Malalai’s father Yusuf was already very cautious life in Afghanistan was getting more and more dangerous.
Pre-empting catastrophe, he used the British citizenship he had earned as an asylum seeker again in 2001 through the Taliban’s earlier rule of terror to flee Kabul.
Hoping his spouse Sherbano and his then nine-year-old daughter Malalai would be a part of him quickly, he caught what turned out to be one of many final business flights out of Afghanistan on 14 August 2021 – a day earlier than the nation fell.
When Taliban fighters claimed victory the following day, he endured a determined wait in a quarantine lodge in London to see if the UK authorities’s Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme might get his household out alive.
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A brand new three-part Sky News podcast, Out of Afghanistan, follows the tales of Yusuf, Sherbano, Malalai, and different Afghan refugees, from the evacuation to now – one 12 months on.
Their names have been modified to guard their security.
Malalai’s mom Sherbano was getting ready Sunday lunch when the Taliban took over.
As a British citizen herself she instantly rang the Home Office however needed to wait two agonising days with gunfire rife outdoors till she acquired a name.
“They called me and said you can go to the airport, but it was late at night and after 10pm we can’t go out and the situation was totally not safe,” she mentioned.
“They told me you can’t take any luggage with you, just one small hand luggage.”
Malalai provides: “I have so much school things – my cousin’s a student, so I have to give her everything. I miss my home now, my grandma was crying, we hugged.”
Four died whereas we have been on the airport
Sherbano took Malalai and her cousin Maiwand to Kabul Airport, the place the world watched harrowing scenes of individuals clutching on to the skin of planes in a bid to flee.
They navigated their method to the Baron Hotel the place the British navy had arrange processing operations.
There they spent three days, with out meals or shelter from the scorching solar.
And with Islamic State working within the metropolis, fears of an imminent suicide assault on the airport have been fixed.
Just days after they have been there a blast within the sewage canal between Baron Hotel and the Abbey Gate entrance of the airport killed 170 Afghans and 13 US Marines only a few hundred ft away.
“People was crushing,” Sherbano recollects. “When we were there four people died.”
Eventually after two days and three nights the three of them boarded a navy aircraft to Dubai, the place they acquired on one other to London.
Once reunited with Yusuf, they have been one in every of many households to be housed in one in every of two ‘bridging motels’ in Bristol.
According to official figures, hundreds of Afghans are nonetheless ready in these motels a 12 months after the evacuation.
‘It’s not a house’
Despite having a roof over their heads and meals to eat, life in limbo proves irritating.
Yusuf says: “The main thing for me in home is cooking, so I’d be cooking lots of stuff at home. In here you don’t do anything, you get lazy all day, especially if you don’t work.”
Sherbano provides: “It’s not a home.”
Malalai, in the meantime, begins college and struggles.
“I’m so new in here. Culture, everything is so different,” she says.
“I go to school but I don’t have any friends because I can’t speak so much English.
“In Afghanistan I had so many associates. I miss it a lot. I hate break time… in Afghanistan now we have no break time.”
Donna Curran, a senior support worker supporting refugees in Bristol, says these cultural differences are important to note when trying to find permanent homes for families.
“There’s loads of suggestions that they by no means use sofas, they like cushions on the ground,” she says.
“Flats fairly than homes – gardens aren’t one thing they want.”
Relatives nonetheless trapped beneath Taliban rule
Out of Afghanistan speaks to a different household who’re resettled in Peterhead – north of Aberdeen.
One of them, Ali, says: “It’s really hard to chat to local people here, their accent is really different.”
He got here to the UK by way of the federal government’s Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme, having labored as an interpreter for the British navy.
Another refugee, Afzal, remains to be frightened about a number of relations nonetheless caught within the nation.
He says: “I’m afraid one of my brothers, maybe during one month I no speak yet.
“Just two or 3 times I obtain his sound on [my phone]. The web is just not good high quality in Afghanistan
“We hope some change in Afghanistan from the Taliban – that they stop their way to hurt people.”
All three episodes of Out of Afghanistan, offered by Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, are out on 8 August
Source: information.sky.com”