Nelufar Hedayat (00:07):
Please note, this episode contains references to war, violence, and sexual assault. Please, take care whilst listening.
Fatima Faizi (00:18):
My life was flipped overnight. On August 14th, I was Fatima Faizi, working for the New York Times, calling people, doing stories. On August 15th, I was nobody, just a number, just a refugee.
Nelufar Hedayat (00:37):
The day Kabul fell, Fatima Faizi was one of thousands of people waiting inside the city’s airport. She’s an Afghan journalist. When the Taliban took over, Fatima was working for the New York Times in the Kabul bureau. As the news broke, she was told to go home and pack. A plane had been chartered to take her and her colleagues out of the country. As she approached her apartment building, she noticed the security guards had changed out of their uniforms into long traditional tunics.
Fatima Faizi (01:07):
Everybody had this short camis on. I froze, because to me, that’s how the Taliban looked like.
Nelufar Hedayat (01:16):
The building manager caught her eye and told her it was okay. They just changed their clothes like so many other people across the city. Inside her apartment, Fatima struggled to get ready.
Fatima Faizi (01:28):
I was leaving my home and everything behind, and I had to pack a backpack. I didn’t know how to do it. It was impossible.
Nelufar Hedayat (01:40):
She put her work laptop, some food, and her wallet into a backpack. As she gathered her things, she spoke to her best friend on the phone, “Bring something that reminds you of home.” she said. Everything else could be replaced. Fatima opened a ripped gym bag and put a few small treasures inside. A traditional dress she loved, her grandmother’s jewelry, and some earrings she had designed herself. She also brought a painting of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, a pair of giant sixth century statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. She’d commissioned it from a local artist. Bamiyan is a province west of Kabul. It’s home to the Hazaras, an ethnic minority group that has long been persecuted in Afghanistan. As a Hazara, Fatima had never really felt like Kabul was home, even though she grew up there.
Fatima Faizi (02:33):
To me Bamiyan was home because in Bamiyan people were looking like me. People were speaking my own dialogues. People were not asking me questions regarding my dress. So, that is why that province feeled home.
Nelufar Hedayat (02:50):
As Fatima packed, she could hear gunfire outside. She almost had a panic attack, but she steadied herself. And when it was time to leave, she took a picture of her living room. In the photo, sunlight streams in through the large windows and there are green plants in almost every corner. There’s a cozy red rug and a purse slung over the shoulder of a soft brown armchair. An ornate carved shelf stands against one wall, filled with books. On top of it, there’s a box with the wooden tiles for Scrabble, the board game. There are also a few signs of her hasty departure. A pile of clothes on the couch, take out containers, and cups on the coffee table. Scenes like this repeated in homes across the country. I can picture it. The moment in the mid nineties when I left my home in Afghanistan for the last time. The moment I became a refugee.
Fatima Faizi (03:42):
I took a picture. I just wanted to remember how everything was intact. I didn’t know when I’m going to come back, but nothing was touched in my living room. Everything was the same way that it used to be.
Nelufar Hedayat (03:59):
Fatima closed the door and headed downstairs. From project Brazen and PRX, this is Kabul Falling. I’m your host, Nelufar Hedayat. This is Episode Three: The Fortress.
Newsreel (04:26):
Each day brings growing desperation at Kabul International Airport’s perimeter walls.
Nelufar Hedayat (04:31):
In the days after Kabul fell, thousands of Afghans rushed to the airport, even if they didn’t have passports or visas. Rumors were spreading that if you managed to get on a flight, you could get asylum in the United States. But even if you had the proper documents, the airport felt like an impenetrable fortress. First, you had to pass through the Taliban checkpoints outside. Then, you had to push your way through the teeming crowds. And finally, convince the soldiers guarding the entrance gates to let you in. The US, which controlled the military side of the airport, was scrambling to evacuate its own citizens.
President Biden (05:10):
The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.
