ARTICLE BY SHAHRBANOO SADAT
Shahrbanoo Sadat is an Afghan screenwriter, director and writer, known for Wolf and Sheep (2016), The Orphanage (2019) and Not at Home (2013).
Film-maker Shaharbanoo Sadat describes her evacuation from Afghanistan after its recapture by the Taliban. She writes about the anguish of leaving her home, the terrifying and chaotic experience of securing places for herself and her family in the last planes out of the country – and her determination to return home some day.
My heart has always been split. Knowing that it is dangerous to stay in Afghanistan and not wanting to leave. That has been the biggest problem in my life, especially after many of my friends, artists, writers, journalists…and many talented and educated people left the country over the years.
My family accused me of dreaming about an utopia: an Afghanistan where I could live and work. I tried to ignore them. I bought myself an apartment in downtown Kabul at the most fragile political time. Everyone else was selling and leaving! I moved into my apartment on my 30th birthday, the 7th of January 2021. Life had never been better for me than at this moment.
Through buying that apartment, I served what half of my heart wanted. I vowed to adapt to insecurity and terror, to the risk of attacks for the sake of being able to stay in my home country. In my family’s opinion, I was gambling with my life. But no one should have power over me: I was making my own decisions. I was staying! Though suddenly my world was shaken up and down. I was alarmed by the situation in a way I never had been before.
That was when the Taliban took over some parts of Bamyan in central Afghanistan, where part of my family lived. Many people were displaced. Nine people moved into my brand new apartment and stayed with me for weeks. I started planning to apply for national IDs and passports for my family, but suddenly there were never-ending queues at the ID and passport offices. The borders were closed. Visas for neighboring countries became impossible to get. You couldn’t even buy them on the black market at any price.
My sister in Hamburg called me and other members of the family non-stop, begging us to leave the country. By that point, I understood the urgency of the situation, but still was thinking I had time until the 11th of September – the deadline for American evacuation. But it was too late.
On the 15th of August, at 02:00 am, an email landed in my inbox: ‘If you wish to leave Kabul, go to the Baron Hotel Guest House or the Green Village compound immediately. You do not need a passport but do need a Government ID.’
I asked if I could take my family with me. It was important to me, because my sister had been divorced and lost her children to the father because of the divorce (as all Afghan women do, when they are divorced). She lived with me in my apartment, benefiting from my emotional and financial support. The father was away when the Taliban overtook Bamyan, so her children were with us too. Our parents brought them when they came to me. My sister’s ex-husband kept sending death threats due to the divorce and her custody of the children. My sister was very fragile,so I didn’t want to leave without her. But the answer was clear: I was told I could only take my parents.
It only took a few seconds for me to respond that I would not set food on a plane if my sister and her two children were not beside me on the flight. I was told that they would try to put me on another flight with the entire family. In the morning of the same day, I went to the bank to empty my account, anticipating being notified about our flight. Crowds of 500 people and more were in line. I heard the rumor that the Taliban had been seen close to the presidential palace. Next, I got a call from my brother, saying that Bamyan has been completely taken by the Taliban.
An hour later, security threw everyone out of the bank. I saw the Taliban vehicles driving around with white flags. Everything happened so quickly and suddenly, just like an earthquake. I was thinking Kabul’s fall would happen on the 11th of September, not the 15th of August. I stored a lot of food at my apartment, because everyone was talking about a siege. That never happened.
Instead Kabul was handed over to the Taliban without a fight. As easy as that. The national army received the order to not fight. A deal was made. The country had been sold. The President flew away without a statement or any notice. I will never forget the horror in the air that day, that moment. People were left alone. I was left alone.
At the same time, I felt I was in the middle of something really significant and historic, which was occurring right in front of my eyes. As a filmmaker, I appreciated my presence there at that moment so, so, so, much, but as an individual, I was just so fucking scared. These could be the last days of my life. Death felt very close. I had been too careless about myself and my life. Staying in Afghanistan had been my choice. But then I thought of my family. I thought of my parents, who were getting old. They had already been refugees before. I thought of my little nephews and nieces. I thought they didn’t deserve this horror. I thought, if I don’t take them out with me, they wouldn’t be able to make it on their own. That was my mission. I had to evacuate my entire family of 17 people.
My other sister and her family also came to my apartment. Then I got a call from an actor saying his life was in danger. I asked him to come to my apartment too. Then a cinematographer friend came, and a day after that, my brother and his entire family. There were 20 in my apartment.
