0:01

Hey, this is Dave Cauley, host of the podcast

0:03

Cold. If you're someone who follows

0:05

the news, or even if you're not, there's

0:08

a good chance you saw and heard stories about

0:10

the chaos that erupted in Kabul two

0:13

years ago when the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan.

0:16

Thousands of people rushed for the airport, desperate

0:18

to escape Afghanistan as the Taliban

0:20

returned to power there. Then

0:23

suicide bombers attacked. People

0:26

died, both Afghans and Americans.

0:28

But memories fade, and

0:31

I'll admit, in the years since, I've

0:33

not spent much time considering what happened to

0:35

all those people who managed to get out of

0:37

Afghanistan. More than 80,000

0:39

of them are now in the United States, facing

0:41

the daunting task of starting new

0:43

lives in unfamiliar communities,

0:46

maybe even your own. And that crush

0:49

of arrivals puts serious strain on the government

0:51

agencies and non-profits that

0:53

typically help refugees find new

0:55

homes, jobs, schools, and everything

0:58

else.

0:59

So what happened to these people?

1:01

Well,

1:01

a colleague of mine, journalist

1:04

Andrea Smartin, has spent the past two

1:06

years meeting and following some of these

1:08

amazing people. She's put together

1:10

a new podcast about their experiences.

1:13

It's called Stranger Becomes Neighbor.

1:15

I've had a chance to listen to the series and can

1:18

tell you,

1:19

Andrea's done an incredible job

1:21

getting at the humanity behind the

1:23

headlines. She will introduce you to

1:25

volunteers who stepped forward to

1:27

cover the gaps when overwhelmed agencies

1:30

fell short.

1:31

You're about to hear a clip from the first

1:33

episode of Stranger Becomes Neighbor.

1:35

While you're listening, please follow Stranger Becomes

1:37

Neighbor on Apple Podcasts so you don't

1:40

miss an episode. As always,

1:42

thank you for listening, and here's that clip

1:44

of Stranger Becomes Neighbor.

1:48

It's wintertime in Kabul, Afghanistan,

1:51

early 2021. And

1:53

15-year-old Burhan spent her break from school

1:56

binge-watching the TV series Prison

1:58

Break.

1:59

times because I really love it."

2:02

At first, she watched it dubbed in Persian.

2:05

But then she had an idea. She

2:07

wondered if she could teach herself English by

2:10

watching the show.

2:10

I can't help wondering what someone

2:13

with your credentials is doing in a place

2:15

like this. Took a wrong

2:17

turn a few months back, I guess.

2:19

She knew the story well. The main

2:21

character, a structural engineer, makes

2:24

an elaborate plan to get himself into

2:26

prison,

2:27

just so he can break his older brother out.

2:30

He even has the blueprints for the prison

2:32

facility tattooed onto his

2:34

upper body. Michael. Why?

2:38

I'm getting you out of here.

2:41

I really like that character. He is

2:44

very smart and he thinks about all

2:46

the things. And that was the reason that I kind

2:48

of, I learned English.

2:50

But she had no way of knowing how much she

2:52

would need English in just a few months.

2:56

Buran is

2:58

not her real name. She asked that we

3:01

use a pseudonym to protect her family.

3:03

Back in the 90s, the Taliban beat up

3:05

her father and broke his back because

3:08

he was training women to work in the medical

3:10

field.

3:11

The family fled to Iran for several

3:13

years. But Buran was born

3:16

after American forces and allies occupied

3:18

Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban

3:21

from power.

3:22

Her family decided it was safe and

3:24

moved back to the country. Now it's

3:27

a good place. Afghanistan is good for living.

3:29

We come back to our country. She wanted

3:32

to be a doctor like her father. She

3:34

had every reason to believe she could achieve her

3:36

goal. And she was in a hurry.

3:38

Buran finished high school two years

3:40

early, but she never got to attend

3:42

her graduation ceremony or take

3:44

the exam to get into medical school.

3:47

By August 2021, all

3:49

of her plans evaporated.

3:51

The Taliban is in downtown, like

3:54

driving, but there is no one to stop

3:56

them. Suicide bombings just outside

3:58

the Kabul airport have killed dozens.

