An Afghan family finds support from local parents as they welcome a new baby

They had been concurrently elated and completely terrified. Zar, who had labored as a main schoolteacher earlier than the new regime seized energy, prayed for one more son; she knew what the long run can be — or what it couldn’t be — if she delivered a little lady underneath Taliban rule.

But Mohammad was gripped by a conviction that they had been anticipating a daughter. “I knew that her future will be black in Afghanistan,” he says. “I knew we had to leave there, at any cost.”

The price can be excessive: A sudden flight from the house they’d at all times recognized and the numerous family members they liked; an arrival in a international nation, with no belongings to their identify; a full reliance on others to assist them discover group and reorient themselves in a new life as they ready to welcome their baby in early October.

Eight months later and seven,000 miles away, on an overcast September afternoon, Mohammad, 30, Zar, 27, and 5-year-old Mubariz watch by the window of a small one-bedroom condominium in Alexandria, Va., as the customer they’re awaiting pulls into the parking zone beneath. Michelle Cooper’s automotive is full of luggage of clothes, furnishings, toys and baby gear she has been rigorously amassing for days, destined for the modest dwelling on the second flooring the place the younger family of refugees has lived since June.

Honored to do a little one thing to assist, similar to others helped my family a few generations in the past, Cooper wrote to Mohammad when they had been launched, and he or she defined that she would assist equip his family with the nursery provides they wanted.

This is named humanity, Mohammad replied. We are so grateful to all of you.

Mohammad and Zar are now not dwelling in fixed worry for his or her family’s security; earlier than the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mohammad had labored for an American worldwide growth firm, which made him a goal of the Taliban. (The family is being recognized by first or center names solely to guard the protection of relations who’re nonetheless in Afghanistan.)

But the transition to a new life in an unknown nation has been daunting. When they stepped off the aircraft at Dulles International Airport on June 2, there was nobody ready to fulfill them. It took a number of days for an support company caseworker to return their calls and at last go to them at their resort, and two extra months earlier than Zar was capable of see a physician, who confirmed that her being pregnant was progressing usually. The family has typically felt left adrift as they’ve tried to regulate to this new actuality, Mohammad says, and regardless of his {qualifications} and fervent want to work once more, he has but to seek out a job that can permit him to offer for his rising family.

In the midst of what has been a chaotic and disturbing resettlement for thus many refugee households, networks of local guardian volunteers — together with Cooper, a 48-year-old mom of two in D.C. — have emerged, working furiously to assist bridge among the gaps left by understaffed and overwhelmed support businesses. These parents have furnished flats, assembled nurseries, helped with job purposes and college enrollments, pushed individuals to physician and dental appointments, delivered groceries and diapers and picked up numerous hand-me-down garments and new toys. They have additionally frolicked listening to the households who haven’t typically had a possibility to share all they have endured.

Reaching Md. was an odyssey. Now, an Afghan family marks a quiet milestone.

After carrying their deliveries to Mohammad and Zar’s condominium, Cooper and her 11-year-old daughter, Raleigh, sit on a sofa within the tidy front room, sipping from cups of juice provided by their hosts. “Your home is beautiful,” Cooper says. “You’ve settled in so quickly.”

“When we left Afghanistan, we had nothing,” Mohammad says. “We had —” he tugs gently on the collar of his shirt; they had solely the garments they had been sporting.

They speak for a whereas about their life earlier than, and their life now — how comfortable their son is to go to high school, and the way shortly he’s already studying phrases and phrases in English after only one month in kindergarten. His parents are now not afraid to see him go away within the morning, they clarify: Beyond the risk posed by the Taliban, youngsters in Afghanistan had been generally kidnapped and held for ransom. Every day, Mohammad says, he would name Zar from his workplace to ensure Mubariz had come dwelling safely.

“There were criminals who would kidnap the children, for just a small amount of money, and if they don’t get it, they kill,” he says. “They don’t care.” As he speaks, Raleigh slips quietly from the sofa to the ground to take a seat beside Mubariz, serving to him sift by a field of new toys.

“I can’t imagine,” Cooper says softly. “I am so glad you’re here.”

Mohammad’s gaze settles on his little boy as he fortunately wheels a small blue and white truck over the carpet.

“We are here today,” Mohammad says, and once more, as if to actually imagine it: “Now we are here.”

In the waning days of the Afghanistan battle in August 2021, as determined lots swarmed the airport in Kabul, Lydia Weiss discovered herself unable to show away from the news.

Weiss, a 48-year-old mom of two in Northwest D.C., was about to embark on a sabbatical from work. “I thought: This is what I want to do,” she says. “I wish to assist.”

She related with Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, one of the agencies that has been helping to resettle Afghans in the region, and signed up to furnish a new apartment for a refugee family. Weiss found the experience so fulfilling, she says, that she assembled a growing network of local parents who also offered to volunteer time, supplies and funds.

“I really tapped my kids’ school community, big-time,” she says. “I used the neighborhood Facebook page, and the Buy Nothing page. I used local listservs. I emailed everyone.”

About 150 volunteers have joined her efforts, she says, nearly all of whom are parents, and most are working mothers. This, she feels, is at the heart of what compels them: the universality of wanting a better life for one’s child, and the empathy to imagine how it might feel to endure such trauma as a family.

“We help with job résumés, we set up playdates with their kids, we bring them the things they need when a new baby is coming, we help get them oriented with how to use public transportation in their neighborhoods,” Weiss says. “What drives my group of women is just that we’re always trying to think like a mom; we know how to solve these kinds of problems.”