Nelufar Hedayat (05:17):
The American troops were not prepared to deal with this many people. The situation soon unraveled into chaos. Taliban fighters and US soldiers fired warning shots in the air, trying to keep the crowds back. Inside the perimeter, Afghan spilled out of the terminal and onto the tarmac. Desperate to leave, they pushed their way up jet bridges, climbed on top of planes, and chased a US military jet down the runway as it took off. More than 600 people crammed onto a US cargo plane, squeezed shoulder to shoulder on the floor, and they were the lucky ones. Families camped out waiting to board evacuation flights. Children sat inside suitcases. Babies napped on luggage conveyor belts. By this point, the machines were no longer moving. Fatima called the taxi company that had been approved by the security team at the New York Times. As the car wound through Kabul’s packed streets, she saw a lot of men outside, and just a few women. Everybody seemed terrified. The driver dropped her off close to the airport entrance. The crowd made it impossible to drive all the way there. She walked the rest of the way, holding her backpack tightly, the one with her New York Times laptop inside.
Fatima Faizi (06:41):
There was a New York Times laptop that I had the data of Afghan security forces casualty. I had numbers, I had people’s names. I had to protect my sources. I could die, but I couldn’t let the Taliban have access to that laptop.
Nelufar Hedayat (07:01):
Fatima didn’t have a plane ticket, a visa, or even a passport. All she had was a letter from the New York Times and the state department saying she should be allowed into the airport, but the woman at the checkpoint waved her through. Once inside, Fatima waited with her family and a group of New York Times colleagues and their families, around 128 people in total. There was some confusion about which terminal their plane would depart from and in the chaos, it took off without them. So, Fatima’s group spent the night in a parking lot. They tried to close the gates and secure the area for themselves, but people were constantly trying to get in. Fatima knew the Taliban had freed thousands of prisoners, and they could be in the crowd along with others who’d come to loot the airport. After a sleepless night, Fatima and her family were stuck outside in the blistering heat of the day. By then, they’d been at the airport for more than 14 hours without food, water, or even a bathroom.
Fatima Faizi (08:02):
The sun was really rough. My dad was dehydrated.
Nelufar Hedayat (08:04):
Fatima’s father had high blood pressure and she was worried that without water, he would deteriorate quickly.
Fatima Faizi (08:11):
I asked him, “How are you doing?” He said, “I’m okay.” And then I was like, “He’s not okay.” And he was standing, he was shivering.
Nelufar Hedayat (08:22):
Nearby, a squad of armed US Marines patrolled the domestic airline’s runway. They shot rounds in the air to hold the crowds back. Tanks moved backwards and forwards. Fatima guessed there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people on the tarmac that day, but she was determined to get the Marines’ attention.
Fatima Faizi (08:42):
I was screaming for 20 minutes. I was literally yelling, “Hey, my name is Fatima and this group, we work for the New York Times. Please, bring me some water.”
Nelufar Hedayat (08:54):
Fatima managed to flag one of the soldiers down. He looked about 20, short, exhausted, his face pale. He reminded her of her baby brother.
Fatima Faizi (09:05):
He was standing here. He said, “Look at me. I have been here for hours. I am dehydrated myself.” He showed me his backpack and he said, “I don’t have any water on me.”
Nelufar Hedayat (09:18):
Fatima knew he was telling the truth. His lips were cracked and his voice was a croak, but the Marine reached inside his pocket and offered her what he did have. A handful of hard candies.
Fatima Faizi (09:30):
In this really tense moment, we were two human beings trying to do our own things. He was trying to do his job. He was not there to protect me. He was not there to find me water, but he tried. He was trying to control that crowd, but it was beyond his power. And it was really sad.
Nelufar Hedayat (09:56):
Fatima’s mother sat nearby, watching.
Fatima Faizi (09:59):
She started crying because he was so young, and then he got super…
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:10:04]
Fatima Faizi (10:03):
… crying because he was so young, and then he got super emotional too.
Nelufar Hedayat (10:06):
The Marines saw Fatima’s mother wiping at her tears, and then Fatima saw his eyes grow wet too.
Fatima Faizi (10:12):
He shouted at his fellow Marines and said like, “Guys, they are with the New York Times. We have to protect them.” They were trying to keep people away from our group, but it was impossible.
