"It was a dark day for me because I lost my whole family." That's the only thing she did," he remembers. There, he finally reached his mother on the phone back in Kabul. The plane arrived in Doha, Qatar, the first leg of a flight to the U.S. He had only the clothes he wore and his papers. He soon found himself on the floor of a massive C-130 aircraft packed with refugee families. "I called them several times and no one was answering because there was a crowd and no one heard the phone ring," BH says. The rest of his family was nowhere to be seen. When he presented his documents to an American soldier, he was ushered through. BH was separated from his family in the crowd and ended up at the gate. In the crush of thousands of terrified Afghans, some were trampled to death. "Everyone was afraid." BH says he was scared, too. "Everyone was pushing each other and they didn't, you know, care about old people and children," he recalls. BH remembers the last time he saw them, 10 of them - parents, a grandmother, brothers, nephews and his uncle - clutching their documents and pressing through a desperate crowd at Kabul International Airport, trying to board planes as the Taliban swept into the city. militaries, making the whole family suspect. ![]() We're just using his initials because most of his relatives are still in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, and often forced to change addresses because they fear the new Taliban regime.Īn uncle worked for the Afghan and U.S. And his family is 8,000 miles away - in danger. He's polite but reserved, easily mistaken for a visiting family member. ![]() People move through the halls to the elevators, introducing their pets and picking up packages at the front desk.Īmid the shuffle is a lean young man dressed in black. Out front, a literal revolving door of residents and visitors. – It's midday at Goodwin House, an upscale retirement community outside Washington, D.C.
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