El Cajon, California – Sayed Omer Sadat imagines the world his daughters would have inherited if the circle of relatives had not escaped Afghanistan.
Think of Asma, 11, with whom she dreams of one day being made by a doctor; D’Aqsa, 6, who loves lipsticks and eye shadows and may one day be a makeup artist; De Gulsom, 9, who can’t speak and relies entirely on his father and mother.
Think about what would have happened to them if the Taliban had confiscated their paintings for the U. S. military.
Women have known a country without Taliban control, but Sadat knows that more than 20 years ago, women were confined to their homes, disadvantaged in painting and education, and beaten for dressing in nail polish.
“The biggest fear is the schooling of my daughters,” said the 35-year-old, with love for his daughters etched on his worried face. “We love our daughters and women to examine and go above and beyond. “
That’s why they landed in San Diego on July 20, stayed in a hotel, and then, with a friend as a resettlement agency, struggled to locate them, and many other Afghan refugees, permanent housing. a two-bedroom apartment in a complex on a busy street in El Cajon.
In early July, President Joe Biden confided in Afghan allies that “there is room for you in the United States if you wish, and we will go through your looks like you have done for our looks. “But some refugees have exhausted their savings while waiting for housing. Many rely on local volunteers to furnish empty apartments, which begs the question: what is a “home away from home”?
For years, Sadat’s space was a four-bedroom, four-bathroom space in Kabul, where he saw his daughters take their first steps; the space where his wife worked as an elementary school instructor and where his brother and elderly mother still live.
From now on, the United States will be the scene of the sadat family’s dreams, but it is not yet at home.
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Sadat was 7 years old when his circle of relatives fled the war in Afghanistan. They lived in Peshawar, Pakistan, for about seven years and only returned to Afghanistan after the U. S. invasion in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
After graduating from high school, Sadat began working as a PC operator with the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. USA He later became site manager for the maintenance of army bases, supervising electricians and plumbers.
He applied for a special immigrant visa in August 2017, hoping to one day leave with his circle of relatives to the United States.
Last year, he returned home to Kabul only once a month. He sat in the back of a 60-person passenger van as he passed Taliban checkpoints, hoping no one would know he was heading to an army facility in Mazar-i-Sharif.
This year, his wife and mom suggested he resign. Three days after receiving his visa in July, Sadat bought one-way tickets from Afghanistan for his family. They first traveled to Dubai, United Arab Emirates on July 19, and then to Los Angeles.
They brought with them two bags full of clothes and documents, Adat gave everything in his space to his brother, the relief he felt when he arrived in San Diego he valued it.
“We are fortunate to have left Afghanistan that day,” he said. “We can pray for the Afghans left behind. “
His circle of relatives has noticed that the stage has since been dramatically replaced. A month after his departure, the Taliban captured the city where he had worked and soon after took the capital where he and his circle of relatives lived.
From San Diego, he watched thousands of desperate Afghans invade the airport, some clinging to a U. S. army transport plane before falling. As the Taliban suggested that Afghanistan stay home after work. As an attack through the Islamic State, the terrorists killed thirteen U. S. service members and at least 170 Afghans.
“Twenty years ago, it was the same scenario we are in today in Afghanistan,” Sadat said. “All upside down. “
Now, like Sadat all those years ago, her daughters are refugees.
But unlike him, he said, his children will grow up “in a country that has it all. “
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In a lime green apartment complex, about 16 kilometers from where Sadat and his circle of relatives were settling, 3 Afghan families arrived last month. they have gotten there over the years.
When Omar Khaliqyar, whose parents left Afghanistan 3 1/2 years ago, sees her, he runs into her arms. When Harman leaves, the 2-year-old bursts into tears.
This year, Harman wrote a letter to the U. S. Embassy on behalf of a woman stranded in Afghanistan, paid her application fee, and helped her complete the bureaucracy to escape. She was able to leave the country on August 16 and now lives in the apartment complex. with your child.
“Sometimes when I get home, I just cry because I feel unhappy for those families,” Harman said.
In Khaliqyar’s circle, the apartment of the relatives next door, there were 14 pairs of shoes outside; inside, 11 members of the family circle shared the 500-square-foot bedroom, while six of them were expecting permanent housing. open, looking to catch the breeze through a magnetic screen.
