Steam rose from copper kettles in the Turkish café tucked down a side street in the Sadar Bazaar. As usual, it was crowded with Afghan men, most dispirited, cradling glass cups of green tea nestled in metal holders. It was a place I’d come to often, hoping to find a way to get a visa, any way out of Pakistan. Others came to buy guns or fake passports. I took a seat and found myself staring into the cardamom-laced froth of my tea as the rising steam warmed my face. Soon this cup would be as empty as my life.
“Salaam,” said a voice in Dari tinged with Turkish. I looked up to find a man standing next to my table. He appeared to be just another Afghan refugee, but his accent intrigued me. “Forgive me, my name is Gul. You look lost.”
“Baleh, in a way I am. Would you like to join me?”
“Tashakor. Tell me, how did you come to be here in Peshawar?”
I told him of my escape, the minefield, the prison, the reporters. “I want to go to America,” I said, “but I’m just one of millions of Afghan refugees in a country that doesn’t want us. No one wants us. I have no entry stamp, so I have no way of leaving, no way to get together with my family again.”
“Why don’t you go to Turkey?”
I thought he hadn’t been listening. “I told you, I have no entry stamp. I cannot get a visa.”
“You don’t need a visa to fly to Turkey, only a passport. In Karachi you can buy a plane ticket and fly to Ankara.”
“Why has no one told me this before?”
“Very few risk the trip to Karachi. Those who do don’t return. I lived in Turkey. Here is the address and phone number of my cousin Hadir in Ankara. Call him when you arrive. For five thousand dollars he can get you to England.”
Now I was suspicious. Was this man Gul (if that really was his name) just trying to find refugees with money to steal? Was what he said about flying to Ankara true? I didn’t know what to think. So much one heard in Peshawar was unreliable, and even if what he said was true, there was nothing simple about it. Karachi was a thousand miles away. To leave my fellow Afghans and the relative safety of Peshawar and travel all that way across Pakistan to a city of Muhajirs and Punjabis involved great risk. So many things could go wrong on the fifteen-hour train journey. I did not want to be imprisoned again, and without Abbas I would not be so lucky a second time.
“Nay, Gul, tashakor,” I said.
After several more weeks at the Sadar Bazaar, I realized I had only two difficult choices left: stay in Pakistan until the war was over (though there was no end in sight) or risk going to Karachi. Karachi was the best of my bad options.
I thanked Dr. Ahmad for all he had done for me and told him I was taking the train to Karachi. “I wish you luck,” he said. “Keep your belongings close. Pickpockets roam the trains looking for dozing passengers.”
At the end of January 1981, three months after I’d left Kabul with Abbas, I boarded the train. Three hours later the train pulled into Rawalpindi station, where the gebis and pakols of Peshawar gave way to the colorful silk robes and turbans of the Punjabis. The British had built Pakistan’s railway system to connect all its major cities, even the remote Quetta. Afghanistan had no railways—none. Rawalpindi station, built in the manner of British imperial architecture, could have been mistaken for a miniature castle with its turreted stone construction.
The train journey from Rawalpindi to Karachi, Pakistan’s main seaport on the Arabian Sea, descends from mountain highlands to hot, humid jungle. Each car of the old coal-fired train was crowded with families. The cries of babies almost drowned out the noise of the train. At each stop the train was set upon by men selling fruit, bread, and drinks. The farther south we traveled, the bigger and more crowded the stations became. The interior of the train became a steam bath. The suffocating aroma of spices, shouting of adults, and wailing of babies permeated all, like the soot from the coal-fired engine that coated everything in a fine black dust. I wanted to sleep, but I hadn’t forgotten Dr. Ahmad’s warning about pickpockets. Even if I could have understood my fellow passengers’ Urdu, I would not have trusted them. I did not want to lose the hard-earned money I had hidden on me. And I worried about what lay ahead. Would I be able to get from the train station to the airport? Would I be able to buy a plane ticket to Ankara? Once I was in Turkey, would I be able to get out?
And my biggest worry of all, a worry that never left me: would I ever see my family again?
After a seemingly endless journey, the train pulled into Karachi station, another monument to the British presence. Even before the train came to a stop, a throng of vendors advanced on us, imploring the passengers hanging out the windows to purchase their breads and fruits and drinks. I fought my way down the aisle to the doorway, got off, and bought biscuits, bread, and orange soda. As I found some breathing room, I ate and drank, then joined the rush of humanity flowing down the street thick as water after a monsoon rain.
Men, desperate to drive me to the airport in their taxis, assaulted me, almost dragging me to their vehicle. I shared a taxi to the airport with several others. Pedestrians mobbed the streets. The taxi stopped and started constantly, trying to navigate through the sea of humanity. How could one country produce so many people? Afghanistan was sparse in every way: landscape, infrastructure, population. Pakistan was so crowded; I could have walked faster than this taxi was moving.
