Ali’s Journey Home

Although years of civil war and an invasion by Soviet troops had devastated the country, causing millions of Afghans to flee, Ali Mohammed had decided to stay and take war in his stride as best he could. Every morning, the youth went into Kabul to purchase any bargain he could find—toys, cans of food, household appliances—to resell for a tiny profit on the streets of his neighborhood.

But this morning he could not avoid war’s indiscriminate destruction, and the next thing he remembers was waking in a Red Cross clinic, fighting for his life. A shell had exploded a few yards from Ali, riddling his body with shrapnel. The doctors told him his right leg had to be amputated immediately, just above the ankle. There were complications, and two months later they had to amputate again, this time above the knee. "I left the clinic crippled, but lucky to be alive," he said.

The Taliban are coming

The reputation of the Taliban as ruthless, murderous enforcers preceded them. "The Taliban are coming! The Taliban are coming!" became a familiar refrain in the alleys of the Qala-e-Shada area of Kabul where the crippled teenager lived. "We feared them very much," Ali Mohammed said. "We heard so many rumors that they were just killing everyone." So, together with his mother and three brothers, young Ali fled to Pakistan before the Taliban captured Kabul.

Already a total of 6.2 million Afghans had escaped to Pakistan or Iran, and Ali’s family settled in the Pakistani city of Peshawar as so-called urban refugees. But life remained so difficult that after only a few months he decided to run the risk of the Taliban and return to Kabul. It was a mistake which nearly cost him his life for a second time. As a young man and a cripple, he was a natural object of suspicion and within days he was arrested.

"You are a traitor," Taliban interrogators accused him, as one official sat on his stump while another mercilessly beat the sole of his good leg with an iron bar. Twice more he was picked up and shaken down for money, so when he was released a third time, he rushed to a relative’s house, borrowed some money and took a bus to the border. "I fled Kabul as quickly as I could," he recalls. Ali Mohammed was a penniless refugee once more. But he was still alive, and no longer alone: Ali now had a wife, Majan, a young widow whose husband had been killed by a stray Soviet shell, and Sabara, her daughter. The family found a four square meter room in Peshawar – tiny, but it had a small kitchen and… electricity. "I remember especially the electricity," Majan said.

"We had television and listened to all kinds of music (banned under the Taliban). Life was very difficult but we were not afraid. It was peaceful."

The dramatic US-led removal of the Taliban that followed the 9/11 trauma changed everything. More than two million Afghans flooded back to their homes, and Ali too started thinking about going home: "But we had established a foothold in Pakistan. We could at least survive. Would I find work in Kabul? Could we survive there? Everyone around us was going home," he continued. "Even the carpet merchant left. In the end we really had no choice."

The Ali Mohammed family was processed by UNHCR, and received a relocation package of 100 kilos of flour, two plastic sheets, female hygienic items, a kilo of soap and 65 dollars. They joined a group of fellow returnees and, clinging precariously high above their fully laden hired vehicle, they swayed their way through the high mountain passes and across scorched valleys back towards home. Kabul had changed from a dreary, tightly regulated urban backwater where the religious police held terrifying sway into an overwhelming cacophony of noise, crowds and traffic. It was also filled with hundreds of thousands of returnees, which was not good news for a second wave of refugees like Ali and his family, and he spent weeks struggling through the streets on his crutches looking for work. There was nothing. "Maybe it was a mistake coming back here," he often said to himself. Some even returned to Pakistan. But Ali Mohammed persisted, and after several months he managed to find employment … weaving carpets again, just as the family had done in Pakistan. No water. No electricity. No toilet. No heating.

Today they occupy the same room Ali had once lived in on the outskirts of Kabul, a tiny bare space of scarcely four square meters. It has no utilities and plastic bags flap in the windows. Against one wall is a loom on loan from a local businessman, which mother and a daughter work by hand. Ali, still troubled by his wounds and unable to lift anything heavy, does odd jobs. School for Sabara is out of the question. "Until I can find a fulltime job," he says, "we cannot afford to send her to school. We need her here to make money for the family." The future is full of uncertainties. Concerns remain among all Afghans about how long foreign aid will continue to flow. But they press on. Ali quotes an Afghan proverb: "Each time we have one good day here, we are having a good life."

For the Ali Mohammed family it means simply taking things one day at a time.

Source: Refugees Magazine

Article courtesy of N.Behring