Open Skies

by Niloofar Rahmani

  After a few hours and with the sun rising, our group reached an isolated border checkpoint. The smuggler with the red beard, the one who’d stolen from everyone, bribed one of the Pakistani guards, who waved all the families across. The exchange was simple, like a menial transaction in a downtown market. Our lives were at risk, but this was everyday business for them.

  Wearing their light-green camouflage uniforms, the Pakistani guards told us to get away from the border quickly, that it was not safe to remain here. Heeding their warning, our large group split into smaller groups, each family moving at their own pace depending on the number of children and the strength of the elderly and sick.

  People were tired and thirsty as we left our homeland behind, but we were also happy. We’d made it to Pakistan, where there was no war, where it was safe, and where we’d find shelter, food, and work—another chance at life. We didn’t know where to go or what it would be like when we arrived, but it didn’t matter. We’d survived.

  Most families wanted to find the refugee camps they’d heard about, which were run by various international aid organizations. These were places where we could get food and shelter before making our next move.

  This last leg of the journey proved the hardest physically. We were hungry and tired, and most people were dehydrated. The region was abnormally dry, and with summer coming, the heat and dust made every breath feel like chewing chalk.

  My family’s group eventually found a muddy lake, but no one seemed to care about the muck. The other families scooped up the stagnant brown water, brought it to their parched lips, and drank. But my father wouldn’t let my mother, my siblings, and me drink straight from the lake. He put the dirty water in bottles and waited for the mud to settle at the bottom. Then he let us drink. It was a small amount, but it was enough to keep us going.

  A few hours later, we encountered someone who directed us to a nearby refugee camp. My earliest memories are from this camp; I didn’t know anything better or different. It was where I grew up.

  But I can only imagine what my parents felt the first time they looked upon it. It was barren land framed by barbed wire, masses of people huddled together, others waiting in endless lines, a sea of tents as far as the eye could see, and dusty earth that swirled up into the sky at the slightest breeze. It was the kind of place they’d only heard about or seen pictures of on the news. This camp would supposedly allow us a chance to survive and take time to figure out where we would go next; yet, living in the camps is one of the lowest forms of human existence.

  Once we registered with the camp authorities, the aid workers issued my family a tent, a few blankets and pillows, and some rations of water and food. We found our assigned plot of ground, a ten-by-ten-foot square, and my father raised the tent. My sister and brother then asked my parents where they were going to sleep, and that’s when my mother explained that this tent was our new home.

  My siblings were still too young to fully grasp the tragedy of the situation, and they were unaware of the uncertainty that clouded the future. Nevertheless, they were awed by the curiosities of the refugee camp and happy to see so many children in one place. They went out to play, and like children across the world, they laughed and smiled and brought joy to those around them.

  6

  The Refugee Camp

  We entered the refugee camp on May 27, 1992, and we lived there for three years. From the beginning, my parents knew they needed to work tirelessly to get us out.

  The day after we arrived, my father woke up before everyone else and ventured outside the camp fence to find work. The food provided by the aid workers wouldn’t be enough, and he didn’t want us to stay in this wretched place a moment longer than we had to. He needed to immediately earn money so we could survive.

  There were dozens of other men from the camp looking for work, and jobs were scarce. Everyone would gather to wait at a place known as the worker’s circle, and employers looking for cheap labor would come by and pick up as many men as they needed. The workers would load and unload trucks, clean yards or bathrooms, dig ditches, haul timber—the lowest forms of unskilled work.

  For an educated and talented man like my father, the situation was painful. He’d been trained to design buildings and factories, to allocate funding and organize men and materials, and to execute complex construction projects. He’d earned a degree from Kabul’s top technical university and worked for a brief time as a civil engineer.

  Yet here in the camp it was as if he were back making bricks in the dead of night. He was an expendable, insignificant face without a name, scrambling for any job that would pay him.

  As my father waited at the worker’s circle, the sun climbed higher into the sky and the heat intensified, rising to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). There wasn’t any shade, so my father soaked his shirt and scarf in water to stay cool. He couldn’t leave the circle to refresh himself, because if he did, he might miss his one opportunity for work.

  After truck upon truck passed by and picked up loads of men, a shop owner selected my father to unload cargo of big, heavy bags of rice and other staples. After that, he went to clean someone’s house. For eight hours of work, he earned the equivalent of five US dollars.

  That night when my father returned to our tent, he carried a bag of fruit and a long red dress for my mother, which he’d bought with his day’s earnings. It wasn’t much, but considering everything my family had been through, my father’s gifts were a grand surprise that brought smiles to all our faces.

  God had protected my family, and we were safe across the border.

  * * *

  My father worked two shifts a day. He’d get what jobs he could at the worker’s circle, toiling for eight or nine hours; then he’d work another eight hours either polishing shoes or carrying groceries in a wheelbarrow to people’s houses.