As he sat cross-legged on an Afghan carpet, Khan Mula told an interpreter in Pashto that he, his wife and 4 of their six children fled Afghanistan in mid-August. They were threatened through the Taliban because Mula worked with the U. S. military. Uu. U. S. about 10 years. Her 21-year-old twins remain in Afghanistan.
Mula’s nephew, who has a newborn baby and two young children, introduced himself and his wife to the space, along with their 16- and 17-year-old sons and daughters and their 11-year-old son and daughter. despite everything being able to sleep without worries of the Taliban.
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On a recent Monday afternoon, Sadat’s circle of relatives looked out of an upstairs window as a curly blonde woman parked a black Honda Pilot outside the doors of their empty apartment.
A giant pink bed attached to the most sensible thing about the car. A white bed filled the inside of the trunk, most sensitively arranged with bed frames, a new TV and a shoe rack. The only area that had the driver’s seat, where Jill Galante sat.
In a matter of minutes, everyone at work. Galante passed over a box with an appearance board given to her at an auction in Asma and a green and orange soccer ball in Aqsa, and then asked Sadat to help her pull out a mattress.
For more than four and a half years, Galante has worked with refugees after their resettlement. Through the Facebook page Helping El Cajon Refugees, other people volunteered to set up apartments and deposit donations.
“No one thinks a toothbrush is vital until you have one,” said lead organizer Galante, whose accessory betrays her as a Bostonian. “I don’t need them to look for anything and they left everything behind. “
She and other volunteers have anywhere from one or two apartments per week to five recently over a seven-day period.
Galante said resettlement agencies warned them to “prepare for a tsunami. “The organization is already receiving messages from families arriving soon at California airports with nothing on their backs.
A few weeks ago, Galante asked to keep an eye on a circle of relatives who had just arrived. When Galante visited the apartment, he said, the parents and the two young men were sleeping on the broken cushions of a sofa they had pulled out of a dumpster.
The same week they set up Sadat’s apartment, volunteers prepared another for a couple and their little girl, the circle of relatives had spent $2,000 on a two-week stay in a hotel while the 3 waited for permanent accommodation. A friend aired them to Sacramento and housed them there.
“Right now, everything is so bad,” said Galante, who has a master’s degree in therapy from the circle of relatives. “If you can help, you must do it. It is an ethical obligation. You are one of the other two people on this earth; either they help you or you are a helper.
For hours Monday afternoon, a dozen volunteers placed futons, lamps, a carpet, a coffee table and a TV in the Sadat family’s living room, filling the kitchen with pots and pans, plates, cups and cutlery. packets of spaghetti noodles, boxes of diced tomatoes and jasmine rice. Two of the volunteers were Afghan refugees whose families fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979.
As Galante tried to figure out where to place a cloth closet in the couple’s room, he called Sadat: “Where is the woman?Where is the boss? I want the genuine boss.
“She’s the boss,” Sadat nodded to his wife.
“We are your king,” she joked with her husband, smiling.
In the 80-degree house, with boxed enthusiasts as relief, Sadat tried to figure out how to turn on the air conditioner, before Galante explained how expensive it would be.
As Asma helped buy paper flowers in a basket at the dining table, Aqsa, who wore a plastic stethoscope around her neck, used a tongue-hanging to check Gulsom’s mouth. They knew a little English while watching cartoons at home, enough to say “excuse me” as they browsed the apartment and “thank you” when a volunteer hit the women with the logo of new scooters.
Throughout the day, Aqsa clung to her father while the koalas of her rose are dressed with the trunk of a eucalyptus. When told they were lucky to have it, Sadat corrected a reporter: “I’m lucky to have them. “
The next few weeks would be filled with stress. Finding jobs to pay for hiring for about $2,000 a month, figuring out how to apply for disability for your daughter, and navigating a new country, but the undeniable fact that volunteers filled your apartment made it a bit hard to bear.
“From the bottom of my heart, I thank you,” Sadat said.
Three days later, on the same day that a bomb devastated the rest of Kabul’s inhabitants, Sadat’s daughters began to go to school. Asma wore a sweater with the words “smash”, “bang” and “pow” written on it, her little sister Aqsa a pink plaid blouse and blue jeans.
That night, Aqsa reminded her mom to wake her up before dawn.
I didn’t need to be late.