LOST HOPE
It has been 30 years since a young Afghan woman draped in a pomegranate red shawl stared back at the world from a glossy National Geographic cover.
Recently, as she languished in a Peshawar prison days before her unceremonious deportation, another photo emerged — this one starkly different. It was a hazy photograph before her court hearing in Peshawar. The sparkle of those beautiful eyes was gone and her jaundiced skin betrayed fatigue and pain — hallmarks of her years spent as an outsider in Pakistan.
Her crime: An illegal attempt to obtain an ID card that would allow her to be a citizen of Pakistan, the country that has been her home longer than Afghanistan.
Sharbat Gula was one of the nearly 2 million of Afghans still living in Pakistan, after escaping a homeland obliterated by violence. “Afghanistan is only my birthplace, but Pakistan was my homeland,” she said in one interview. Yet, Pakistan never accepted Gula as her own.
And so, dressed in a distinct cobalt blue burka, she left for Torkham border — for home — on Nov 8; her eyes hidden behind a lattice veil that made her indistinguishable from the thousands of Afghans being ‘repatriated’ from Pakistan.
Much like the life of this woman, arrests, forced payment of bribes, violence, harassment and intimidation are everyday features in the life of Afghans living in Pakistan.
Back in Afghanistan too things have changed over the years. Abdur Jabbar, another Afghan-origin man who until recently lived in Pakistan, is back living in Jalalabad. Aged 70, he had to leave Pakistan after spending 40 years in the country. Many like him came back to Afghanistan only to find that their houses were either destroyed by war or were occupied by someone else. Abdul is also concerned for his children. “They used to make a good living selling vegetables and fruits in Peshawar, but they are yet to find anything here,” he says.
Each day in the life of these Afghans is a struggle. These are their stories.
‘When I told the doctor that my son is dying, he advised me to go seek treatment for him in Pakistan’
By Nasir Khan
Pakistan’s image is more tainted than celebrated in most countries. Yet to Afghans, Pakistan is a place with an enviable healthcare system. Owing to the poor quality of healthcare in Afghanistan, Afghan patients often look towards India and Pakistan when in need of medical assistance.
Until recent clashes at the Torkham border, “Half of the patients [at our hospital] were Afghan,” Tariq Khan, director administration of the Rehman Medical Institute “But now we attend up to 400 patients, only 100 of whom are Afghans,” he said.
The very promise of better medical facilities drew Rabia, a young Afghan woman, to Quetta with a desperate hope to find care for her ailing two-year-old.
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