Flight

The air is thick with billowing dust from hundreds of military transports and white pickup trucks—I’d forgotten the white trucks. The frightened crowd nearby falls silent as they pass. A contagion of despair drifts around us.

My brother Amin and I sit on the ground by the road west of Jalalabad. We whisper together, wondering if we will be rescued. My name is Aadela Karimi. I am hidden in a burqa my brother bought for me, wearing hiking boots I stole from a store as we fled the city. I’ve never stolen anything before, but the ATM was out of order, and my high heels were out of the question.

A water bottle hangs over my shoulder under the burqa. Amin carries another one. He wears cargo pants, pockets crammed with dried fruit, candy bars and cigarettes, also grabbed on our way out of town. His running shoes are covered in dust. He left the gym so fast that he didn’t pull on his socks. “My feet are already blistered,” he says.

We had no time to return home for our parents and the family car. Amin called them. They promised to do whatever the militants order. We told them we must leave the country. They blessed us and cried. I think they’ll be okay. Mother and Papa are harmless people, even though he once worked in America.

Amin and I are not harmless. He teaches political science. I write for a feminist press. He speaks often on the radio; I have a popular weekly podcast, interviewing women who do amazing things that will no longer be allowed. Like working as environmental biologists, nuclear physicists. Like creating foundations to help girls get through high school and go on to college.

Amin was fourteen and I was eleven when the Americans drove the Taliban out of power. We both got to go to high school and university. He was never forced to study in a madrasa. I didn’t have to cover up and hide at home. We are both divorced and live in our parents’ clean white house with its beautiful walled garden. It felt like Afghanistan was returning to life, stumbling toward openness.

Until yesterday, my brother had a tenured position. Now that security means nothing. The press I write for advocates for girls’ education, equal pay, and sexual autonomy. We investigate rape, femicide, violations of lesbian rights. Now our faces appear in Taliban propaganda, crosshairs drawn on them.

We’re on the run because we love the messy truth and the Taliban hate complexity. My brother might have taken a low profile and survived, but he knows I can’t escape without a man. We need a safe house far from Afghanistan and its fraught history, someplace we can regroup and begin to speak for our comrades who have scattered like ash in a windstorm.

The burqa means I can only see straight ahead, like a horse wearing blue blinders. It traps my sweat. I’ve never worn one before, swore that I never would. Today, it may keep me from death.

The pickups stream by, carrying stupid boys with M-16s left by the Americans and black-bearded men who think Allah has given them our country. My brother speaks behind his hand. “Mustafa just texted me. He’s on his way to pick us up.” He fears being overheard, even though we’ve walked three miles out of town and the Taliban are driving too fast to pick up conversation. The people around us seem as anxious as we, but perhaps there are infiltrators already.

“How will he see us in this crowd?”

He shrugs. We both gaze down the road, along with others who abandoned their lives abruptly, like us. A few people carry plastic bags stuffed with essentials. We’re all gathered at a dusty bus stop, a turnout on the undulating highway that vanishes into blue hills.

We wait, eyes narrowed against the late-day glare. A mother carries her baby wrapped in a beach towel and grasps a toddler’s round arm with her other hand. She has no male chaperone. Six teenagers stand close together, smoking and muttering among themselves. I think they’re soldiers of the government that’s gone. Three of them wear army-issue camouflage pants and colorful tee-shirts, poor disguises if they hope to blend in. Two elderly women in black dresses and hijabs lean against each other, looking at photos on a cell phone. There are dozens of others.

Headlights flash on and off. My brother stands up. “That’s Mustafa! Come on!”

We run to the edge of the road. A green SUV pulls over and other refugees crowd around, begging for a lift.

Amin pushes his way to the passenger door and motions to the driver, who rolls down the window. It’s Mustafa, my brother’s university colleague.

“Get in!” he yells. “Don’t let the others!”

The crowd presses and I can’t hold them back. The two old women push past me, wrench the sliding door open and tumble in, along with the young woman and her children. We pull with all our strength to shut the two doors as the former soldiers try to force their way in, too.