3:59

Suddenly, the focus

4:02

was on escape and survival. The

4:04

Americans were withdrawing from Afghanistan,

4:06

and Buran found herself at the Kabul airport,

4:09

one of many Afghans desperate for a

4:11

way out.

4:12

For five days, they waited on the street

4:15

outside the airport. Buran, her

4:17

parents, her 31-year-old sister, her

4:19

two older brothers, their wives, and

4:21

kids. All the Afghanistan came to

4:23

the airport to enter the gate, and

4:26

it was very crowded. They lost

4:29

each other. And then the gates

4:32

opened.

4:32

As they pressed forward, Buran's sister was carrying

4:35

her four-year-old niece, their brother's daughter,

4:38

and they were knocked to the ground. They

4:40

managed to get up

4:41

before they were crushed. They

4:43

made it through the gates. But when

4:45

Buran looked around, several family

4:47

members were not there. And

4:50

when we entered the gate, we lost our parents.

4:53

One of their brothers and his wife, the niece's

4:55

parents, didn't make it either. But

4:57

the authorities pushed them forward. They

5:00

couldn't wait, and there was no going back.

5:02

They flew to Qatar, hoping the rest of the

5:04

family would follow. They ended up at

5:07

a makeshift military camp in New Jersey,

5:09

where they spent several weeks. It

5:12

was there that Buran

5:13

celebrated her 16th birthday.

5:15

One morning at 5 a.m.,

5:18

Buran, her sister, and niece woke up in

5:20

the dark, skipping breakfast to get on an

5:22

airplane,

5:23

having no idea that they had two stopovers

5:26

and would be traveling all day and into

5:28

the night. The four-year-old begged

5:30

to eat the food she saw in the airport restaurants,

5:33

but the only money they had was Afghani.

5:36

By the time they arrived at their final destination

5:38

in Salt Lake City,

5:40

there was a snowstorm. The first night

5:42

that we came to Utah, it

5:44

was a very horrible situation.

5:47

It was 1 a.m. A caseworker from

5:49

a resettlement agency drove them through

5:51

streets covered in snow and brought them

5:54

to an apartment close to downtown. When

5:56

he opened the door and when he

5:58

entered the house, he was in a

5:59

It was very cold and it was

6:02

a snowy weather. There was no power, no

6:04

heat. And this apartment was

6:07

dark, completely dark.

6:08

Baran tried to recall the English she

6:11

had learned from watching prison break. But

6:13

that night, standing in the dark room, she

6:15

couldn't find the words to communicate with

6:17

the caseworker. Even I couldn't talk

6:19

with our caseworker that how

6:22

we can turn on the

6:23

heat, how we can turn

6:25

on the lights.

6:27

Even we don't have the phone to call him

6:29

that come here. They asked the

6:31

caseworker to come back the next day.

6:33

He said he would be back the next week. And

6:36

then he left. My niece, she

6:38

starts crying and she says that I

6:40

don't want to be in here. And then

6:43

they were all crying. There was a chair

6:45

with a box of household items, toiletries

6:48

and laundry soap stacked in the middle of the living

6:50

room and some food in the kitchen

6:52

left by the agency.

6:53

Their niece was hungry.

6:56

They'd been traveling all day without a meal. Without

6:59

power, they couldn't cook, so they gave her a glass

7:01

of milk and some bread. As

7:03

women alone, they didn't feel safe. The

7:06

lock wasn't working, so they pushed a table

7:08

against the door. Before they

7:10

left Afghanistan, they had never spent

7:12

a night without their family.

7:15

They were all alone in a strange

7:17

land. And my sister said, so

7:19

what should we do? We want to go

7:22

back to the airport and I want to sit

7:24

there. At least there's a kind of people,

7:26

there's a population.

7:28

If we live in here with this kind of situation,

7:31

I want to come back to Afghanistan. If

7:34

there's a Taliban, it's okay. Just I want

7:36

to go back. They were so scared,

7:38

Buran's sister thought it might be better to

7:40

risk living under the Taliban. At

7:43

least their family would be together.

7:49

What will happen for Buran and her family?

