B’s Journey from Afghanistan
Photo provided by B
PART 1/3
Her Earliest years in afghanistan
I was born in Kandahar, a Southern province of Afghanistan. My mother is originally from Kabul, and my father is from the Kandahar region. They met when my father was in Kabul for work, it was a marriage of love, not an arranged marriage. My parents had 4 children: my older brother who is now 19, then myself (I have just turned 18), my younger brother who is 15 and my little sister who is 13 years old. We lived there for 8 years but Kandahar has always been a very unstable region - the Taliban has a stronghold there. My father was a civil servant and working for the government, we always received notes and threats from the Taliban, because they didn’t like anyone working with the authorities, but he insisted on continuing with his work. They knew everything about our family, where we went to school, how old we were, what we did. We didn’t know who kept posting these letters to us. My father was a really loving dad, I think he loved me the most out of everyone. When he would come home from work he would never come home empty handed. He would always bring me chocolates or some sweets. My parents were so loving with each other, I was very lucky.
When I was eight years old, my father went to the mosque one day for evening prayers. My mother had prepared dinner, and all five of us were waiting for him to come back. We heard loud noises in the distance, and before we even realised what it was my mother said “It’s your father”, she just knew it. We ran outside and there were lots of people there. He was unconscious, so we were not able to speak with him, but he was still breathing. The police arrived 15 minutes later and took him to the hospital, but the next day they told us he had passed away. Still now, after all these years we don’t talk about it a lot, because the memory is still so devastating.
My mother was still very young herself, and suddenly she was a single mom with four young children to look after. It was so hard for her. Sadly my grandfather made life even more difficult for her. My mother wanted to leave Kandahar and go to Kabul, because she had had enough of living her life in fear of the Taliban - she had lost her husband and she was scared that she would also lose us, her children. But my grandfather from my dad’s side would not allow her to leave Kandahar. He told her she had to stay. He also wanted her to marry my uncle - my dad’s brother, but my mother refused. She was loyal to my father still and she never wanted to marry another man. In Afghanistan it is very difficult to be a single woman, and my grandfather wanted to decide how she should live her life and run the family. Eventually he agreed to let her go to Kabul, but only on the condition that she would take just one son and one daughter with her, and that she would leave her other daughter and son behind in Kandahar. My mother of course did not consent. Our life was very lonely, we could not go to school because the Taliban doesn’t like girls being educated. My mother also could not work because women are not allowed to, so we relied on my grandfather to bring us food and clothes. My grandfather was a very influential man in Kandahar, he had many contacts, also with the police, so we were scared to leave.
My auntie loved us very much and she was such a good person: she told my mother that we had to go because it was too dangerous for us to stay, and she knew we would have no life or future in that town. She gave my mother money, and she helped us escape to Kabul. I remember we took a taxi to the bus station to go to the capital. But I also remember we were all very scared that somebody would see us leaving and tell my grandfather.
At first we lived with my mother’s sister in Kabul. But when my mom found work at a bank she also found a house for ourselves. We stayed in Kabul for a few years, but life was very hard for a single woman to support 4 children. It was so difficult for her to make ends meet: to pay the rent, to buy food, and to send all 4 of us to school. In the meantime our grandfather would never leave us alone, he would call and harass us, demanding to know where we were and what we were doing, he vowed that he would find us. We never told him that we are in Kabul but he probably suspected it because he knew that was where my mother was from. We were always scared that they would find us, because my grandfather had so many connections. If he would find us I’m not sure what he would do: but for sure he would take one of us, or all of us children back to Kandahar, and it would be impossible for my mother to get us back. If we would have gone back to Kandahar, there would be no future for us: no school and no education, only suppression. Just to stay inside the house until we would be married off as young girls.