Nelufar Hedayat (10:29):
Eventually as the minutes melted into hours, a different Marine quietly passed her a few small bottles, but told her to keep it a secret. He didn’t want to be mobbed by the thousands of thirsty people in the crowd. Fatima gave the water to her dad and others in her group. Later on, she finally found a bathroom and drank from the faucet. It was the most delicious water she had ever tasted. On August 19th, four days after the Taliban took over, Rodaba, a medical student from Herat, boarded a bus to Kabul. It was a long, hot, uncomfortable trip, a full 24 hours. With the Taliban in charge, she couldn’t travel alone, so she brought her 14 year old brother, Rashid. Rodaba had been shocked to see the Taliban take over her city. She was training to become a neurosurgeon, but that dream now seemed impossible. She’d also been part of an all-girls robotics team. The group made headlines in 2017 when they traveled to the US for an international competition. Rodaba said she wanted to show Afghan women and girls that they could succeed in science and tech.
Rodaba (11:47):
They think that it’s impossible in Afghanistan, and I’ll show them that nothing is impossible. Everything is possible.
Nelufar Hedayat (11:54):
Around that time, Rodaba became friendly with a journalist named Danna Harman, who covered the team story for the New York Times.
Danna Harman (12:02):
They went to competitions in the United States, in Mexico and Europe, and I went with them. These young people have grown up exactly in the time where all these freedoms were promised where all these dreams were encouraged. I just really definitely felt for them.
Nelufar Hedayat (12:20):
When the Taliban came to Kabul, Danna messaged Rodaba, and started helping her plan a way out.
Rodaba (12:26):
She was just all the time like motivating me. We can be comfortable. Don’t be sad, and just try to be strong.
Nelufar Hedayat (12:35):
The day after Rodaba and her brother Rashid arrived in Kabul, they tried to make their way to the airport. Danna told Rodaba about a few different buses taking people there, organized by different international organizations, but you had to know someone to get a seat.
Rodaba (12:51):
Danna told me not to lose even one of your chances.
Danna Harman (12:55):
I’m like, try all your contacts. Anything you can get, take. Whatever you have in hand, go.
Nelufar Hedayat (13:00):
Rodaba and her brother managed to get on a bus that was carrying a group of women’s rights activists, but that was only half the battle.
Rodaba (13:10):
A bus, for example, tried to get into the airport and then Taliban didn’t let it. And it’s just turned back to the center of the city.
Nelufar Hedayat (13:19):
Then she got a new lead from some people she knew on a different bus.
Rodaba (13:24):
And then they called me, “Come to this address. We are leaving to the airport.”
Nelufar Hedayat (13:28):
But then that bus was turned away too.
Rodaba (13:31):
And then I was just jumping from one bus to another bus.
Nelufar Hedayat (13:35):
For more than a week, Rodaba and her brother tried different buses, which tried different routes to different gates of the airport. She felt stuck in an endless loop like in the movie Groundhog Day. Rodaba worried their chance to leave was slipping away. Inside the buses in the August heat, it was miserable.
Rodaba (13:54):
You’d be in a bus with lots of people with the babies and children who are crying, no water to wash you and your face and your hands, no food, no toilet. Even you do not have a fan or an air condition.
Nelufar Hedayat (14:12):
The whole time, Rodaba worried about what would happen if she didn’t make it out. Her mother had told her what it was like to live under Taliban rule. She’d married Rodaba’s father when she was only 12 years old and was determined that her daughters would have a different life. She worked as a cleaner to pay for her children’s education, as well as parts for Rodaba’s robots. Rodaba and her brother went round and round on the bus for nine days. She wondered how much more she could take. Back in Europe, her friend Danna the journalist was glued to her phone trying to help, even though she was technically on vacation in Venice.
Danna Harman (14:52):
So here I am yachting around the islands, and if you look at any of the holiday pictures, I’m just constantly on my phone or typing away.
Nelufar Hedayat (15:02):
She teamed up with Yotam Politzer, the CEO of an international aid organization called IsraAID. The group had agreed to fund and help coordinate evacuation efforts, not just for Rodaba, but for hundreds of other Afghans.
Danna Harman (15:18):
We were in hundreds of WhatsApp groups, each with different groupings of Afghans and trying to figure out where to send them next. They realized that they have some people helping them, and they’re just going to hold on for dear life because as they say again and again, and it really gets you, you’re our only hope. We don’t have any other way. And I kept saying, try all your contacts. Just do whatever you can to help yourself, and I’m also working my hardest to help you.
