For Afghan arrivals, a taste of the US at an air base in Germany
In a dimly lit U.S. military tent, as tiny children toddle between benches, a group of Afghan women is getting a crash course in how to carry on in a new culture.
“Americans like to see people who are doing something,” the instructor tells them. “You can’t just sit on cushions and wait for things to come to you.”
Their future neighbors also don’t like people who are “judgy,” she warns, despite what they may have heard. “If you want to wear a headscarf, you can wear a headscarf. But if you want to be accepted, Americans also have a right to be accepted – their culture, their religion, everything. Don’t [be shocked] if you arrive and women are wearing much less.”
Other surprises will arise as they settle in, the instructor notes in the widely spoken Afghan language of Dari, starting with public buses and their predesignated stops. “It’s not like home, where you can tell the driver, ‘Let me off here.’”
A woman raises her hand. “I have questions.” The instructor tells her to hold on. “We’ll get to those later.”
The women’s subsequent queries tend to involve what sort of reception they will receive in their new home – answers that will hinge on Americans themselves as they begin to welcome these Afghan allies, brought to safety in the largest air evacuation in U.S. military history.
The lessons being learned on this sprawling military base in Germany represent one more postscript to America’s tangled 20-year relationship with Afghanistan. After an abrupt end to America’s longest war and a shambolic evacuation, the U.S. military is now being faced with housing the thousands of Afghans who were airlifted out of the country and
