Nahida M. cannot remember her escape from Afghanistan, nor can she remember: she was only three months old at the time, in the fall of 1999. The family fled a home that had been badly damaged by decades of war. First the Soviets, then the Mujahideen, then the Taliban. Nahida’s father had been a cook in the Afghan capital Kabul, his income was just enough to survive, but he saw his life and that of his young family threatened. They made it to Germany via Iran and Greece.
Nahida finished middle school; her dream was to train as a medical assistant. The plan failed, she tells the visitor over a glass of tea in her small apartment in Ramersdorf, because of the headscarf that she didn’t want to take off, “because it’s a sign of my faith.” And as it happens in life, the idea of marriage arose; the family already had a husband who was still living in Afghanistan.
So she moved to him in 2017, when the NATO alliance led by the USA was still in the country. It was not yet clear to many people that the Taliban would ultimately win and that the Western alliance would leave the country sooner than expected. The young family initially had a fairly good time in Kabul; they lived with their in-laws, cramped but happy. Her husband Abdulwafe, eleven years her senior, worked as an animal keeper on a cow farm just outside the city. She translates what her husband says about this time: “It was a good job, we were doing well.” Her two boys were born and everything seemed to be fine.
But then the resistance of the Afghan government army waned, the Western alliance hastily withdrew in the fall of 2021, and Nahida saw herself and her two boys, all three with German citizenship, in great danger. She decided to leave the country. “I had to decide quickly.”
The decision was difficult for her, very difficult. It was clear to her, as she was told when she called the Munich immigration office, that her husband was not allowed to come with her. But he took it calmly and said: “The children are more important.” When the last transport planes had already left Kabul, Nahida was still sitting hidden in the small apartment and waiting for the saving call from Munich. On November 22, 2021, the message came from the district administration department that she should come to the airport. She actually managed to get on a plane that took her and the children to Qatar. Six days later she was back in Munich, which she had left four years earlier with high hopes.
Saying goodbye to her husband was “extremely difficult,” as she says today, “because no one knew if and when we would see each other again.” It then took six months before she received any sign of life from him. “I knew it was about his life.” More than a year and a half later, her husband also managed to leave Afghanistan and reached Munich this summer.
And now that he has received the necessary certificate from the immigration authorities, he is studying German in the mornings at Sendlinger-Tor-Platz. He wants to learn German as quickly as possible. It will be his third language, because in the large family they spoke both Farsi, i.e. Persian, and Pashto, i.e. Afghani.
The beginning of our return to Munich was difficult. At first they were placed with Nahida’s family, but tragedy had begun there. Her sister, a nurse on the Rechts der Isar and mother of three children, was suffering from lung cancer. The chemotherapy didn’t work, and the immunotherapy didn’t work enough to give the doctors confidence.
So Nahida has to look after her sister’s children as best she can. And she tries to support her two boys, who are still struggling with German in kindergarten. It will still take time for the family to find peace after all these blows of fate. But if she could make her sparsely furnished apartment more comfortable, if there was still money left over for a little break, it would help a lot.
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