Mustafa hits the accelerator and blasts the horn. Amin and I squeeze into the front seat and the three women settle in back, one child tucked between them, the baby screaming in his mother’s lap. Five more people complicate our escape. More reasons for the Taliban to pursue us. But I keep quiet.

The rear hatch is full of cardboard boxes. “I’m trying to get them out of the country.” Mustafa nods at the pile. “The Taliban are burning everything.”

“What’s in them?” My brother shouts over the baby’s wails.

“Ancient books—Orthodox Christian.” He smiles without humor. “And some of my own.”

“How will we get them through checkpoints?” I lean across Amin so Mustafa can hear me. His air conditioning isn’t working; the windows are down. My burqa flaps in the wind.

“Who knows? I wanted some boxes of vegetables to cover them up, but the market’s shut.” He looks over his shoulder at the women and shouts, “Do you have any burqas with you?”

They shake their heads.

The young woman leans forward. She’s dressed in a blouse and tight black pants, her hot-pink hijab looped around her neck, lustrous brown hair uncovered. “If anyone does, I get it before your old books.” Her voice shakes. “But you can have this.” She unwraps the baby and throws the bright orange beach towel over the boxes. It highlights what it’s supposed to hide.

How can I protect her? If I give her my burqa, the next checkpoint will catch me. They know my face; I won’t survive. Maybe her children will be some kind of shield. The woman’s daughter stares at me. She seems to read my thoughts.

It feels safer in the vehicle, but we’re going to encounter Taliban as we drive toward the capital. Our goal is the Kabul airport, where Americans and Germans are airlifting their own, plus so-called collaborators, out of the country, so my reporter friends texted. But now I can’t reach any of them. Amin checks his phone—no reception.

For an hour, we drive in silence. The baby’s nursing under his mother’s hijab. Traffic eddies, slow as a stagnant stream. Both lanes move toward Kabul now. The eastbound traffic drives on one shoulder. People walk the median carrying suitcases, pushing shopping carts full of their belongings.

I watch the world through the tiny latticework that covers my eyes. It makes me feel like I’m missing important details. Are there Taliban patrols mixed in among the refugees?

“Maybe you could buy a blanket from someone who has extra. To cover the books.” I look at Mustafa, but he keeps his eyes on the road.

“Maybe.”

“Do you have enough gas to get to Kabul?” Amin peers at the gauge.

Again, Mustafa says, “Maybe.”

Two weeks ago, we were middle-class Afghans, working, drinking lattes in coffee shops, arguing with our parents. Rumors seeped through the city. The Taliban were cutting deals with their old enemies in the north. The mujahadin handed over town after town. Women vanished like phantoms from the streets. Colleagues in provinces described the takeovers. Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar. Amin and I tried to convince my parents to load the car, pull their savings out of the bank. They wouldn’t. So we stayed.

“The Westerners will protect us,” my father said. “We’ve done nothing wrong. And they are so much stronger than the Taliban.”

“But they’re pulling out, Papa. They say they’ve done enough.”

“Well, they haven’t. No one can do enough. We’ll just endure as we’ve always done. Allahu Akbar.”

In the end, I was interviewing a poet and Amin was at the gym when he got an anonymous text—the Taliban had taken the city. My name was on their list. We fled minutes before they would have found us. Stealing the boots felt somehow like an act of defiance. I left my newly forbidden high heels on the store shelf.

Now we could lose our hands for stealing. I’m already weary of what will come, remembering the bad old days. The public beheadings, the girls and women scarred by acid thrown in their faces because they attended school or fled abusers. The armed, entitled young men on street corners. Even though I was a little girl then, I feared they’d kidnap me, sell me to some Pashtun sheikh. When the Americans came and Taliban disappeared, we couldn’t believe it. Girls began going to school, wearing short dresses, talking about careers. I stretched out my arms and started to live. And now this.

The sky darkens as we creep along. I wish Mustafa would stop and buy a blanket for the books.

“I’m afraid people will try to climb on board,” he mutters. Finally, he slows and opens his window, calling to a teenager with a load of covers in a cart.

