DR KHALID Hazara, who is in his 40s, had gone to his office in Kabul on Aug 15 as usual, clueless about the shape of things to come.

Although he had heard reports that the Taliban were closing in on the Afghan capital from all sides, he dismissed suggestions that the city’s fall to the militants was a matter of time.

He was confident that the Afghan forces were capable of defending Kabul. But suddenly all hell broke loose while he was at his office. “The Taliban have entered Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani has surrendered,” Latifa, a government employee herself, informed Khalid, her husband, leaving him incredulous. “Come home quickly,” she implored.

The news that Taliban have captured Kabul spread like wild fire. Fear and panic were not far behind. A sense of impending doom pulled people out of their workplace and spilled them, as it were, on chaotic streets.

Traffic was at a standstill. Khalid waited in vain for an hour or so for the tailback to open up. Then he locked his car and decided to walk home.

But home was over five kilometres away. Nevertheless Khalid defied exhaustion and lethargy to take the first step in his journey of over five thousand metres.

His slow but steady trek rewarded him at last when he beheld his home looming in the distance. It was a homecoming like no other for him.

“Let us leave Kabul, Let us leave Afghanistan,” a frightened Latifa clasped her hands to beseech her husband. “We are unsafe here.”

Latifa’s fear is justified on three counts: first, they are Hazaras; second, they are Shia; and they have been working for the Afghan government since the end of Taliban rule in 2001.

Khalid agreed and they hurriedly left for the airport with their three daughters in their other car, with nothing but bare necessities.

The milling crowds around the airport had grown manifold over the past week. “Unlike most Afghans, we had our passports though they did not carry any visa on them,” he told Dawn. But there was no way out since commercial flights were suspended.

After a few days he managed to get in touch with a relative in Quetta. Hazaras have been living in the city’s Hazara Town and Marriabad for ages.

Their ancestors first made Quetta their home during the 1880s after leaving Hazarajat, in central Afghanistan, to escape persecution by King Abdul Rehman.

After establishing contact in Quetta, the family left for the bus station on the evening of Aug 21. They boarded a rickety, juddering Kandahar-bound bus. The bus reached Kandahar just before daybreak.

By now weariness had got the better of them. Biscuits and water were all they had taken since leaving Kabul.

During the stopover, they went to a tea shop, Hotel Baba-i-Sakhi. A Pashtun, attired in his traditional Kandahari Shalwar Kameez, came over to negotiate a deal for helping the family cross into Pakistan.

“Yak nafar, 9 hazar kaldaar (nine thousand rupees for each person),” he whispered to Khalid.

The man worked for Ameer Mohammad, a notorious human smuggler. Khalid accepted the offer.

He was no stranger to the Balochistan capital since he lived here during the 1990s too. Back then Khalid had fled with his parents.

They were not very well off at the time, but now he is relatively prosperous thanks to his government job as a doctor.

They began the second, more arduous leg of their journey — from Kandahar to the border, and eventually to Quetta.

After some distance, a bearded man flagged down the car they were travelling in. Khalid had a sense of déjà vu since it seemed almost a replay of their experience of 30 years ago when one of the Mujahideen brandishing a Kalashnikov had demanded money in return for permission to move ahead.

Now, this man had an American-made pistol tucked in the inside of his Shalwar. He demanded three thousand Afghani paisos for enabling them to cross the border.

“Having left behind everything, I begged for concession. Instead, he raised the amount to four thousand paisos, pulling up his Kameez to make clear that he was armed,” Khalid recalled.

He paid the amount half-heartedly and the family was now allowed to continue the trudge to Quetta.

After some time, they were dropped off at Spin Boldak, the Afghan town along the border.

Upon being directed by the human smugglers, he encountered an 11-year-old Afghan boy, pushing a trolley.

Khalid told the child “we are Ameer Mohammad’s people”. Upon hearing the feared name, the boy showed them the way forward.

They finally arrived in Quetta the next day, where despondency and uncertainty awaited them.

Writing on the wall

On a Monday, I am headed to Quetta’s Hazara Town.

Hundreds of Hazara families have arrived here after fleeing Afghanistan.

Most of them live in Imambargahs. One of them is known as Shaheed Ustad Abdul Ali Mazari Imambargah.

Inside there are two portraits hung in front of the courtyard — those of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah & Abdul Ali Mazari.

Mazari was invited by the Taliban in 1995 for negotiations in Kandahar, but he was betrayed, arrested, and murdered along with his advisers.

On the first floor, there is a hall. Besides Khalid’s family, there are four more families.

Hadi, a member of one of them, was a TV journalist in Kabul. Since his face is familiar to many Afghans, he now sports a beard and moustache so that the Taliban do not recognize him.

Khalid, in a lighter vein, compares his appearance to that of the smuggler in Kandahar — Ameer Mohammad’s man.

According to Khalid and Latifa, their children are blissfully unaware of the momentous happenings back home. One of them asks her mother all the time to Look up her school WhatsApp group so that she can take the last two tests.

“They have not realised that life has crumbled around them and there is hopelessness all around,” Latifa said, her voice choking with emotion.

Khalid looks at his children closely and then asks me to take a look at their glowing faces. “These are not hungry faces. They had everything in Kabul. But we have to start from scratch now,” he remarks, helplessness writ large on his face.

Mahin, Khalid’s youngest daughter, has grasped by now that her parents are being interviewed.

After the end of our conversation, she stands up and whispers in her father’s ears. A smile dances on Khalid’s lips.

“She has a question for you,” he turns to me. She wants to know “what will be the title of your book about us”.

All of them look at me with an air of expectancy. Taken aback, I feel nervous and speechless. Lost for words, I nonetheless muster the courage to reply: “ Sorry. I do not know yet.”

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2021