Queens family fights for loved ones’ escape from Kabul
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The Karimi family, Ghezal, Farida, Zohal and Mohammad, has relatives trapped in Kabul, Afghanistan and has been doing all they can to get them out. Photo courtesy of Farida Karimi
By Jacob Kaye
Mohammad Karimi has a new morning routine. Every day for the past several weeks, he’s woken up in his family’s Fresh Meadows home, walked downstairs to his mother’s room and listened to her talk on the phone with his aunt.
“I see her on the phone with my aunt and she's asking if everything is okay. And then I go to work,” Mohammad said. “Every time my mom speaks to them, she's really strong here, and then within seconds of when she hangs up, I can hear her crying. It's really intense and really crazy.”
Mohammad’s aunt, uncle, cousins and several other relatives live in Kabul, Afghanistan and are looking for a way out of the country in crisis before the U.S. halts evacuations at the end of the month. The family has tried contacting nonprofits, legislators and anyone else who can help but haven’t found much success. If their family members aren’t evacuated, they will likely face retaliation from the Taliban, they say.
“The past week, I've been calling every single person I know,” he said. “I'm literally submitting anything to anyone… everything is just a waiting game, really.”
Quickly after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Kabul, the country’s capital, was overrun by the Taliban in mid-August. Countries, including the U.S., began evacuating their citizens living in or visiting Afghanistan, as well as some Afghan nationals who aided NATO countries during what was the longest war in U.S. history.
Images of people desperately clinging to planes and falling from the sky to their deaths circulated in the media and online throughout the evacuation process.
President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that his administration would stick to its Aug. 31 deadline for evacuating U.S. citizens and Afghan allies, CNN reported. The U.S. has evacuated 70,000 people since Aug. 14, according to the president.
The Taliban said Tuesday that they would stop any Afghan nationals from reaching Kabul’s airport, according to the New York Times. Several cases of U.S. Marines blocking potential Afghan refugees from fleeing the country have also been reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Mohammad’s aunt, who works as a principal at an all-girls school; his uncle, who is retired and is suffering from dementia; and his two cousins and their wives have been hiding out and unable to travel around their neighborhood, let alone to the airport, they say.
Another member of their family previously worked for the U.S.-backed Afghan government, escorting visiting dignitaries to the presidential palace. In the weeks since the government’s fall, he has been traveling from one location to another, fearing that if he’s caught by the Taliban, he’ll be killed.
The names of the family members in Afghanistan are being withheld for safety reasons, as requested by the family.
“The situation is really bad over there,” said Farida Karimi, Mohammad’s mother. “My sister, she cannot go out. It's very bad and it's not safe for women.”
Farida came from Afghanistan to Flushing as a refugee in the early 1990s. She has since become the owner of a salon and spa in Long Island and raised three children. She’s never left Queens. Mohammad, her eldest, attended Baruch College and now works in digital marketing.
Farida’s sister has resisted calls to immigrate to the U.S. in the past but this time is different.
“She never wanted to leave because she always said, ‘What about my students and staff?’” Mohammad said. “Then now, when we talked to her, she said she has no idea where her students and staff are.”
Mohammed said he’s been struggling to focus at work in the past weeks. His job requires him to engage with social media, a place where he sees constant reminders of the terrors his family faces.
However, he’s found some comfort in the arms of the New York Afghan community, who he has rallied with in recent weeks to try to get support for the community’s family in Afghanistan.
“Afghans don’t agree on much, we are so different – every state has a different dialect, every state has different viewpoints, people do not get along because their traditions are different from state to state,” Mohammad said. “But this is the most I’ve seen Afghans of all different sects come together to basically condemn everything that’s going on.”
“The one thing we all agree on is basically ‘f’ the Taliban – excuse my language,” he added.
Heidi Gliboff, who works with a Queens-based real estate law firm, met the Karimi family earlier this week and felt immediately that she needed to help.
Gliboff, the descendent of Holocaust survivors, said that to sit back and not do anything would be “unconscionable.”
“Jewish people say never again, it doesn’t mean just for Jewish people, it means for anyone,” Gliboff said. “What she was suffering through just overwhelmed me, the fear… this is real.”
Last week, several local lawmakers in Queens signed onto a letter sent to Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urging the federal government to evacuate as many people in Afghanistan as quickly as possible and to send refugees to the Empire State.
“While the situation in Afghanistan unfolds, we write to you as elected officials from New York State saying we will welcome asylum seekers and refugees from Afghanistan and stand ready to support them when they are here,” reads the letter signed by Queens Assembly members Catalina Cruz, Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas and Sen. Michael Gianaris. “We also encourage you to act urgently to make sure that those still on the ground who are at risk and eligible for protection pathways are evacuated expeditiously.”
Federal lawmakers say their offices have been inundated with calls from New Yorkers, like the Karimi family, in need of assistance.
Rep. Grace Meng told the Eagle her office has received over 600 requests from her constituents and people related to her constituents, asking for help in escaping Afghanistan.
“For those of us who live and represent parts of Queens, this is very much a local issue that is affecting our constituents,” Meng said. “We have no choice right now, but to plug away, and to make sure that we use every resource available, until we can’t anymore.”
The congress member said that she and her staff, who have been working day and night to help people relocate, have run into frustrations surrounding the lack of consistency in the evacuation policies and plans laid out by the federal government.
“There is not always consistent guidance and response from people that we are trying to seek answers from,” she said. “I have someone that we're helping, for example, where they literally had necessary papers and travel documents, came to the airport and were literally turned away.”
Last week, Meng co-wrote a letter to the Biden Administration urging them to take a number of steps to better unify the evacuation efforts. Meng suggested creating an interagency refugee coordinator to facilitate the evacuation processes, as well as a targeted program at helping visible women, who may be more likely to suffer at the hands of the Taliban.
“Even when they give everything they're told to provide, it's not necessarily working in terms of them getting through the gate and onto an airplane,” Meng said. “Time is running out.”
Local organizations, including Women for Afghan Women in Fresh Meadows, have been providing their services to assist the estimated 400,000 people who have had to flee their homes.
“Over the past few weeks, [Women for Afghan Women] has been working relentlessly, 24/7 to keep its clients, staff and families alive and safe,” the group said in a statement. “Staff are working day and night to provide safe shelter, resources and aid to the thousands of women, children, families and staff who are under the organization’s care.”
Mohammad said that for most of his life, he’s been living in Queens with a sense of survivor's guilt. Many of his family members have escaped desperate situations and his life has been made better for it, he said. The guilt he feels has only intensified in the past several weeks.
“We are the lucky survivors,” he said. “We have this weird survivor's guilt, we have this cycle – it's a very weird feeling. I've been having this feeling of impending doom, it's so bad.”
His mother feels slightly more hopeful. Farida, who happily calls her sister the favorite child, said that during their phone conversations, she preps her to leave.
“I told her to please be ready, whatever happens, you guys have to just leave, ” she said. “I’m hoping that something like a miracle is going to happen and they can get out of Afghanistan.”