“How much for three?” Mustafa reaches out to touch the boy’s shoulder. “How much?”

I can’t hear the vendor’s reply. Mustafa argues with him, waving one hand and driving with the other. Finally, they settle on something. One cheap blanket for two thousand afghanis.

I’m embarrassed because I have nothing to contribute to hiding Mustafa’s contraband. I’m also annoyed that he didn’t hide the books, that he even brought them.

Amin hands him some money. I hope it’s not much. Mustafa tosses the blanket to the young woman behind me. Interacting with the blanket-seller scared me. My hands shake inside the burqa.

“Cover them.” He is ordering her, not asking.

She hands the baby to one of the old women, twists around and kneels on the seat, spreads the blanket in a semblance of normalcy over the boxes. But now it looks like we’re carrying a draped child’s coffin. She rumples the blanket a little, tries to make it look carelessly thrown over luggage.

“It’s the best I can do.” She turns back and stares at the refugees on the road. “My name is Shara Abdul-Rahman. The children are Mina and Yusef. My husband Hamid was a soldier. He died last week in Kandahar. Shot by some Talib asshole. His platoon ran and he tried to hold the street by himself. He called the day before and told me to leave Jalalabad. I didn’t believe him and now we’re . . .” She begins to cry. The old woman next to her reaches for Shara’s hand. The other takes the toddler on her lap, stroking her hair. I lean over my seat and pat Shara’s knee.

“Hamid was a translator.” She presses her hands to her face. “My kids and I, we have to get out.”

“We do, too,” I whisper. “We’re heading for the airport. Inshallah.”

“Yeah. I don’t know about God’s will, but I’m glad I got in this car.”

She lights a cigarette, opens the window to blow the smoke out. So there are four of us who aren’t safe here. Two of us should be hidden under burqas, but there’s only one.

“Where are you ladies going?” I turn to the two women.

One is singing softly to the toddler, the other holds a large red plastic purse on her lap.

She sighs before she speaks. “To Pakistan. We want to live in Islamabad. We’re done with Afghanistan.” I realize the two women are twins, both short and square with green eyes and dyed black hair under their hijabs.

“We aren’t going to Pakistan,” Mustafa shouts over the traffic noise from the open window. “We’re going in the opposite direction, to Kabul. The Taliban hold the border crossing. Can’t get through there.”

“Oh, dear.” The woman with the red purse opens it, seems to search for something, then closes it again. “We must have gotten mixed up at the bus stop. We aren’t from Jalalabad.” She looks at her sister. They shake their heads in unison. I’m uncertain whether or not to ask their names. A lot of us have reasons to obscure our identities in this moment.

In the distance ahead of us, we see a checkpoint lit by construction flood lamps. A knot of vehicles and pedestrians swells around the Taliban’s makeshift barrier with the flag of their Islamic Emirate above it. The breeze has died to nothing in the hot evening and the dirty white flag hangs like a wet mop against its pole. Men with guns motion cars to pull over. There are dozens of vehicles ahead of us. We have time to plan.

Amin elbows my side. “Keep quiet. They might recognize your voice.”

“What about yours? You’ve been almost as public as I have.”

“I’m a guy. Flimsy protection, but it’s something.”

What about Shara and her children, her tight clothes and high heels? Which of us is worth more to freedom in Afghanistan?

Am I brave enough to give her my burqa?

Mustafa kills the engine to save gas. We sit in silence for twenty minutes, watching boys with guns move down the line. They shout for people to get out of their cars and show papers.

Men are dragged away. Women in Western clothing are pushed off into the darkness.

I pull the heavy covering off over my head.

“What are you doing?” Amin yells. He’s never raised his voice to me before.

“I’m giving my burqa to Shara. She has kids. They’re the country’s future.”

“No.” Shara leans forward, pushes the garment back into my lap. “I know who you are. I listen to your podcasts. Afghanistan needs you. You have to get out and tell the world what’s happened here.” The baby cries. Shara raises her voice. “I would rather die than cause your death.”

