One family’s escape from Afghanistan ‘ WE HAD TO LEAVE EVERYTHING BEHIND ’

Aboard a Qatar Airways jet chartered by the United States government, Bushra Farkish held her baby son Liam in her lap and wept. It was around 4pm on August 15, and the plane full of Afghans with Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) had just whisked Bushra and her husband, Qais Wared, away from Kabul, Afghanistan – stirring a jumble of emotion. “I heard rumours about the Taliban being at the city gates, and I was worried about our families,” Bushra, 26, recalls. “At the same time, I was excited. I wanted to go places. I didn’t want my son to go through what I went through in past years – poverty, suicide bombings and attacks. So there was relief.” But it