Life after war

Kabul, April 1992. The early summer sun, usually a welcome sight after months of harsh winter, brought little cheer or warmth to Shirshah Heravi. The constant shelling by Mujahideen fighters hammered the young undergraduate’s nerves as he headed for the university every morning. The radio and the television added to the unease, relaying news of the civil war from other Afghan provinces. Son of a military officer who served under the ousted President Najibullah, Heravi feared that the war might disrupt his studies in law and political science. And that’s what happened.

Various factions of the Mujahideen closed in on Kabul from different directions while international bodies tried to broker a peace agreement. But the negotiations had little effect on how the radical outfits transformed the city’s social and cultural fabric. Public executions became a routine. Women were barred from jobs and education. And the airy classrooms of Kabul University became the gallows for those who resisted the Islamisation of the capital.

Fearing persecution for being loyal to a man who once enjoyed Soviet support, the Heravis lay low for a couple of years. In 1995, a year before the Taliban stormed into Kabul and executed Najibullah and his brother, the family crossed the border into Iran. And that journey earned him a tag that Heravi is still trying to lose — that of a refugee. “I miss those days in my father’s house in Kabul… It was a huge bungalow with more rooms that I can remember. We had every comfort a family in an upscale neighbourhood in those days could ask for. And today, I am struggling to pay the rent for two small rooms,” says Heravi.

In his early 40s now, the six-foot-tall Afghan arrived in Delhi in August 2013. With three children in tow, Heravi and his wife Kamila started a coaching centre for Afghan refugees in the city. A signboard in Dari, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, marks the entry to Aryana English Centre in Bhogal’s Church Lane, in central Delhi. A modest whitewashed room in the basement of a residential building was the best that Heravi could find within his budget. Contributions from friends and former colleagues helped him buy chairs along with writing pads, a printer, writing boards and spoken English guides.

“I pay ₹15,000 in rent for this room, but even that becomes difficult when the students can’t pay the tuition fee, which is only ₹500,” says Heravi as he arranges printouts for a lesson. Unable to meet expenses from the coaching income, he became an interpreter with a UN agency. For nine hours a day, Heravi is the bridge of communication between officials and Afghan refugees in India. “It gives me some satisfaction that I am able to help people who are in the same boat. But I keep asking Allah if we will ever see better days. My children keep asking me the same question… I have no answer,” he says.

Like every father, Heravi wants a good education, a career and marriage for his children. But safety is what he prizes most. “Concern for the physical safety of my children brought me to India,” he says. After almost 10 years of living in Shiraz and Tehran, Heravi found an opportunity to migrate to Canada. “I was getting the papers ready for our move to Canada when my elder brother called me back to Afghanistan. He said my father, who’d gone there to sell his property, had been poisoned by an aunt’s family. I had no choice but to return, I had my duties. I packed my wife and children into a bus and returned to my country after another arduous journey,” he recalls.

The return wasn’t a happy occasion for the family. Heravi’s father died after months of suffering in a hospital, even as they struggled to reconcile with the drastic changes in a war-ravaged Afghanistan. “The Taliban had mutilated my country beyond recognition. There was tension everywhere. Corruption and fundamentalism was killing Afghanistan minute by minute,” says Heravi. The urge to help the country get back on its feet prompted Heravi to join hands with various international bodies and ministries. His work took him to far-flung areas while his family settled down into a modern housing complex near the airport in Kabul.

In late 2012, Shaheer, Heravi’s elder son, complained that he was being shadowed on his way to school and back. “It pressed the panic button in my head. Abductions were an everyday affair and anyone who worked with the government or international bodies were targets,” Heravi breaks down as he recalls the day he decided to leave Afghanistan for good. “Today I don’t have savings. I don’t have a car. I don’t have enough money to take my family to the Taj Mahal. But at least we are together and alive,” he says. His children — Adiba (18), Shaheer (17) and Baheer (9) — like to stay indoors most of the time. “Staying close to each other is our way of feeling secure,” he says.

Heravi claims his neighbours are friendly but the sense of being an outsider is ever present. “I have a refugee card that protects me from forced deportation or detention, but that’s not enough to erase questions people around us have,” he says while his eyes wander to the clock on a stark white wall. “I am expecting a visit from the local police station. Someone — I don’t know who — has complained that I run a jihadist madrasa from this centre,” he adds.

At 10 pm, Heravi locks the heavy iron gate and walks home, just five minutes away. “I can’t say what tomorrow will bring. For now, I have a home-cooked meal and some Afghan TV channels to return to,” he says.

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