Once You Leave Your Country, You'll Be Homeless Forever

My name is Sarah. I am from Afghanistan.

I moved to the US in 2023. I fled Afghanistan 2019 and I lived in Turkey for five years. It was me and my younger brother and my two younger sisters. My parents were still working in Afghanistan. When Afghanistan fell in the hands of the Taliban, they came to join us from Iran. All the flights (from Afghanistan) were canceled. The airport was destroyed.

Now I’m going to Highline College (Washington) and also working at International Rescue Committee (IRC) as a full-time employee. I’m a Multilingual Youth Program Specialist for Secondary Programs. I’m multilingual. My native languages are Persian, Dari, Farsi. They are all the same, but I also speak English, Pashto, Turkish, and Arabic, and I’m also literate in all these five languages.

I mostly work with newcomer students from refugee and immigration background. My work is very rewarding because I work with students that share the same kind of status with me, being immigrants, and I help them find their way in the United States. For me, also, when I first came, it was so hard to find my way, although I knew the language. They are still learning the language, and they have no idea of how different their new home is from the country that they came from.

I also do a side hustle. I’m very interested in being healthy, eating healthy food, anything that has to do with our health by honoring what is there in nature for us. Last summer, I got an LLC for my business. I wanted to learn about it, and I love to take risks. First, I wanted to do computer hardware engineering because I have a background in computer science, but now I changed to chemical engineering, so that will help me better understand and handle the products that I will be making. I want my work to have a positive social impact. It’s like my purpose.

I had traveled to Turkey before, in 2016 when I was in 12th grade. I was selected for a scholarship program that was co-conducted by the US Embassy in Kabul, American Councils for International Education and Geleceğin Yıldızları. It means Future Stars, it’s an organization in Turkey. The name of the program was YSEL (Youth Solidarity in English Language). It was a program for students who are speaking English as a foreign language, to practice their English and also to learn solidarity, and to just have time with other Afghan students from different provinces of Afghanistan. It was a great time and a great experience. I learned so much about my own country because I’ve never visited other provinces in my home country.

I really liked Turkey. I just fell in love with its beauty. And also with its culture. Our culture and Turkish culture have so many things in common. When I went back to Afghanistan after the program, I explained my experience to my parents, and they also really liked it.

At the same time, there was a lot of instability going on. Everyday there was a suicide attack, a bombing attack, nothing was stable in Afghanistan, even back then. In the same year, there was an attack on American University of Afghanistan, unfortunately, we lost some professors and students. We just wanted to have a backup plan, a legal permit to stay in a different country in case the situation gets worse in Afghanistan. And also, my mom was head of a clinic and she was an advocate for women’s rights and she was doing family planning. So she was frightened.

So then we applied for a visa (for Turkey), it took us so long. We had to apply several times. There’s a lot of bureaucracy, and also fraud. There were private companies that wanted you to apply through them, and they were taking a commission. Although the visa itself cost around $150, people were paying $2,000 and even more to get a visa. The first time, they only issued a visa to me and my parents. So we traveled to Turkey and my parents bought a home there. My three siblings were in Afghanistan with my aunt. So we had to come back. And then we applied for the second time. And the second time they issued visas for my younger two siblings, but not for my brother.

That was after an attack aimed at my mom. Someone shot at her office in the clinic. But thank God, nobody got injured. So then me and my sisters stayed in Turkey, in Istanbul, and my parents came back to stay with my brother. That was when they gave me power of attorney and made me their legal guardian in Turkey. It was very hard because I was literally a parent, and I knew how it feels to be a parent. You were so worried about your sisters. You want to protect them. You are working hard to make them happy. Yeah, I also got a job. I was not buying stuff for myself, but I was buying stuff for my sisters to make them happy. For example, I got my sister a guitar, and then my other sister, she’s so talented, she taught herself how to play guitar.

It was so hard. I did all of my sisters’ school enrollment, all their paperwork, and also all the paperwork for getting their residence permit. I already had one because I went there a year before, 2019. But they didn’t receive their residence permits, so they couldn’t go to school for one year. And it was COVID. They told my sisters that their visa was expired. They told me, “Your sisters have to go back to Afghanistan. They have to reapply for visas and then come back.”