My mom studied journalism at university, but when we arrived in Kabul she found a job at the bank as a loan officer. I was small at the time so I didn’t stop to think about it, but when I think about my mom now I am just amazed at her strength, and how she managed to work and look after her family all by herself. She is the strongest person I know. I know she must have hidden all her fears and all her worries from us children. We had to go to school by ourselves because she was working full-time, but even that was very scary and dangerous. My mom was never sure if we might be abducted by our grandfather along the way. It was no way to live for any of us. We were free to some extend, but somehow still trapped under his influence and always terrified of being found out. And my mom worked long hours, came home and cooked us food, cleaned the house and had to help us with our homework, without any help from anyone. In the beginning my mother would sell off her jewellery to help with the bills, but after a few years she had run out of gold to sell. My father had owned many properties in Kandahar, but we couldn’t touch them of course. And her job alone was not enough to pay for everything. This is when she decided it was time to get away from my grandfather, away from the Taliban, and away from everything that stopped her children from having a chance at a future. She saved up from her job so we could finally leave Afghanistan for good.
PART 2/3
Leaving Afghanistan Still a Child
We flew to Iran and stayed there for two weeks with a family my mother knew. Then she found a smuggler who would take us over the border to Turkey. A grown-up cousin from back home also joined us because his father knew that we were very vulnerable between the five of us, and even my older brother was still very young back then. That was a huge relief for my mother. One night the smuggler called us and told us to come so we could cross the border, they put us on an open top van with a cloth cover. I still remember thinking this driver was absolutely crazy, I had never seen such a careless and dangerous person in my life. The road was so dangerous and full of potholes and rocks, we were shaken around from side to side and were holding on as tight as we could so we wouldn’t fall out. We were all hugging each other and I remember that the whole night my mom would repeat to us: “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. All of this will pass.”
There was a scout in front of the car who would call the smuggler we were with, and he would tell him what to do: to go right or left, to stop, or for us to hide. We were kicked out of the car at some point and told to wait, it was so dark outside, the night filled only with stars and the sound of barking dogs in the distance. The weather was so cold and we didn’t have much with us to keep ourselves warm, just some food and extra clothes that we put on. Some more people joined us. They also made us get rid of our belongings and the smugglers made us take these black packages across to Turkey. I don’t know what was inside, maybe tobacco or maybe drugs, but we were threatened not to open them. Then we were told to start walking. I think it must have taken us two or three hours by foot. All I remember is that it was pitch black and so dangerous, and we weren’t able to use our phones as a torch or anything like that because then the border guards might spot us. Sometimes my mom or the older boy would carry us, but it was a very difficult crossing.
It was probably about 04:00 in the morning when the smuggler pointed to a light in the distance. “That’s Turkey” he said, and that’s where he left us to cross a small river. It was deep and the water was powerful. We found a rubber tube to help the crossing but we realised it was leaking so it filled up with water. The older boy helped all of us cross, one by one. We were so lucky he was with us because we would never have been able to make the crossing by ourselves. My mom crossed last with the older boy, and in the distance we could see that the Iranian police had spotted us and was coming down to us. They shouted at us to stop, but we didn’t. Some people from our group were still halfway in the water when the police started shooting. A bullet went straight past my mother, and missed her by just a few inches. We started running as fast as we could. I know that there were two people from our group left behind in the water, because we never saw them again, and I don’t know what happened to them, but they were probably either caught or hit.
We were wet and chilled to the bone, the weather was freezing and the river had soaked us. Still we had to keep running for as long as we could. We crossed a road with cars and the people who saw us were shocked - we must have looked like zombies, not humans. We waited on the other side of the road in our wet gear, for another smuggler to come and pick us up. A vehicle came and this time it was a big van without any windows. More and more people on the run joined us, then they stuffed us inside this van without air or light, we must have been nearly a hundred people. We were squashed inside like sardines in a tin. We couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t make a sound and we couldn’t move as we were going past the police check points. It was about six hours to a city called Batman. And we stayed like that, squashed, frozen, hungry, exhausted and hardly able to breathe. They dropped us off at a bus station and then went to the Police to report ourselves. At the police station they asked us what city we wanted to go to. We told them we wanted to go to Afyon, because it was the only place we had heard of in Turkey, and we knew another family who already lived there. We lived and slept at the bus station for two days until they took us there. After a very long and dangerous journey, we had finally reached our destination.