  The money he earned allowed us to eat decently—vegetables, bread, and sometimes meat. He eventually bought a small propane burner so my mother could cook our meals inside the tent. In time, he saved enough money to buy notebooks and pencils with the expectation that Afsoon and Omar would start school. Both my parents believed an education was crucial to our future.

  As Afghan refugees, however, we had no rights or immigration status in Pakistan, and the authorities prevented my parents from registering my siblings for school.

  Faced with no other option, my mother designated one small corner of the tent as the classroom, and the next day, my father came home with a board to write on, along with more notebooks and pencils. Every morning, my mother began the day teaching us the alphabet and numbers, and then moved on to other subjects like history, language, and science.

  I also attended class, though I was barely a year old. While my sister and brother learned to write their letters and numbers, I tried to imitate them with my own paper and pencil, holding the pencil in my tiny fist and drawing squiggly lines. My mother said I was very curious and that I admired my older sister and brother, aspiring to do the same things they did.

  Other families in the camp soon noticed my mother teaching us, and she realized that most of the other mothers weren’t educated. She offered to teach some of the children from the nearby tents, and their parents gladly accepted.

  Being needed encouraged my mother. If it hadn’t been for the war, she would have attended Kabul University. She valued work and education. This kind of interaction with the other parents and children helped my mother get through each day, I think, giving her a purpose beyond just us.

  However, the totality of everything—the hardship and the loss of all she’d known and held dear—weighed on my mother. Years later, she admitted that she despaired about what happened to our family and our homeland. She’d lived in a beautiful house in Kabul, waking up every morning to the sounds of birds singing. Our family had had enough food and nice clothing, and they had shelter and the basic necessities of life, along with a few luxuries that they’d acquired through hard work and determination. They
had a large family, many friends, and an intimacy with the land. Afghanistan was their home, but the civil war had destroyed it and forced them to leave.

  This camp was now our existence; we were refugees in a foreign country where we had no rights, no home, and no future.

  * * *

  When we’re young, I think, we assume nothing happened in the world before we were born. We may have seen old pictures of our parents and family and heard stories about events from years past, and we superficially recognize that our parents led complex and interesting lives, but our developing minds haven’t made the abstract connections that allow us to understand how big and diverse the world is beyond our little piece of it and what we know about it.

  As a little girl in the camp, I didn’t know my parents had owned a house in Kabul or that they’d grown up in a cosmopolitan and vibrant city. I didn’t know that my mother used to wake to birds singing outside her window, or that my father had a good job where he only had to work a normal day’s shift, and that he would often bring home gifts and fine foods. I didn’t know that they’d spent special occasions with relatives, feasting, laughing, and playing games, or that at one time my parents believed all of their children would have a chance to go to a real school and pursue a bright future of our choosing.

  That was all gone, and had never existed for me.

  The camp was all I knew. There was a torrent of smells, from burning wood and trash, from the sewage, from the spices coming off the cooking fires, and from the cauldron of thousands of people crammed into a confined plot of land. There were also sounds of trucks driving by, mothers yelling for their children, the wind causing the tents to whip and flap, and legions of boys and girls playing and laughing, oblivious to it all. Sand and dirt were everywhere, and the grime got into everything we owned, into our clothes, and into the crevices of our bodies. It permeated our daily lives completely.

  I remember waking up in the tent and seeing the sun stream through the canvas. I remember sitting next to my brother and sister as my mother taught them to add and subtract and how to spell their names. I remember wearing the same faded pink dress every day and eating the same rice, onions, and beans for every meal. I remember running through the camp for what seemed like miles but was probably only fifty feet, and playing with the other children. In the evening I’d watch the sun go down while my mother or father held me until I fell asleep. Then I’d wake up with a film of dust on my face and in my mouth and do it all again.

  This was the only life I knew, which was why I was so confused when my father came home from work one day in 1995 and said we were leaving.

  * * *

  My father worked himself ragged to provide a better life for his family. He’d promised himself that as long as he was healthy and had strength, he would do everything in his power to take care of us. He never complained, he never made us feel like a burden, and he would often go hungry so we could eat.

  He searched tirelessly for better employment and eventually secured an interview with a construction company. They weren’t interested in him as an engineer, only as a laborer, but it was good work, and my father didn’t want to lose the opportunity. He told the bosses that he’d work without a salary or compensation for the first three months. At the end of the three months, if they were satisfied with his work, they could decide if he should stay with the company and get paid.

  My father did this without complaint, never backing down from a task. He’d work a full day with the construction company, and then he’d go back to his other jobs to earn money so we could eat. We never knew any of this, only that he was working every day so we could survive.

  After three months, the company hired my father full time and started paying him a working wage. In six months, they promoted him to supervisor, and he started earning decent money. He’d show up at the job site an hour before everyone else and stay an hour later to demonstrate his dedication and work ethic.