Those moments of exchange and connection “still choke me up every time,” Weiss says. “Often there is no language in common. All that is in common is parenthood.”

When Megan Flores, govt director of the Immigrant and Refugee Outreach Center, recently offered Weiss a list of expectant families in need of nursery supplies, Weiss paired Mohammad and Zar with Cooper, who was among Weiss’s circle of volunteers but had yet to coordinate a donation drive herself. Cooper was both nervous and eager to take it on, she says.

“As somebody who is Jewish, I think about the plight of migration from the beginning of time all the way through to when my own ancestors were coming to this country,” Cooper says. “I know that I am a beneficiary, generations later, of someone else’s kindness. And I love being able to pay that forward a little bit.”

Flores says this sort of matchmaking — pairing individual volunteers or groups of volunteers with refugee families — has been especially vital over the past year, as aid agencies have been overwhelmed.

It is a complicated situation, she adds, because she knows the aid agencies are grappling with extraordinary demand, often while balancing staffing shortages. But “some of these refugee families have never seen their caseworker,” Flores says. “There’s no excuse for the way that some of these families have been treated.”

A spokesperson for Lutheran Social Services noted the unprecedented increase in demand that the agency has faced since last summer. “We went from accepting 500 people for an entire year for resettlement, to 500 a month for resettlement,” the spokesperson said. In a written statement, the agency added, “Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area continues to proudly provide resettlement services to the largest number of Afghan Allies on the East Coast since last summer.”

Flores says it has been deeply gratifying to see how more personal interactions between local residents and refugee families can change lives, for all involved.

“It’s one thing to write a check to an organization, but it’s another thing to go to someone’s house and really see their situation firsthand,” she says. “These families have been shuffled through the system … to have someone stop and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing? What do you need? What have you been through?’ That means so much.”

It was the night of Aug. 9, 2021 when Mohammad stood on the roof of his family’s home in Mazar e-Sharif, watching as Taliban fighters swarmed the streets. One week later, he and Zar packed Mubariz into a car with relatives from Kabul and traveled nine hours south to the capital city, threading through a panicked crowd of thousands outside the airport gates, only to turn away without hope of getting through.

“The Taliban kept shooting, a rain of bullets was coming down from the sky. I was not worried about myself, but I was worried about my son and my wife,” Mohammad said. “My son, he had never seen such terrible things before. I think he will never forget.”

Before the American withdrawal, the family had never imagined leaving their country. “I had a good salary, I had all my family there,” Mohammad says. “We had a hope that one day all people there will live under peace.”

For many months, they didn’t know if they would be able to escape. But a call came at last from the U.S. State Department one April morning, with instructions for Mohammad and his family to travel immediately to Kabul. There was no time to prepare, and they were not permitted to bring any belongings. Mohammad’s father was at work; he couldn’t make it home in time to hug his son goodbye.

Mohammad’s voice breaks when he recounts their abrupt departure, and their fear for the family left behind. “These things are not in my control,” he says. “I want to cry, but I want to be strong.”

But there was also tremendous relief as they left, he says. Bound first for Qatar, he and Zar kept willing themselves to believe that they were finally flying to freedom. “We were laughing on the plane,” he says. “We had nothing, but we were so happy.”

For several months spanning their departure from Afghanistan and their arrival in the United States, they had no access to medical care, and Zar went without prenatal appointments, Mohammad says. It was mid-August before they finally met with a new doctor, who told them that they were expecting a little girl. They looked at each other and laughed; this time, Zar says, the thought of a daughter brought them only joy.

“I am so happy now, that she [will be] born here,” Zar says, “because here, I think her future is bright.”

Her own future feels brighter, too. Zar was studying English in Afghanistan, and she has already made plans to join classes at a local library after her daughter is born. There is a quiet determination to her voice when she speaks of this — “Soon, I will get started studying again, to improve myself,” she says — and Mohammad smiles proudly.

“She is a very hard-working lady,” he says of his wife, “and she can do whatever she wants.”

A picket crib is ready for his or her daughter within the little bed room the place the family of 4 will sleep facet by facet. Cooper helps carry a donated altering desk into the room, putting it rigorously in a single nook.

More deliveries will observe, Cooper guarantees — winter coats, and a few different objects that didn’t slot in her automotive on this primary journey. “We’d love to stay in touch, if there are things we can do to make sure you’re okay and comfortable and have what you need,” she says.

“Thank you so much for all you are doing,” Zar says.

Before their guests go away, Mohammad shares a ultimate reminiscence from Afghanistan: One frigid winter morning as he walked to work, he says, he handed an unhoused family huddled collectively on the frozen floor. “They had a child, like my son,” he says. “They had no jackets. Sleeping on the snow. It was so cold.” The sight of them tormented him, he says, “so I went to my work, and I shared the story with my colleagues, and I said: ‘If we don’t help them tonight, they will be no more.’ ” His co-workers banded collectively, he says, and purchased plentiful provides to ship to the family — tents, mattresses, dishes, meals, clothes.

“We became so happy, from here,” he says, smiling and putting his palm over his coronary heart. There is a symmetry that resonates now, as he remembers that different model of his life, when he was the one in a place to offer: “We helped them like you are helping us.”

“Oh,” Michelle says, mirroring his personal gesture, putting her hand on her chest. “What you did was amazing, what we did was just a small —”

But Mohammad gently interjects, shaking his head. “I believe helping is not something ‘big’ or ‘small,’ ” he says. “It is always big.”