate in Kabul, when the Taliban searched door to door for American citizens.
Riding the news: Axios interviewed the 21-year-extinct and her 18-year-extinct sibling, who went by his final name, Ahmadi, at the Dulles Expo Middle in Chantilly, Va. They gave a significant-hand tale of the hump from Afghanistan to the U.S. — a homely, demanding, exhausting time out lasting 9 days.
Atifa and Ahmadi had been in Afghanistan visiting family for the month and a half preceding the give design of the executive. It took them three days to invent it into the Kabul airport.
- Within the protection of a convention heart outside the nation’s capital, they win been surrounded by over 100 others who’d fled Afghanistan.
- Amongst them win been youngsters playing with hula hoops, moms in head scarves preserving youngsters, young males in outdated garments.
After boarding a flight out of Kabul, the siblings landed at the Al Udeid Air Sinister in Doha, Qatar, where they stayed for 2 nights.
- There used to be diminutive meals, and none that Afghans are at possibility of eating.
- Their next close used to be Germany. After 5 days, they boarded a 12-hour flight to the U.S.
The expo heart used to be stuffed with the echoes of dozens of varied Afghans who emerged from in the motivate of dividers where they’d been processed with wristbands signaling their varied visa statuses.
- A whole bunch of green cots sat lined with Crimson Injurious blankets, divided by curtains and labeled with hand-written indicators designating sections for single females or families — in English and Dari.
- A curtained put used to be living aside for prayer.
Outdoors, a U.S. citizen who lives in Unique York told Axios’ Erin Doherty she used to be at a loss for words about why she landed in Virginia.
- Folk waited for kinfolk — or looked for a lost accumulate.