7:52

That will depend on people like you

7:54

and me. The global forces

7:56

and political choices that created this situation

7:59

are beyond our own. beyond our individual control.

8:02

But how we respond will test who

8:04

we are

8:05

and how we define community.

8:08

On this podcast, we're going to follow people

8:10

after the evacuation is over and they've arrived

8:13

at their destination. Who will

8:15

emerge to help these new neighbors?

8:17

And what does it mean to be part of

8:20

a community? In

8:23

August 2021, while then, 15-year-old

8:26

Buran was waiting on the streets of Kabul

8:28

for the gates to open at the airport, halfway

8:31

across the world, a woman sat on a sofa

8:34

in her air-conditioned home in a suburb of Salt

8:36

Lake City, watching it unfold on

8:38

the news. She saw people trying

8:40

to scale the walls, covered in barbed

8:43

wire. Families crushed in

8:45

the crowds and separated.

8:46

Azim shared video of his wife

8:48

at a Taliban checkpoint where he says

8:51

she was tear gassed and beaten.

8:52

People crowding around a massive U.S.

8:55

Air Force transport plane as it starts

8:57

down the runway. Some even managing

8:59

to hold onto the wings as it lifts.

9:02

Then bodies

9:03

fall from the sky. For

9:07

most of us, it's impossible to fathom

9:09

how someone could be that desperate to escape.

9:13

But she's seen this story before. In

9:15

fact, she's lived it. What

9:18

I saw in the news, it's

9:20

kind of triggered my memory.

9:23

Her name is Nisifa. She asked

9:26

that we not use her last name. To

9:28

this day, she's nervous about exposing

9:30

her family. More than two decades

9:32

ago, before the U.S. occupation, she

9:35

also fled Afghanistan. Her

9:37

family, part of a persecuted minority

9:40

and a target of the Taliban. We

9:42

escaped maybe not like

9:44

through evacuation flights, but we went

9:47

through the same route, you know, leave

9:49

our home with nothing. It's

9:52

a time in her life she prefers not to

9:54

think about. But when the U.S. withdrew

9:56

and Afghanistan fell back into the hands

9:58

of the Taliban,

9:59

It all came flooding back. She

10:02

remembered the day her father never

10:04

came home. We can find his

10:06

body. We were waiting when Taliban

10:09

was coming on our door, looking for

10:12

us. Nazifa, the oldest of

10:14

six children, was 12 years old when

10:16

her family crossed the border illegally into

10:19

Pakistan. She remembered

10:21

what it was like to be on the run, her

10:23

family living in one room with

10:25

one blanket among them, how she

10:27

worked in a refugee hospital, and

10:29

her younger siblings worked as carpet weavers

10:32

just to keep the family alive.

10:35

Sitting on a big cushy chair in her living

10:37

room, she lets herself go back

10:40

to that time. I didn't go to

10:42

school or anything, so I just

10:45

worked,

10:46

survived. This

10:48

is making you emotional. What is

10:50

it bringing up for you? All

10:52

of the hard work, you know, it's like

10:55

the life that I have lived. I'm

10:59

grateful for the experience. I think that

11:03

is what made me really strong,

11:05

and that was, you know, why we

11:08

work so hard in here.

11:11

I wanted to be really independent,

11:14

educated, and

11:16

I never wanted to live for survival.

11:20

Today, you could say Nazifa has achieved

11:22

the American dream. She works

11:24

as a risk analyst in the financial industry,

11:27

a job that allowed her to buy a home in

11:29

a nice neighborhood at the base of a mountain

11:32

canyon. How she got there

11:34

is another story that we'll get to in the

11:36

next episode. Suffice it to say,

11:38

she didn't do it

11:39

alone. Right now, there

11:41

are new arrivals from Afghanistan who

11:44

need help, more help than the

11:46

resettlement agencies can provide, so

11:48

she and others are stepping up

11:51

to volunteer. Thanks for listening

11:54

to

11:55

this clip of episode one of Stranger Becomes Neighbor. now

12:00

from KSL Podcasts. Find

12:02

our show on kslpodcast.com.

12:05

You can follow us now on Apple Podcasts

12:07

or wherever you listen so you don't miss

12:10

an episode.