“But what happens to your kids if you get dragged off? Take it. I’m wearing conservative clothes. One of the twins will give me her hijab. Or I’ll wear your pink one.” I try to laugh, though no one seems in the mood for humor.

Amin turns to me, grips my arm. “It’s a bad idea, Aadela. Are you sure you want to do this?”

I am. But also so afraid.

Shara hands me her hijab and takes the burqa. The two old ladies help her pull it on and adjust the veil. It’s strange how a person disappears in these things. It mutes Shara’s edgy nervous energy. She pulls the baby under its folds to nurse.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

I’m wearing a loose black top with a high neck and a calf-length skirt over leggings. The hiking boots are incongruous. I turn around again so Shara can hear me. “Give me your heels. They’ll wonder why I’m wearing hiking boots with a skirt.”

She laughs. “A new trend, maybe.” We trade shoes. Thank God, hers fit me well enough.

I wonder if the pink hijab is too defiant. For the moment, I let it lie across my shoulders. It feels so good to let the breeze stir my hair.

“Don’t wear that,” one of the old women speaks up. “It’s too bright. They will see it as rebellious.” She emphasizes the word, as if she were putting quotation marks around it. “I’ll wear it. You wear my black one.”

We finish the clothing exchange as armed men approach.

“Everyone quiet,” Mustafa mutters. “I’ll handle this.”

I press my lips together and pull the black hijab across my mouth. Amin and I have no passports. We fled Jalalabad without them. All we have are work IDs. I can’t show mine because it says I’m a journalist for an international newswire. So I’ll pretend to be a housewife.

A man with a thick gray beard steps up to Mustafa’s window. Great. A relic, probably a hard-liner from the old morality police. I keep my head down.

He runs through the questions. Who are we? Where from? Where are we going? Do we have passports or exit visas? The twins show their passports, which surprises me. They look like they’ve never even been to Kabul. Shara doesn’t have one. The Talib guy orders us out of the car.

I feel like I could vomit, but I push it down. Shara’s hand emerges from her burqa. She squeezes mine quickly as our questioner calls over another militia member. They pore over Amin’s and Mustafa’s university IDs as if they were evidence of a crime. They mutter to each other; one pounds his fist into his other hand. My heart seems to shiver. Going to Kabul was a bad idea. But what other option did we have?

The armed men hand the IDs back. I inhale slowly as they turn their attention to me. They ask the questions again. I speak softly, as unlike my usual rapid-fire podcast commentary as I can. They stare at me and the older man turns to Amin.

“Pull aside her hijab.” His voice is curt.

Amin straightens up. My brave brother is taller than both militants. “You’ll have to ask her,” he replies. “I don’t speak for my sister.”

“You should.” The old guy turns to me. “Uncover your face.”

I want to smack him so badly. But instead, I take a step back. “I do not uncover my face for strange men. Only with my brother and father.”

“What about your husband?” The younger Talib throws this in, grinning.

“Yes, of course, for my husband.” I’m not about to tell him I divorced five years ago.

They hesitate. Then maybe their piety gets the better of them and they move on to Shara. They call her sister, as if she were their family. Because of the burqa.

When they ask where her husband is, she says, “He died as a fighter, a martyr.” This is true, of course, but not in the way that they think.

The senior Talib asks if she wishes to go with them, to raise her children in the Islamic Emirate.

She hesitates as if she’s thinking about it. She projects a division in her heart even with her face hidden. I wonder if she’s an actor. Or a spy.

“I would very much like to go with you.” Her voice is even and innocent, yet vaguely seductive. “But my grandfather and my parents are in Türkiye and they ordered me to come to them until things are sorted out here and you have consolidated power. I am their only child. I will return, of course. My country means everything to me.”

It works. They nod and place their right hands over their hearts. “Peace to you, sister.” The irony of these terrorists blessing a woman whose husband they recently killed chills me.

They turn to the twins. I assume this will be short. Old women with papers in order. But they run through all the questions again, peer into the wrinkled faces, confer with each other.

Then they escort the twins away to the roadside.