For the next three days I stayed at home and was on my phone 24/7, talking to my producer, Katja Adomeit, and to friends and other people who wanted to help us by trying to put our names on different evacuation lists. It was intense. Talking, thinking, sharing – all of it non-stop.
On the 19th of August, I received a visa and pass from the US foreign ministry in my inbox. Two days before I received a call from their security to ask for my address in order to organize a pick-up to the airport. I called the security and asked if I should go to the airport, as I had been asked in the email. I was also told that the US government wouldn’t guarantee my safety in getting to the airport. Security told me to not go to the airport,but to await their call. At some point, I stopped trusting them. I had been told over and over about a pick up, but it had never happened. I wondered what if the email were true and it was the security forces who were mistaken. I decided to go to the airport to see the situation with my own eyes. I took five members of my family with me, the ones who were supposed to be on the American list.
We tried the main entrance. Shots were being fired. We couldn’t even get close. We turned the car around, and tried a different gate, but there was shooting everywhere. But this time I could find my way to the entrance. I showed my US visa and the pass sent by the US government to a Taliban soldier who was at the checkpoint. He laughed at me. He told me that the whole crowd has the exact same documents I have. I realized that my name was neither on the visa nor the pass. So everyone who received this email was able to share it with other people. As a result, everyone standing there at the gate had the same documents as I did. I became angry at this shitty management by the US government. I was told that only pre-organised pick up cars could get in. I called security and told them that I was at the gate. He told me to go back home immediately and to wait for their call. The call never came.
We went back home but I didn’t go inside. I decided to take my usual 7km walk around my area. I knew it would be my last. The town seemed strange; as if it was the first time I was seeing it. I saw Taliban soldiers all over the town, but I was trying to pretend to myself that everything was normal. I went to an ice-cream shop that I used to go to, and asked for an ice-cream but the man refused to sell me one. I looked around and saw some Taliban soldiers eating ice-cream with bread. They noticed me, but avoided looking at me directly. Instead I looked at them closely. I suddenly felt myself weighing them up in the way that a film director does during casting! Damn it! What great faces! I was fascinated by them. They seemed as if they came from another planet. Probably they felt the same about me. The difference between us was huge and shocking. At that moment, I didn’t hate them. I just thought about how much work needs to be done to support Afghanistan and its culture. I felt the importance of my job, as if the solution of all problems in Afghanistan lay in my hand.
I was informed that all our 20 names, 18 my family including myself, plus my cast and DOP, were on the French list. But on the next day, I only got documents for ten people. I decided that ten was better than none. The embassy instructed us to go to the north gate. The taxi dropped us 1 km away from the gate and we had to run under a hail of bullets. We stayed the entire night in a tiny, empty cement kiosk in a corner of the main street. The shooting did not stop until 10:00 am the next day, and we still were in the same spot.
We changed our gate, trying to get through Abbey gate this time. We learned that there were four Taliban checkpoints we had to pass before we reached the American part of the airport. In the queue, jammers disconnected signals from all mobile phones. This disconnected me from all the people who were trying to help me. I was not able to use my internet or phone anymore. Only Katja and my partner Anwar could call, using Danish and German numbers. I could not hear them very well and our sentences echoed. They had to call over and over again. I had to whisper in English with Katja, so that Taliban soldiers could not hear us, as they were passing by.
Women could not go to the toilet in this queue. We stayed for 14 hours in the queue before reaching the first checkpoint and another eight hours in the queue up to the second checkpoint. People were pushing from all directions. I, and my nieces, fainted in the queue. It was 33 degrees , with no shade. A young boy next to me splashed me with ice-cold water from his bottle and I was able to stand on my feet again. The Taliban were hitting people to make them queue neatly. Then they shot into the air, frightening the children and babies, making them scream and cry. The second checkpoint was the worst. There was only space to stand on one foot, so we were standing on one foot for hours and then swapping over and standing on the other one. My father has a breathing problem and my little nephew of four years of age needed to be carried, or otherwise he would have been crushed by the crowd. Later, when we moved to the 3rd checkpoint, the Taliban carried out eleven corpses. Those were the ones who had been killed by the crowd. We were informed that the gate was closed, so the crowd stopped pushing.