Nelufar Hedayat (15:57):
Western expats had a better chance of making it into the airport, but they had to navigate the same chaos. Nigel Walker is a British American journalist who has worked in Afghanistan since 2004. When Kabul fell, he was working as a communications advisor for a Norwegian aid organization. The Norwegian government coordinated a way out for Nigel and his colleagues. There were four Europeans and two Afghans in the group, plus two security guards from the organization. The plan was to drive to a smaller gate in a section of the airport controlled by US and European soldiers. Once they got to the gate, the troops were supposed to identify them from the crowd and bring them inside.
Nigel Walker (16:40):
And so we drove over there. It took us about, you know, three hours. It’s usually a 15-minute drive.
Nelufar Hedayat (16:47):
They had to get to the gate on foot. Hundreds of people were pushing and squeezing into a narrow bank.
Nigel Walker (16:54):
Surrounded by, you know, high cement walls topped with barbed wire.
Nelufar Hedayat (17:01):
Foreign soldiers stood guard on top of the walls. They looked out over the crowd, making decisions about who to pull up as people waved their documents in the air.
Nigel Walker (17:11):
And I guess the plan was that each nationality’s soldiers would figure out whose citizen was down there and somehow get them over the wall.
Nelufar Hedayat (17:22):
In reality, hardly anybody got in. Nigel pushed forward with the crowds. He was being squeezed from all sides. So many bodies, so many children. He realized he’d gotten separated from his group.
Nigel Walker (17:35):
And I go to turn back and there’s a young woman who’s linked her arm around my arm.
Nelufar Hedayat (17:42):
Foreigners were more likely to get attention from the soldiers on the wall.
Nigel Walker (17:46):
And so she had attached herself to me and I was actually trying to get back out, but I saw her mother standing behind her, and she was just motioning for me to move forward and to take her with me.
Nelufar Hedayat (18:01):
Nigel turned around and tried again to push to the front.
Nigel Walker (18:05):
I turned around and started pushing forward. I kind of rolled her onto my side, grabbed her arm, and we started pushing towards the cement walls.
Nelufar Hedayat (18:17):
Suddenly, someone grabbed his passport and his phone. Nigel whipped around and saw the perpetrator. He grabbed the back of the man’s neck.
Nigel Walker (18:25):
And we kind of wrestled around, but it was so tight in this crowd that it was just disrupting everybody, and people were getting angry.
Nelufar Hedayat (18:36):
He managed to knock his belongings out of the guy’s hand. His passport fell to the ground, but it was so crowded he couldn’t even bend down to get it. Nigel centered himself and pushed outward as hard as he could. That created just enough space to crouch down and pick up his passport. By the time he stood back up, the young woman who’d been holding onto his arm was gone. He looked up and saw his colleagues.
Nigel Walker (19:03):
A couple of minutes later, the rest of my group comes back too because they realize that they’re not going to be able to get through. They’re in shock. Both women have been assaulted also in the crowd, and so we decide to turn around.
Nelufar Hedayat (19:25):
At this point, to get out of the country, Afghans needed international connections. The evacuation had spun out of control of Western governments, so foreign volunteers stepped up to take the reins. One of them was Jake Cusack, an ex-Marine court officer originally from Michigan. He’d served in Iraq and later came to Afghanistan as a civilian to work on economic development.
Jake Cusack (19:50):
I manage a firm called CrossBoundary, which focuses on bringing investment into underserved markets. People from afar often have the perception that these sort of fragile states are just sort of completely on fire and it’s just chaos all the time, but people-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:20:04]
Jake Cusack (20:03):
… fragile states are just sort of completely on fire and it’s just chaos all the time, but people still are going about their daily lives, and they need sources of income and they need ways to get food and get healthcare.
Nelufar Hedayat (20:11):
From his home base in London, Jake was just one node in a sprawling network of civilians, advocates, and military members.
Jake Cusack (20:19):
You’re sort of reaching out to basically everyone and using your past experience or credibility to then join, like a lot of different like WhatsApp and Signal groups were set up, which were either like exclusively former military or former military intelligence and people would vouch, you know, “This is Jake Cusack, he has this background, let him into the group,” and then you’d be able to share information in there.
Nelufar Hedayat (20:44):
The situation was changing day by day.