I clasp my sweaty hands. This is a trap. The twins know who I am and they will tell the Taliban. I will die on this dark road, just miles from my airport haven.

One of the old women looks at me and nods. I lean against the SUV, nauseous again.

Then they return. One of the twins slips her hand into mine. I’m afraid she’ll prove stronger than she looks, pull me after her into a white truck. But she presses something into my palm, a small wad of paper. I curl my fingers around it, tight.

“You may go.” The older Talib motions toward all of us, except the twins. “These ladies want to go to Pakistan and we will take them. They are mothers of the first revolution, just as you,” he nods to Shara, “are a mother of this one.” He doesn’t say anything about me being a mother. I think he just wants me to leave Afghanistan.

I place my hand over my heart and wish peace on the elderly sisters. We all do.

Mina asks for something to eat. We climb back into Mustafa’s vehicle and Amin pulls little bags of dried fruit and nuts out of his cargo pockets, hands them to us all. The little girl settles in the space left by the twins. Shara pulls off the burqa as soon as we clear the checkpoint.

“Hate these damned things,” she mutters. “I hope those old ladies will be safe. Do you think that’s the real story? That they’re mothers of Taliban? Why aren’t they wearing full cover?”

I shrug. Who knows in this chaos? I uncrumple the wad of paper and switch on the overhead light. The script is very small and crooked. She must have written it at the checkpoint.

“They will kill you next time. Call Georg Mannheim, German Embassy, for visas. Get out, inshallah.” A phone number follows.

I lay my head on Amin’s shoulder, and he rests his on mine. This night seems endless.

§

When I wake up, Mustafa is cursing the Taliban. I point out that they never checked his vehicle, so the books are safe.

“I need duffle bags to get them out.”

I tease him. “It’s always something with you. Blankets, duffle bags. I bet there will be a kid selling luggage along here.”

And I’m right. As dawn breaks, we arrive at Kabul’s outskirts. Vendors line the road selling everything from Taliban flags to flats of bottled water and, yes, duffle bags. Mustafa buys five.

Shara pulls the blankets off the pile of boxes. “My God, you’ve got a hundred books here. How will you carry all of them?”

“Amin, you carry two and Aadela, you take one, okay? Shara, you’ve got enough to manage with the kids. I’ll take the others.” I suddenly picture Mustafa, who is single, and Shara starting a new life together, two kids in tow, in Germany or the States. Inshallah.

The books are treasures. Like the ruined Buddha of Bamiyan. Since I’m leaving my country with nothing of my own, I may as well take something that belongs to everyone. I climb into the back seat and help Shara pull crumbling leather-bound volumes out of boxes and stack them into the duffle bags.

Mustafa drives straight to the airport. Crowds stretch out like a vast lake from the terminal toward the city. We can’t get near, so we’ll have to find a hotel and call the German embassy for exit visas that take us to the head of the line. I don’t want Mustafa to insist on going straight to the embassy. We need rest. So I’ll tell the others about the twins’ gift to us after we find a hotel.

We drive the packed streets for hours. Finally, Mustafa pulls up under the awning of a hotel near the British consulate. One room available for an exorbitant price.

“Put it on my card.” Amin almost chuckles. We have no idea how it will be paid.

The room hasn’t been cleaned since the last customer and towels lie in a heap on the bathroom floor. Shara calls the desk and yells at them. I try to calm her, pulling candy bars, little bottles of scotch, and cans of cola out of the mini fridge. I mix her a drink and give Mina a piece of chocolate.

“One of the twins gave me a name at the German embassy. She said we can call for visas.”

“How would she know? Shouldn’t we stick with the Americans?” Amin is pacing, uncertain. “I mean, we want to go to the US, right?”

“I don’t think we can be picky right now.” Mustafa is flipping through cable channels, looking for independent stations. I wonder about my colleagues. Arrested? Dead? In flight like us?

“What if no one speaks English?”

“Amin, everyone speaks English. Have a drink.” I hand him one and pick up the phone to call the embassy’s number. It’s busy.

I dial every fifteen minutes for three hours, until early evening. Finally, someone answers. In German, until I speak English.