At this point, the Taliban let sellers with food carts come in. Suddenly the mood changed. People could take a break and buy food and talk and laugh. I found myself close to a burger cart, and ordered a large burger with lots of french fries. Taliban soldiers were standing around the cart next to me, ordering the same. It was surreal. I even talked to one, to a mullah with a white turban. I asked him if, under their new government women would be able to study and work? And he laughed, and said of course. I couldn’t believe I had had this conversation. I said to him, if that’s true, everyone in this queue can go home now. People around the cart laughed and the mullah did too. He went away. I thought to myself, if only we could live like that, being able to talk to each other and to listen to each other, being able to accept the differences and still respect each other. Oh, what a beautiful world that could be! Utopia !
But right after finishing my burger, I was thrown back to reality again. We stayed the night in the queue. We slept for five minutes, and then we had to move all our bags, backpacks and food five cm forward. Otherwise, there were always new arrivals wanting to fit themselves into that five cm spot. This happened many times, and that led to fights among the crowd.
At 3:00 am, we were informed that the gate had been opened and again, the crowd began pushing towards the gate. We didn’t push because of my father and my little nephew. We waited two more hours, and then walked to the fourth checkpoint and waited there for the next twelve hours until we could get into the airport. At the queue, a rumour spread that there would be an explosion. Where? No one knew, but probably close to the American part, exactly where we were standing. The responsibility for everyone was on me. I decided that everyone should stay in the queue. I pretended I was not buying the rumour, but I was actually very scared. What if we all got killed? What if something happened to my family? I told myself, no! Don’t think about it. It’s too late to think about it. We are not going home. Either we pass the other side or we don’t. I decided to take the risk.
At that moment, Taliban soldiers were walking among the crowd and taking people out. They mostly targeted single men, with no family with them. I was on the phone with Katja when the mullah I talked to the night before at the burger cart got close. He picked out my father. The mullah was very aggressive and didn’t allow him to speak. I saw fear on my father’s face for the first time in my life. I always thought that my parents were the bravest people in the world. That they were not afraid of anything. It was horrible to see them scared. I didn’t hang up the phone. I just threw myself towards my father. The mullah who had told me women could study and work under their government hit me on my back with a cable.
Other Taliban soldiers came and took him away. I went back to my place but then I realized my place in the queue had been taken by some new arrivals. I was so angry that I started to fight for my place back. They fought me back. It was crazy because they fought as if it had been I that occupied their space. I fought and fought and fought until I took my place back. Some Taliban soldiers arrived, aggressively asking who this person was who caused all the trouble, but then some people who were with us in the queue for the last ten hours, helped me, saying that the interlopers had not respected the queuing system.
All of this took 72 hours, and yet, everything happened so quickly. I was busy trying to survive that I didn’t think, but at the very last moment, as the Taliban soldier opened the gate for us to go to the American sector, he said t“Bye bye” to us in broken English. That was like a knife in my heart. I understood what he meant. He meant ‘You do not belong to this country and that’s why you are leaving. Go and never come back!’ My tears fell silently, as I showed my documents to an American soldier in front of me. ‘Bye bye!’ It ran on repeat in my head.
We were taken care of by the French soldiers as soon as we were on the other side. They drove us to their compound at the airport, registered us and gave us food to eat. I could use my internet again, after three days without access. On the same night, they took us on a plane to Abu Dhabi. There was a 10-15 minutes walk from their base to the plane, with over 450 people and French soldiers all around. That walk was the saddest of my life. I felt kicked out of my own country. I felt unwanted, useless and powerless. At the same time, I felt happy for part of my family who had the chance to leave, but I also felt sad for the ones left behind, not only my family but also other people, everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t know. I felt that I was betraying Kabul by leaving. I could not stop crying during the walk.
In the plane, I was sitting on the metal floor next to my parents. I looked at them. And I saw something words can’t describe. This is the second time they have to leave their country. I was emotional, but they were calm now. My father said: ‘It’s okay!’ But I knew that nothing was okay. I experienced a moment of epiphany. I realized why my heart is always so heavy when it comes to Afghanistan. I am an artist and my work is to communicate for others, those who can’t – like my parents.
Twenty-four hours after all that, we ended up in a homeless shelter in Paris. We became roommates with rats in an old building, only allowed to go outside for two hours every day. We stayed there for three weeks, and then my family and I were invited to live in Germany.
I became a different person after 15th of August. Words such as democracy and human rights mean different things to me now. More than ever, I hate politics. Even though I left my heart in Kabul I’m still dreaming of my utopia. The Taliban cannot keep Afghanistan forever. When that day comes, the key to my apartment will still be in my pocket.