The situation at the airport was no better, the crowd of people so dense I could not see the ticket counter. An old floor sweeper working nearby was constantly being interrupted by questions. When I heard him answer someone in Dari, I approached him and asked him where I could buy a ticket to Ankara. “You are Afghan,” he said, his eyes lighting up. He pointed toward a counter that I could barely see in the distance through a gap in the crowd. “There is the ticket counter. God be with you.”
The long line to buy tickets moved at a glacial pace. Each person seemed to have some great difficulty that could only be resolved through a long, heated discussion. When it was finally my turn, I approached the ticket seller.
“Passport!” he demanded. I handed it to him. “Where is your visa?”
“I was told I don’t need a visa to fly to Ankara.”
“That’s true—but only if you have an entry stamp. You have no entry stamp, so I cannot sell you a ticket.”
“No one said anything about an entry stamp.”
“That’s not my problem. Next!”
As I stood there, the people behind me became more and more restless. They began shouting, “Step aside!” The ticket seller kept waving me away, but I refused to move. I had nowhere else to go. Suddenly I felt a poke. There, resting on his broom handle, was the floor sweeper. He motioned me closer. I bent down to him. “Baksheesh,” he whispered.
I turned to the ticket seller. “How much for an entry stamp?”
He quickly replied, “Five hundred dollars U.S.”
It was an outrageous amount. But wasn’t my freedom worth five hundred dollars? Everything has a price, I thought. Then my pride took over. I had risked death going back to Afghanistan for this money, and I was not going to turn it over to this ticket seller for simply stamping a piece of paper. The voices of the crowd behind me grew louder, and the floor sweeper gave me another poke with his bony elbow. “You must pay him,” he said. “Hurry!”
I gave the ticket seller a determined look and told him I only had one hundred dollars.
“Next!” he shouted.
The floor sweeper pulled my sleeve and whispered into my ear, “Two hundred.”
I ignored him and said to the ticket seller, “I will find another agent who will take my money, and you will lose one hundred dollars. What do you want to do?”
He motioned me away impatiently.
I stepped aside and stared at him as others bought tickets. After twenty minutes he motioned to the next person in line to stop and gestured to me to come to the counter. I handed him my passport with the hundred-dollar bill inside. He reached under the counter and retrieved an ink pad and stamps. “Whack! Whack!” He handed me my passport with its newly inked entry and exit stamps.
My seat on the plane was as dirty and worn as a seat on a Peshawar bus, but I didn’t care. I plopped down and buckled my seat belt, so tired that I took little notice of the strange rumbling from the plane’s engines, which grew worse as the plane taxied down the runway. As we lifted off, the engines groaned in defiance, but the plane’s tired, hulking body soared into the sky over the Arabian Sea.
The straining sound of the engines was drowned out by the drone of passengers running their fingers along their prayer beads as they rhythmically chanted, “God is greater, God is pure, praise be to God; God is greater, God is pure, praise be to God.” The plane leveled off, and the praying stopped. Vast quantities of food and drink appeared from vests and bags, and I understood why my waskat had so many pockets. The plane’s interior smelled like a Pakistani restaurant.
Then the plane plummeted, tipping from side to side as if it were trying to shake us off. I broke into a cold sweat, and my stomach leaped into my throat. Food and drink flew everywhere; overhead bins popped open; baggage toppled out; flight attendants were knocked to the floor as screams of “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” filled the cabin.
What a cruel fate. I’d survived the Russians, the mujahideen, the landmine explosion, and prison only to discover that just when I thought I had escaped, God’s plan for me was to plunge to my death in the Arabian Sea. The plane rose and plunged, rose and plunged, as the passengers screamed and prayed, screamed and prayed, and my last thoughts were of my family, who I would never see again: Baba, Babu, Afsana, Walid, and Mariam, my cousins, uncles, and aunts. I closed my eyes and accepted my fate, awaiting the impact of the plane slamming into the sea.
The plane swooped back up, leveled off, and the pilot regained control.
“We appear to have a problem with the right engine,” the pilot announced. “We’re returning to Karachi.”
Hours later our new plane rose smoothly over the Arabian Sea. We flew above the vast, glistening, empty deserts of southwestern Pakistan, across the Pakistan border, and over the belly of Iran, before setting down at the Ankara airport.
Rain pummeled me as I stepped off the plane, but it was Turkish rain, and as I ran to the terminal in the downpour, there was no one on earth who was happier than me.
But having had nothing but problems with government officials, my happiness turned to fear as I handed the customs officer my passport. “What’s this?” he asked, holding up the dripping wet document.
“My passport,” I replied. “It’s raining very hard outside.”
He shook his head. My heart sank.
Then he smiled and said, “Wait over there until it dries.”
I returned, and he gently turned each page, smiled, and waved me through—and he had not demanded a bribe. I liked Turkey already. As I headed out of the terminal, I thought, “This is the land of Afsana’s family,” and I felt suddenly close to her, and my step grew light.
If only such happiness could have lasted forever.