At first in Afyon we stayed with the Afghan family we knew, and shortly afterwards we found a home to rent for ourselves. At first my mom felt very happy because she was finally free from fear of my grandfather, we were out of his reach at last. But it wasn’t long before we realised how difficult life in Turkey actually was: they didn’t send us back to Afghanistan, but at the same time they also didn’t give my mom a work permit, and it’s pretty much impossible to find work without a permit and without speaking Turkish so we were living in extreme poverty. The allowance we received was only enough to pay the rent, but there was no money to buy food or clothes or to go to the doctor if we needed to. Sometimes my mother would find work as a cleaner inside people’s homes, but it was very little money and it was inconsistent work. We were able to go to school and I quickly learned Turkish, but my older brother and I would go to straight to work at the sweets factory at the end of our school day. At the end of the month my brother and I went to collect our wages but instead of giving us the 900 liras they owed us, they gave us only 200 liras. We said: “Give us our money!”, but they just laughed at us. They knew that there was nothing we could do because we are refugees with no rights and no work permits, so we would never be able to go to the police. The only right we had was the right to go to school, but as soon as we would turn 18 we would not be able to continue our studies, and we would not have been allowed to attend university later on with the papers we received. We also felt unwelcome and hated. A lot of shops would have signs outside saying ‘No entry for refugees’. So we felt again that we had to move on. My mother asked her sister to find and send money for us so we could leave, and in the winter of 2019 we decided to try and make it to Greece.
We tried to make the crossing twice but we were caught by the Turkish coast guards and arrested. When they first caught us, they put us inside a camp, they gave the five of us a small room, it was like a prison to be honest, because we were not allowed to leave our room. For two weeks we stayed inside without sunlight or fresh air, and twice a day they would bring us some food. When eventually they let us go the policeman said to us: “If we catch you again, we’ll send you straight back to Afghanistan.”
We had to contact the smuggler to try and make the crossing again. For our second attempt we stayed in the woods of the coast for two days without food or water, waiting to get the go-ahead from the smuggler. We were about 15 people, which was okay to fit inside the dinghy, but at the last moment the smuggler brought four more families and he said they are coming with us too. My mom told the smuggler it was not safe to fit all these people into a small rubber dinghy, and that we had paid for a safe trip, but the smuggler just laughed at her. We set off but very soon we realised already that our boat was broken and that water was coming in. We used our shoes and our water bottles to empty out the boat, but we were way too many people so the boat was refilling much quicker than we could empty it. We were about 30 minutes away from the shore at this point, and Greece was still a good few hours away from us. Everything around us was just pitch black. We decided we had to call for help because we would not be able to make it to Greece, and we weren’t sure how long we’d be staying afloat in our broken dinghy. But there was no phone signal where we were, all of us were trying but nobody could send anything. I don’t think anyone can understand how frightening this situation is unless they’ve experienced it. The powerlessness you feel when you’re surrendered to the water, and the water alone, because there is nothing around you but cold waves, and nobody who can hear you.
I don’t think anyone can understand how frightening this situation is unless they’ve experienced it. The powerlessness you feel when you’re surrendered to the water, and the water alone, because there is nothing around you but cold waves, and nobody who can hear you.
We paddled a little further until one of the guys in the boat managed to get a signal and call the Turkish police. They arrived after 20 minutes and they took us straight back to another camp where we stayed for another two weeks. But we were just happy to still be alive.
The third time we tried to cross there were 70 people to the boat, all squeezed onto this dinghy, it was so dangerous. My mom was hesitating a lot to get onto the boat, but she also knew we couldn’t stay or go back. So we went because we still had hope that somehow fortune would finally find us and we could cross safely. About an hour into our journey the engine cut out. We were lucky because there was a person on board who knew how to fix motorcycles. By the light of our phones, he worked on the engine for about 30 minutes whilst the waves were crashing against our boat and coming inside. He managed to get it going again, when the engine switched back on we all breathed a sigh of relief and joy. But our ordeal was not yet over, an hour further into our journey the engine cut out again, and it turned out that this time it had ran out of petrol. We had already emptied out our backpacks to the bare minimum when we were at the beach, but to try and make ourselves lighter we had to throw out everything and anything we still had on us. When we were looking for things to throw overboard somebody stumbled across a small water bottle filled with petrol. You can’t imagine the joy when we discovered this. The boat actually managed to carry on for another hour and a half, we switched on our phones and we realised we had reached Greek waters. We could see the flags in the distance.