So almost every week, I was taking the train to go to the main department of immigration in Istanbul, across town, and just find someone that could help me. And thank God there was a very nice gentleman that really understood our situation. He taught me how to write a petition in Turkish, and then I handwrote it immediately. To explain my situation, what was going on. And then he helped me to get it to the right department and office. And then also he told me to call my parents immediately so they should be here so that my sisters don’t face any more problems with their residence permit. And then my parents came. And then finally they got their residence permit, and they started going to school.

And then they (my parents) went back to Afghanistan because my brother was still there. My brother joined us in November 2020 before the fall of Afghanistan. Before the fall of Afghanistan for almost two weeks, I had a very bad feeling and uneasiness. My chest was tight and I could not fall asleep at night. I was watching the news that one province of Afghanistan is falling after another, but I never imagined the Taliban would be able to take over the capital, Kabul, until they did. It was Sunday, August 15th, 2021 that my parents called me and told me not to panic. They told me to watch over my siblings, as I am the oldest child, in case anything happened to them. We were all crying behind the phone. The call was disconnected and I thought something bad may have happened to them. I kept calling them back on the internet but had no success, they were not connected to the internet. I called my other relatives and they assured me that they are fine, they just ran out of data. That was such a relief to know. Those were the hardest days of my life. I just wanted to be on call with my parents all the time. All I wished back then was to be reunited with my parents.

My parents joined us and our family got reunited in October 2021. Three months after the fall of Afghanistan. But at the same time, it was also COVID, and in 2019 or 2020 I lost my grandmother.

And then we came to Seattle.

In Turkey, every day there were more policies and rhetoric against immigrants. Because of the economic crisis, most people were thinking that maybe immigrants are taking their jobs, although, like our family, we invest money. We bought a home there, so that’s kind of like an investment.

And then we were applying for two years of residence permit, we were paying the fee for two years but they were issuing one year residence permit, and later on, they reduced it to six months. And some Afghan families that were there, they didn’t receive their residence permit, although they had bought a home there too.

And again, it added to our feeling of not being secure and safe, because anytime we could have gotten a rejection for our application. Every year, we were living the same stress. There were a lot of fees also associated, and it was hard for us to keep up with all of that stress and seeing other families that had to leave because their permit was rejected without any valid reason. That was really hard.

And so it was in 2021, the same year Afghanistan fell, that I received an email from the US Embassy because I was in their alumni list. It said that there were refugee application programs through a p1 visa. Since I was over 21, I had to apply separately. And also my brother applied separately. And then the rest of our family, my siblings and my parents, they applied separately. But we all passed the interview, the medical, everything, and we came here.

We were so happy, because now there’s nothing to be afraid of. You didn’t have to worry about going back to Afghanistan, until the current administration stopped the green card process for all Afghan nationals. All my family received their green cards, except for me and my youngest sister. I applied for it but it took so long and it stopped. It’s on hold for everyone. Hopefully, I’ll get it in the near future.

Because when you leave your country, especially when you are in danger as a refugee, you cannot go back. You lose your connections with your country and you will be homeless forever, until another country fully accepts you and you naturalize. I’m still not naturalized, and I’m still living in uncertainty, and I still feel like anything could happen anytime. But just use the time that you have now and take most out of it. And then you will spend your life living in a different way than people in your country.

Since your country is oppressed, people are forced to dress in a certain way, to act in a certain way that has nothing to do with their authentic culture. But then those imposed practices gradually become part of their culture. They get used to it and then it becomes normal to them. That is the truth with some parts of Afghanistan that were under the influence of Taliban before the Taliban took over all Afghanistan.

We have some students (in Seattle) from those parts. I see that their parents are not allowing them to do after-school programs and that makes me sad. But I’m happy for them that they are here. It will take time for them to unlearn those practices, to realize how they were brainwashed. They will face circumstances when they will regret what they decided for their daughters, and then they will change. I know they will change. They will realize how valuable it is for girls to be independent and to be educated and to have the same opportunities as men.

In Afghanistan, my parents never treated me and my brother differently. They provided the same opportunities. What matters to them is who wants to use these opportunities and grow themselves. They sent me to a Turkish language course, to an Arabic language course. They sent me to mathematics courses, computer courses, all those other courses that made me the person who I am now. They provided opportunities for me to equip myself with all the skills that help us in life, and those opportunities are very limited in Afghanistan and expensive.

When you look at the problem with a different perspective, then you find a solution for it that teaches you so much, that helps you in your other stages of life. It’s just a general formula for me that our challenge can be an opportunity for learning, for growing yourself, for becoming more resilient, and finding other ways to be helpful and stay positive.