“May I speak with Herr Georg Mannheim?” I see that the twin wrote her name at the bottom of the note. “I am a friend of Aania Harifal. She asked me to call him.”

And miracle of miracles, I am transferred to Mannheim. At seven in the evening, he is still working. Perhaps he can’t get home. I tell him who I am and our situation.

He replies, “Ah, yes. You must leave. And the professors also.” Mannheim clears his throat. “We are shutting down airlift operations very soon. I can get you visas this evening, but you must leave tomorrow. Can you do that?”

“Yes, of course.” I raise a fist to let the others know we are in.

“Take headshots of each person and text them to me. With contact information.” Mannheim must think that’s not lax, security-wise. When he gets the photos, he texts back that they’ll work. A courier from the embassy will bicycle over to the hotel with the visas before midnight. As I hang up, I am both laughing and crying. For the prospect of a safe exit. For the separation from my parents, my work. For the utter loss of our world.

§

It’s afternoon, August 26. The snail’s-pace drive to the airport takes half the day. Buses and crowds on foot flood in its direction. Mustafa’s SUV runs out of gas, so we shoulder our five duffle bags, corral the two children, and abandon the car.

We trudge toward Abbey Gate, where the Embassy courier told us to look for German soldiers. The western sun blasts everything it touches. People in line eat flat bread, dried apricots, or nothing. A soldier carries Shara’s baby for a while. Others bless the crowd with water bottles, the last we may get until Germany.

My phone reads it’s five o’clock. I’m about to check the news when Shara says, “I can’t deal with Mina anymore. Too much wiggling.” She hands her off to me and takes my heavy duffle bag. I swing the little girl up onto my shoulders. Her legs press the sides of my neck, small hands beat a soft rhythm on my head.

At last, we can see the gate, shimmering in the dust. People churn in front. They look as much like they’re trying to flee as to get in. We advance at a slow shuffle, taking turns with the kids. Amin has Mina on his shoulders now. I imagine him as a dad. His first wife was a heroin addict. No kids. But he has come into his own since then, and I hope he will find a good woman wherever we make a home. He hands Shara’s child back to her.

The crowd ahead of us roars in unison. They are rushing toward us. Why? We are less than five meters from the gate when the blast wave hits us. The last thing I see is my brother, rising into the sky on his back, clutching at the air. And then everything goes dark.

§

Early the next morning, soldiers help me climb the airstairs onto the last plane to Germany. My body is badly bruised, but nothing broken and no concussion, so the medics have cleared me to travel. The door shuts and transport rumbles like the belly of Jonah’s whale. I sit on the floor, behind a young couple who argue quietly about where to go from Frankfurt. I can’t think about Shara, Mina and the baby, or Mustafa.

All I know is that Amin is dead and I feel dead too, locked out of life. I fall asleep long enough to dream. I am back in Jalalabad. My brother walks across a shady plaza toward me. I say, “Oh, you didn’t die after all.” He holds out his arms. Deep in my body something relaxes. Then I wake up.

Four hundred people are packed onto the flight. Masked against Covid, shocked by the bomb blast. No seats, just narrow trails winding among them. I wonder how many lost someone they love. Did any of them know about the bombing beforehand? Is there a jihadist among us now? The people with whom I rode from Jalalabad—any except Amin could have been Talib or Daesh. I know that’s crazy, but I no longer have any trust. I may never again. I try to go back to sleep.

Someone presses a cool bottle of water into my hand. I open my eyes. In front of me, the stolen hiking boots and long legs in tight black pants. I look up into Shara’s face. She has a black eye. Her baby curls against her chest in a sling made from the pink hijab, now splattered with dirt and rust-colored blood. She holds a duffle bag of books in one hand. Mina clings to her leg, large-eyed and silent.

“Drink it,” Shara drops the bag and sits down beside me. “You’re going to get dehydrated if you don’t. It’s seven hours to the new world.”

I grab her shoulders and she wraps me and Mina in her arms, waking the baby. We all cry as the plane rises through the clouds.