Jake Cusack (20:48):
So you had like the chaotic period where the airport sort of almost fell or was not fully controlled, then the military reestablished control, then it was tough for maybe a day or so to get into the airport, but I think there was a sense or direction that, “Hey, we need to get people out faster,” and so there was about 24 hours where the floodgates were sort of open and a lot of people got in, including people with minimal or no paperwork, and then the system was overwhelmed, and then it became the situation of, there was probably five or six total possible gates, maybe two of which were somewhat open at any given time, and trying to understand, “Okay, which gates are open, and like for which type of candidates or types of paperwork, and how do you get people physically to the airport, help them navigate basically a crush of humanity at the gates, and then into the airport and then onto a flight?”
Nelufar Hedayat (21:38):
Ogai, the young journalist you met in the first episode was lucky to have a connection to help her. Reporters Without Borders, an organization that supports journalists, had told her to come to a hotel near the airport, she would then be driven to her evacuation flight. On the way, Ogai was stopped at a Taliban checkpoint. She was terrified they would search her bag and find the press pass that identified her as a reporter for a women’s TV station, But her brother made up a lie about taking her to the hospital and the Taliban let them go. At 8:00 PM, after a few hours at the hotel, she left for the airport on a rumbling bus with other journalists. As they approached the entrance she saw the Taliban’s violent approach to crowd control.
Ogai (22:23):
Outside of the airport there was lots of rush of people, children, womens, and just Taliban firing, and Taliban, oh my God, beat them, and they cried and they said “We want to go! We want to go!”
Nelufar Hedayat (22:40):
It was 10:00 PM by the time Ogai made it into the airport. She huddled on the tarmac. By now, it was dark and cold. She saw a family with young children. The little ones were crying and the father took off his scarf to try and warm them up. Ogai’s phone buzzed. It was her mother calling with a flurry of questions. ” Where are you? When is your flight? Are you safe?”
Ogai (23:04):
I said, “Mom, I’m okay, everything is okay, and we will fly after one hour.”
Nelufar Hedayat (23:11):
It wasn’t true. Ogai would spend the night outside on the tarmac and fly the next morning to Qatar, and then to Ireland, but she didn’t want her mom to worry.
Ogai (23:21):
Then she told me, “You’re going to tell me a lie. I know that it’s cold and you’re getting freeze, and why you are telling me a lie?” I said “No, believe me, I am okay. Everything is okay, just go and sleep.”
Nelufar Hedayat (23:37):
It was Ogai’s first night all by herself without her family, without her bed, without a roof over her head. She lay her head on the hard concrete, then she heard someone shuffling towards her. It was the family she had seen earlier. They offered her one of their suitcases to lean on. Ogai thanked them in tears. She put her head on the bag and somehow she fell asleep.
Nelufar Hedayat (24:06):
Small kindnesses like this meant so much in the crush of bodies and desperation at the airport. To Fatima, the chaos on the tarmac seemed like judgment day, an apocalyptic scene where everyone was just trying to save themselves. The massive crowds emboldened some men to taunt women, to follow them around and to grab their bodies with no fear of punishment.
Fatima Faizi (24:30):
He just looked at me and he was like, “You slut, what do you know about stuff? If the Taliban come they are going to hang you in the street. You know what you have done.” He was like just laughing at me, and we were trying to go to the American side, and somebody was just squeezing my arm, and I was like, “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” And he was just like smiling.
Nelufar Hedayat (24:59):
She and her family were still waiting for their flight, sitting there in abandoned building when things took a turn for the worse. Around three in the afternoon a group of Afghan men with AK 47s started climbing the building walls. She didn’t know exactly who they were, but she was terrified.
Fatima Faizi (25:17):
If we stay here tonight, I am 100% sure that this will, people will rape women.
Nelufar Hedayat (25:25):
Fatima picked up her phone and frantically started calling everyone she knew in Washington. As a reporter for the New York Times she had some high level contacts, including ambassadors and government officials.
Fatima Faizi (25:36):
I called them. I was cursing them, begging them to do something. I called my colleagues, asking them for help. Whosever contact that I had from American side, foreigners, I was asking them to do something.
Nelufar Hedayat (25:51):
A group of Marines appeared and tried to push people away from Fatima and her group. Some of them went up on the roof. Gunfire rang out around her. Meanwhile, her phone was buzzing. Now, people from different embassies and the NATO mission in Afghanistan were calling her.
