From Kabul To New Haven, A Story Of Resilience

One of the pieces of embroidery Z brought with her when her family fled Afghanistan. Z asked the Arts Paper not to use photographs of her or her father. 

Z was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with her father in Kabul, the capital of their home country Afghanistan, when the three men stopped them on a highway. Traffic was so thick their car couldn’t move. As Z remembers it, the men picked a lock on one of the doors. They pulled her father out of the front of the car.

She was nine years old and sitting in the back seat. She remembers crying, yelling, and trying to get them to stop. She has asked the Arts Paper not to use her or her father’s full name in this story.

Using her cell phone, she managed to call her uncle to help her get to safety. What had been a routine trip to the city of Khost to see her aunt had become a harrowing experience.

It would be nine days before Z would see her father again. Her father was a journalist—a very dangerous job in their home country. Z said that he was always at risk because his reporting often involved leaking information about terrorism and social injustices that happened in  Afghanistan. More often than not, her father wrote stories about dangerous people, or the government.

The men who took her father held him hostage until her family paid for him to be released, she said.

That was 2017. Her family fled Afghanistan the same year, resettling first in New Haven and later moving to West Haven. Now, 14, Z is navigating life as a rising sophomore at Metropolitan Business Academy.

At Metro, she is pursuing the Law Pathway, one of four potential career pathways for students. She said she likes the people, the freedom of picking her pathway, and knowing that she’s training to be a lawyer. For years, Z has wanted to pursue law because of what she called “unstable laws” in Afghanistan. In the U.S., she envisions a career where she can impact legislation—which she cannot do as a woman in her home country.

“The Freedom To Be Whoever I Want To Be” 

Since leaving the country five years ago, Z has lived with a foot in between worlds, missing members of her family who still live thousands of miles away in Afghanistan. She had an opportunity to visit them this past April, when she and her family went to see an uncle who had fallen ill.

She said she was happy to return to her culture and family in Afghanistan. That happiness was interrupted when a family member attempted to arrange a marriage between her and her cousin, and she was reminded of how different those two worlds were.

Z said she was scared. Despite the Taliban's takeover of the country last August, she had expected a smooth trip back to her country. The marriage was sprung on her and her father. Her father would not allow the marriage and the family soon returned back to the United States.

She knew her father had her back, she said. He always lets her make her own decisions.

Z said the experience made her glad to have the life she has now in West Haven, but she also still missed the family she had left behind a second time.

“There are times when I’m compared to others because I am supposed to be the ‘perfect Afghan daughter,’” she said. “But I’m still grateful, you know? None of this would’ve happened without my dad.”

Z said her dad has been fairly nontraditional, as far as Afghan fathers go, for as long as she can remember. He was a journalist before she was born, and worked in the field until leaving Afghanistan. In the U.S. he is currently employed as a cashier.

“Having a supportive dad gives me, like, freedom to be whoever I want to be, you know?” Z said. “Like, I don’t have any restrictions or many obstacles because my dad supports me so much.”

In part, her drive to become a lawyer comes from the instability of the laws she saw—and he faced—while he was working in Afghanistan. During the years that the family was there, Afghan deaths were often caused by bombings, U.S airstrikes and NATO ground strikes. Originally, she said, her father wanted her to pursue medicine, but is now excited about her interest in law. He is proud of her and her siblings, she said—and feels safer in the U.S. The family now lives in West Haven.

Discrimination is something that Z still deals with today, she said. Sometimes it comes in the form of blatant racism, and sometimes there are more subtle micro-aggressions—like asking if she’s seen bombs or if she has hair under her hijab. Born only six years after September 11, 2001, she said that civilians sometimes target their family because of where they come from and their practice of Islam.

She remembered a recent situation at an airport, for instance. Z and her family were getting their bags checked and going through the metal detectors when they were stopped. They had to have their person and bags rechecked because a woman before them felt “unnerved,” she said. When their bags were checked, a part of the luggage beeped, because of Z’s baby sister’s items, and they were checked for a third time.

For her, experiencing racism in a country where she was told she would be free to be herself is an extremely crushing feeling, she said. Still, she’s grateful to be in West Haven.

“Oh no! My sisters didn’t go through what I did,” she said. “Afghanistan I mean. I’m glad they didn’t to be honest.”

 This piece comes to the Arts Paper through the fifth annual Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI), a program of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Read more about the program here or by checking out the "YAJI" tag. Atlas Salter is a rising sophomore at Metropolitan Business Academy.