PART 3/3
Europe
“We stayed inside a big tent for three days.”
Photo: forRefugees, 2017 at Stage 2 Camp, Lesvos
We arrived at a beach in the early morning. There were some tourists there who seemed completely shocked to see our dinghy arriving. The tourists called the police for us and we waited about an hour to be picked up. We were so cold from being wet all night. They took us away in some cars and vans, gave us a blanket and they took us far away from where we landed and we relaxed a little.
When we arrived to the transit camp they gave us dry clothes and did a medical check up. We stayed inside a big tent for three days to register us and get our papers sorted. We were excited to leave and be taken to the next part of our journey, we didn’t expect much, a simple and safe room for the five of us would have been okay.
But instead we were brought to the most horrible camp I could ever imagine. It was camp Moria on Lesvos. It was so dirty, so dangerous and so desperate. The air was always filled with the foul smell of burning plastic, dirty blankets and clothes, and the constant smell of human faeces all around. There was very little running water, absolutely disgusting toilets, food queues with thousands of people, and men fighting with each other. When my mother saw the camp she burst out crying and said “What have I done? We should have stayed in Turkey, I should have just tried harder to find work instead of bringing you to this place.” We were comforting her and telling her she had made the right decision to try for a better future but my mother was so upset.
“We were brought to the most horrible camp I could imagine.”
Photo: forRefugees, 2018 at Moria Refugee Camp, Lesvos
The night we arrived there was an Arabic man and an Afghan man fighting each other with knifes. We were given a tent and told to find a place to camp at the end of the jungle, very far away from the main camp or any of the facilities.
For the first month, we didn’t leave the tent unless we had to go to the toilet or to get food. My mom wouldn’t let us, she was scared somebody would hurt us, rape us or take us. At night, there was always fighting in the distance or even nearby. So at night we tried not to go to the toilet even if we really needed to, we had to wait till the daylight and we would always go in pairs. My mom would go out by herself to wait for hours in the food line. Whilst she was gone we were not allowed to leave the tent. It took about a month before we got to trust some of the people around us, this one man would sometimes take one of us to the food line, or we would leave the camp and go to one of the good places, like an NGO or volunteer place.
Most single mothers had their registration fast tracked in 3 or 4 months, or they were moved to a better camp, but we remained stuck in the jungle of camp Moria for more than a year. We arrived in the winter, and we all just had one blanket each so we were always suffering from the cold and wet. The food was terrible but we had nothing else to eat so we had to. Every day for 1 year we would go to the UNHCR office and ask that they transfer us because my mom was a single mother with four children, and also because she desperately needed an operation that she wasn’t able to have on the island. I know it sounds hard to believe, but for that one whole year we pretty much just stayed inside our tent all day. We would watch videos on mom’s phone or play games, but a lot of times we were just bored or I filled my hours just thinking about everything that has happened to us, or everything that might still happen. I was a 16 year old girl at the time, and it was very hard for me to imagine what my future would be like.
In the last few months a volunteer came to our tent and she found out that I speak English. She asked my mom if I could come and help with translating at their project. My mom was too scared for me to go out by myself, but eventually she agreed to let me go if Martha would come and pick me up and drop me off every day. It was a project for women to drink tea, wash clothes and have a shower. For me it was a great place to escape to from the camp. It was safe and it was cosy. I helped there with translating and with volunteer duties in running the project.
One day my mother got so so sick. She was too sick to drink water and she was too sick to even stand up. I went to the MSF clinic to borrow a wheelchair and bring my mother to them. It turned out she had kidney stones, they were so bad that MSF called for an ambulance to bring her to the hospital in Mytilini. My mother had to stay in the hospital for two whole weeks, and I stayed with her to translate and look after her. But my siblings were all alone inside our tent. Thankfully we had a really good neighbour who promised us to look after my family. But the whole time that we were in the hospital my mother never stopped worrying about my siblings. The hospital gave my mom some medicines and treatment, but they told us that she actually really needed an operation to get the kidney stones out. But this operation could only be done in Athens, in Lesvos they did not have the capacity.