Fatima Faizi (26:07):
“We don’t want anything to happen to you. Just get out. It’s extremely dangerous. We know there will be suicide attacks. Get out.”
Nelufar Hedayat (26:16):
But Fatima didn’t know how to get out. It seemed impossible, and there at the airport, tears streaming down her face, she felt totally abandoned and betrayed.
Fatima Faizi (26:28):
To me, that was the end of my life. It kind of was, but that day, hallucination, oh my God, it still feels like really real, because I had this hallucination that I could see people get, I could see my dad getting shot or my mom dying in front of me. I was picturing unreal things in my mind.
Nelufar Hedayat (26:58):
There’s a lot from that day that Fatima doesn’t remember people, people she doesn’t recall speaking with, things she doesn’t remember saying. One of her colleagues told her the voice messages she sent him from the airport that day gave him nightmares. Fatima doesn’t know what they say. They’re saved on her phone, but she doesn’t know when she’ll be strong enough to listen to them.
Nelufar Hedayat (27:20):
Around 5:30 that afternoon, after Fatima had been at the airport for about 24 hours, two Taliban fighters arrived and told the group they had to leave.
Fatima Faizi (27:31):
They came and they controlled the crowd. Two of them. Americans with tanks, with heavy weapons were not able to control this crowd, but the Taliban, with whips and pipes, they were able to control this crowd and said like, “You have to go home. There is no plane.”
Nelufar Hedayat (27:54):
The men struck her mother, leaving bruises all over her back that lasted for months. Her brother and sister were also beaten, though Fatima and her father were spared. They began to shuffle out through throngs of people. Fatima was walking behind her brother when she felt a strange pair of hands invade her body.
Fatima Faizi (28:15):
At some point I noticed that somebody just from behind among this crowd grabbed my boobs and just squeezed it as hard as he could. I just screamed and then looked at him, and then he finally released his hands.
Nelufar Hedayat (28:39):
Later, she saw the incident had left bruises.
Fatima Faizi (28:42):
I was like, “Wow, these are the things that happened to me, and I’m 100% sure that there are things that happen to women that they’re not talking about.” You get angry and it bothers you over and over again. That’s why you have to talk about it, you have to process it. I know that for Afghan women it’s impossible, but I think they should talk about it.
Nelufar Hedayat (29:12):
Somehow Fatima and her family managed to get out of the airport. She hid out at a colleague’s place in Kabul for a few days before trying to get on another plane. Ultimately, they were evacuated to Qatar. Fatima remembers just one good moment in the airport. At some point, across the tarmac, she spotted a familiar face. It was her friend Sahraa, a filmmaker who was also a fierce advocate for women’s rights.
Fatima Faizi (29:40):
She just came and hugged me, and then for a moment I felt protected. I saw somebody that I knew, and then she was like “[foreign language 00:29:50].” It means, “Oh, my dear,” and we went our different ways.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:30:04]
Nelufar Hedayat (30:08):
For Abdul, a former CIA interpreter from Kandahar it felt like now or never. He headed to the airport with his wife, four children and his cousin plus his family. His former colleague, Phil, had told him to go to Abbey Gate on the eastern side of the airport. It had taken hours to get there because of the crowds. A long ditch ran along the perimeter wall of the airport. American and NATO forces were stationed on one side, the mass of Afghans trying to escape were on the other. The soldiers had laid spirals of jagged concertina wire in the ditch to prevent people from getting through. There was another deterrent too, the smell. The ditch, which passed through various neighborhoods in and around Kabul was filled with thick silvery, sewage, water. Abdul stared at it and saw sludge that went up to his knees, but it was the only way. He told his cousin to look after the kids, he took the family’s documents. Taking care to avoid the barbed wire, he held his breath and lowered himself into the ditch. He called up to an American soldier, Abdul had applied for a special immigrant visa available to Afghans who’d worked for US forces. He had all the documentation for it, he showed it to the American.
Abdul (31:31):
He says, no. We don’t accept all these things.
Nelufar Hedayat (31:36):
The American said only US citizens, permanent residents or active visa holders were allowed through. Abdul was stunned. He was in contact with a former CIA officer, his friend who could vouch for him and he just crawled through a trough of shit. But the soldier refused.
