Look at this photo. You can clearly see the faces of these Afghan men and women leaving Kabul on a US Air Force plane after the city fell to the Taliban in 2021. You wonder about their stories and ask what happened to them and where they went. I met one of them in San Jose two days ago.
This young Afghan could speak Urdu. How come? I have met older Afghans living in Europe and the USA who are fluent in Urdu. They moved south after the Russian invasion in 1979. While staying in Pakistan for a couple of years, waiting for their asylum papers to be processed for migration to western countries, they picked up Urdu. But Masud was too young to be one of them. How did he speak Urdu so well? He told me he was born in Karachi! He explained to me where he and his family lived in Karachi: the landmarks he described--Disco Bakery, Rim Jhim Hall--made sense. He was only seven when the US forced the Taliban out of Kabul and Hamid Karzai came into power. One day, Masud's father said to the family, "Let's go back to our home country." And just like that, the family moved back to Kabul. After completing his studies, Masud found work with the US Embassy. Several years later, when Kabul fell back to the Taliban, his employment earned him a seat in the C-17 cargo plane that left Afghanistan with over 600 people.
Photo, courtesy of USA Today.