My mom felt a little better with the medicines, so after two weeks she was finally discharged from the hospital and we returned to the camp. We took our doctors’ indication to UNHCR, but they said it doesn’t make a difference because she’s feeling better at that point. For two months straight I went to the office everyday begging them to put my family on the list. To be honest, I think they got pretty sick of me, but I kept coming anyway. After having spent 13 months in camp Moria there was a family who didn’t want to move to Athens, so they put our family in their place instead. I think this was one of the happiest days we ever had, we were finally able to leave this hell!
When we reached Athens we were taken to a hotel and given one room for the five of us. It was better than the camp, but it was still very dirty and the room was covered with ants. The food was so horrible, but still we were feeling a little better: we were able to go out, we were close to the beach and at last we felt that we were safe. We stayed at the hotel for six months when it was torn down and converted into luxury holiday apartments. Some people were relocated, or sent to another camp on the mainland, we were lucky enough that we were moved into an apartment by Nostos (a greek NGO in charge of housing). The first home we had was so beautiful, it was big, it had enough beds, a stove and a fridge. We felt happy there and we made it our home. But after four months we were kicked out. Our neighbours didn’t like us and they went to Nostos and they complained about us. They told lies and said that we were noisy and a nuisance. None of it was true but we were forced to leave anyway. We were moved into a much smaller apartment, it’s not as nice as our previous house, but we accept it and are still happy to have a roof over our heads.
In the fall of 2021 we received a positive asylum claim in Greece. We didn’t tell Nostos straight away because as soon as we receive the residency permits, within two weeks the cash assistance is cut off and you are forced to leave your accommodation. In this time you are supposed to find a home, a job and enough income to support your whole family. Greece has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, and things like renting a home or opening a bank account are a bureaucratic nightmare, especially for people who do not know the language yet. I’d been trying to find a job as a translator with organisations, but the competition is fierce as it’s often the only opportunity for work among refugees.
One day in December, our case worker from Nostos came to do a house visit and she told us she had found out that we received our asylum decision, so it means we will have to leave the apartment the next month. There were many families like us in the same situation. Most of them will try to stay in the accommodation for longer whilst they search for a job or apply for the Helios assistance program. But a lot of those families eventually end up on the streets, stay illegally inside a camp or live in a squad, including women and children, or single mothers like my own mum. We would do the same, we decided to stay for as long as we could until we are really kicked out.
I had just turned 18, and I was taking a computer course in Athens through an organisation for refugees to learn to use software and technology. My whole life I have loved doing art, it has always been an escape for me. I draw, do water colours and also use my phone to make portraits and digital paintings. I often draw women, because I admire their strength, especially my mother’s. The women I draw are very colourful characters, but they are faceless, you only see their outlines. And it’s because in my country, but also here in Europe, people don’t listen to women, they do not pay attention or respect them. I sell my art through instagram and my website: when they choose the design I print some cards and posters and send it to them via the post. Whatever I sell I use the money to help my family, and also I take some of the money and buy food for the homeless. There are so many poor people in Athens. It makes me very sad when a Greek person doesn’t have a home in their own country. I cannot accept it when people don’t have a roof over their heads.
With all our own worries, we also worry a lot about my mom’s family who are still in Afghanistan. They have it very hard after the Taliban take over. They have the money and the visas to go to Pakistan and reach safety, but the borders are shut and they cannot get through the checkpoints. My cousins cannot go to university because they are girls, there are no jobs, the banks are shut and life is generally very dangerous and difficult. There is nothing we can do for them: I feel so sad for these girls, and I feel so lucky despite our difficult situation here, that at the very least we are safe and we are free. My mother, my siblings and myself, we are all very close with each other. We support and love each other, because each other is all we have here.
When I imagine my future I cannot imagine it in Greece, I would love to be able to study in London, but anywhere where I can learn really. I have many goals, one day I would like to study and have my own business so my mom will be proud of me.
Since the interview B and her family were given an eviction notice to move out of their Athens flat. She tried to find a full time job but couldn’t find anything that would sustain the entire family. The family then decided they would try their luck in Germany and file for a new asylum claim there. They now live in a small town in central Germany. B and her two brothers are studying hard to learn the German language, her younger sister is now 15 and goes to school.
They are still awaiting their asylum decision. It’s 11 years’ since B’s father was so tragically killed in Afghanistan and the family’s lives were changed forever.
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