Abdul (31:56):
So I tried my best and I stayed there in that ditch trying to convince one or another American for like two hours.
Nelufar Hedayat (32:05):
But he kept hearing no. The ditch was full of people, standing shoulder to shoulder, putrid water splashed on Abdul’s clothes as they jostled, all trying to talk their way in.
Abdul (32:18):
Everybody was having some sort of papers in their heads. True or false, God knows.
Nelufar Hedayat (32:28):
But after standing knee deep in sewage for hours he was getting nowhere. He climbed out of the ditch. He needed to get back to his family, but he couldn’t find them anywhere in the crowd. Everybody was pushing. His phone wasn’t working. Finally after an hour, he caught a glimpse of his cousin and rushed toward him. Then he saw a body crumpled on the ground. It was his eldest daughter who was in her early 20s, she wasn’t moving.
Abdul (33:01):
Walking slowly, slowly in the crowd and people start pushing. So she fell on the ground. A few people actually ran over her, her body so she became fainted.
Nelufar Hedayat (33:13):
His teenage son was injured too, bleeding from the nose. Abdul asked…
Abdul (33:18):
What’s happened to you. And he said, as you know peoples they were fighting in the crowd and so they start kicking each other, a punch came and hit him on the nose. So, that was the situation.
Nelufar Hedayat (33:32):
It was 2:30 PM, the afternoon sun was beating down and his clothes were blackened with dirt. The end of his pant legs were shredded. The smell of sewage emanated from his skin. Abdul felt crushed, he had failed to get his family through the gates. He had failed to keep his children safe. He decided to bring them home. They needed to rest and recuperate, but even the drive back was fraught with terror.
Abdul (33:59):
There were the Talibans on the streets and they were having fire in the air trying to harass the people.
Nelufar Hedayat (34:08):
Some of the fighters were bashing people with tree branches.
Abdul (34:13):
So, it was a very terrible situation. Hours and hours.
Nelufar Hedayat (34:19):
It was almost evening by the time they made it home. Abdul threw out his dirty clothes and shoes, got into the shower and scrubbed off the stench from the airport. The day’s events flooded through his mind. He didn’t blame the soldiers who would turned him away, he knew they were just following orders. But his anxiety was rising.
Abdul (34:39):
You know what evidence shall I show you guys? I have worked with you guys for years and years. I have received threats. I have everything. Now when’s the day and nobody listens so obviously a person will be in deep concerns, I guess.
Nelufar Hedayat (34:58):
In our next episode of Kabul Falling.
Ben (35:01):
I was like, you need to leave the gate. And he is like, no, no, it’s fine. We’re going to get in. So he FaceTimed me, three seconds after I saw his face the blast happened.
Abdul (35:09):
I told my family that this is the last chance. If we make it, we make it. Otherwise, no other chance is waiting for us.
Tariq (35:18):
It was a mixed kind of feeling like happiness and emotional both together because what we have left behind and where we are going.
Nelufar Hedayat (35:27):
We want to hear from you. Please get in touch via our website kabulfalling.com, where you can send a voice message or tweet using #kabulfalling. We’ll share some of the best responses during the course of the show. Also, to support the women of Kandahar Treasure, you can buy one of their hand embroidered scarves on our website. 100% of the proceeds will go to this women owned collective in Afghanistan. Kabul Falling is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX. It’s hosted by me, Nelufar Hedayat. Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, are executive producers. Sandy Smallens is the executive producer for Audiation. Our managing producer is Lucy Woods and Ireland Meacham is the producer. Susie Armitage is our co-producer and story editor. And Siddhartha Mahanta is our consulting producer. Our associate producers are Dan Xin Huang, Fatima Faizi, Francesca Gilardi-Quadrio-Curzio, and Neha Wadekar. Additional reporting was done by Nigel Walker. Our translators are Hasan Azimi and [ ]. Arson Fahim composed the original theme music. Sound design, musical scoring, and mixing by Brad Stratton. Cover design by Ryan Ho and Jane Zisman. Embroidery by Women of Kandahar Treasure. Additional audio and video by Nicholas Brennan, Megan Dean, and KK, with special thanks to Clayton Swisher. For more information on the people featured in this podcast and additional interviews, visit kabulfalling.com. Audiation.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:37:17]