  Then, one day in April, he rented a car and parked it outside the camp. He came to our tent and told us to gather our belongings because we were leaving.

  At three years old, I didn’t understand and started peppering him with questions. “Where are we going? Will we ever come back here? What about our tent?”

  My father smiled and hugged me, and told me to get my things because I’d find out soon enough.

  My family had arrived at the camp with four bags. In our time there, we’d acquired three pans and a propane stove, and that’s all we had when we left the camp. The drive from the camp to our destination took seven hours. I had no idea where we were going because my understanding of the world was confined to the perimeter of the camp, but I heard my father say we were going to a place called Karachi.

  That evening, we found ourselves in an urban area filled with apartment buildings and small, run-down shops with metal siding that was propped up as awnings. Other buildings had an odd construction where the second floor jutted out above the first floor, like a mushroom, which effectively blocked the sunlight in the narrow streets. The alleys had broken pavement, and the ground was coated with a layer of brown dust and grit, most of which was damp from seeping drainage pipes. All the ground-floor windows had bars covering them, and cows were tied to buildings or being walked by their owners in the street.

  This was Baldia Town on the western edge of Karachi, not far from the Hub River to the north and the border of Baluchistan.

  My father announced we had arrived at our destination, and told us to follow him. With our few belongings in hand, we entered a building and walked up one flight of stairs. We came to a door, which he opened with a key he removed from his pocket, and he said this was our new apartment.

  We were speechless, and it took us a moment to take it all in. There were two rooms, a kitchen, a balcony, and a bathroom. I’d never seen anything like it, and years later my mother told me I ran all through the apartment laughing and giggling with wonder. So did my siblings, and between laps we’d stop and hug and kiss our father and mother, then take off running again, our little feet pattering on the floor.

  The sight of the apartment delighted my mother. Her precious children would now sleep in real beds, have electricity, use a bathroom, have running water, and at night she could lock the doors and feel safe. It’d been so bad, so destitute and hopeless for so long, but life was getting better.

  My father brought home food from a local restaurant for dinner that night. I hadn’t seen this kind of food before; my father told me it was chapli kebab made from marinated lamb, which was then flattened and cooked as a patty. We also had samosas, with chicken and onions and potato fried in a pastry shell. There was naan bread, and plenty of it. It was a true feast as we all sat on the floor in a circle, eating and talking.

  While everyone was still together and satisfied from our beautiful meal, I leaned over and rested my head on my Baba Jan’s leg. I fell asleep happy, listening to my family’s voices, feeling warm and safe inside our apartment protected from the wind. It was like a dream, a magical dream. We were so blessed.

  My father picked me up and carried me into the bedroom. He laid a blanket over me and placed my head on a pillow. It was a real pillow, not a bag filled with dirty clothes and dusty shoes, and he swore to himself he’d never let us suffer like that again.

  7

  Karachi

  Compared to our previous situation, life was good in Karachi. My mother continued to homeschool us because we weren’t permitted to attend the Pakistani schools. I was just three years old, so I didn’t fully appreciate the problems we would have if we lacked a formal education as adults, but I truly enjoyed spending time with my family in our new apartment.

  We played together outside and with some of the neighborhood children. Aside from the one incident with the playground bully when we first arrived, having a playground and friends to play with was marvelous compared to the refugee camp.

  My mother also started teaching us how to cook. The first dish she taught us was rice.
It was a very simple dish and something we ate at almost every meal, but it was the time spent alongside my mother and sister in the kitchen that was most special to me. I began to understand how much love and care my parents put into the basic elements of our lives, which up until then I’d taken for granted. I became keenly aware of how much they did for us throughout each and every day, from the cleaning to the laundry to the cooking to the teaching to the attention they gave us whenever we asked for it.

  But my fondest memories are of the trips we took into the nearby mountains. After a few months working for the construction company, my father had saved enough money to buy a scooter. It was a tan 1979 Vespa with a sidecar. It was a bit run-down since it was close to twenty years old, but it looked like a grand chariot to me. In the city, I’d seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Karachi’s citizens riding motorcycles and scooters just like this one, and now we had our own.

  The first time I got to ride it, my Baba Jan picked me up off the ground and set me on the seat in front of him. He hit the throttle and sent us down the street with the hum of the engine buzzing in my ears, and I found the experience exhilarating. With the speed, the wind against my face, and the scenery passing by in a blur, I felt free and alive. My father said I was fearless, always wanting to go faster. I fell in love with this sensation; it was like I was soaring.

  On the weekends, we would all climb aboard the scooter and ride into the Kirthar Mountains north of the city. The range runs through the provinces of Baluchistan and Sind, serving as a natural border and marking the transition from the western ranges and valleys of Baluchistan to the lower Indus River plain to the east. The Kirthar Mountains are also home to Ranikot Fort, which dates from the ninth century and is often compared to the Great Wall of China with its thirty-foot-high walls and its sixteen-mile circumference.