The Kid on the Green Bike

By Wali

A Gripping True Story of Escapes, Rescues, and Fighting for the American Dream

One Man's Journey from Afghan Immigrant to Candidate for Governor of Arizona

 

Wali Mailatyar was 15 years old, and he had a choice to make. Either get conscripted to fight in the bloody civil war between the communists and the mujahedeen devastating his country or leave his home and family and possibly never see them again.

Wali ended up escaping his homeland and embarking on a long journey that would eventually lead him to stand for election in Arizona as a candidate for governor.

This book tells how Wali fought against the odds to escape the horrors of war engulfing his homeland and to find the American Dream.

The Kid on the Green Bike is more than just another immigrant story—it's part action thriller and part family drama.

Filled with cinematic scenes and heartbreaking stories of love and loss, this book shows all of us that the American Dream is still very much alive—if you're willing to fight for it.

If you love stories about underdogs beating to odds, the triumph of love, or the importance of family, this book is for you.

Just like coming to the United States for the first time changed the course of Wali's life, this book will change the way you see the world and America's role in making it a better place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Bike Publishing
• Release date: Jul 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986001517

Book preview

Escape Through the Mountains

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The noise was coming from across the valley and growing louder every second. The men around me, hardened and battle-tested mujahideen, military fighters, flung themselves to the ground. Two far-off specs racing across the sky were suddenly recognizable as MiG-23 fighter jets. The roar intensified, a hellish ground-shaking, panic-inducing thunder rattled overhead, and my brother-in-law and I threw ourselves, face-down, at the base of a tree.

Then the explosions. Fireballs descended from the jets and tore toward the ground. Rockets erupted, hitting the valley where we lay, now under cascading mounds of dirt and debris flung into the air. All around us, a shower of death was scarring the earth. My first thought was that everyone had been killed. I was in the middle of a battle zone, deep in the Afghan mountains, miles from the Pakistan border. Just days before I’d

been in school, I’d been home with my mother and father. I was only fifteen, and now my life had been shaken apart, my childhood was gone. And my journey had just begun.

This frightening, treacherous crossing that took me away from my home had been forced upon me by geo-political events that shook Cold War US-Russia relations and shook my future.

I was just ten years old when, in April 1978, the Afghanistan I had known all my life disappeared overnight. President Mohammad Daud Kahn’s government was overthrown by left-wing military officers led by Nur Mohammad Taraki. Almost immediately, the new pro-Soviet Union government began a purge of anyone who opposed it. And, during the coup, President Daud Khan, his family members, and guards were killed and secretly buried in an undisclosed location.

My father was a high-ranking government official, but a Communist ideology went against everything he believed in, and because of those convictions, he resigned from his government job, and his distinguished career ended unceremoniously; he was just fifty years old. I know this must have been difficult for him, because he loved and took immense pride in his work, which he felt was contributing to making Afghanistan a better country.

He had held senior positions in the government’s Ministry of Water and Power. He was a well-respected figure and incredibly intelligent, speaking fluent German, some English, Arabic, and Pashto.

Within six months of the coup, the atmosphere in our city had changed dramatically; armed military patrolled the streets constantly. Secret service officers were seemingly everywhere, riding around in Jeeps. People disappeared and were never seen again, and rumors circulated that the secret service was responsible. The fates of those who disappeared were unknown. Did they end up in the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi Prison on the outskirts of Kabul? Were they sent to labor camps in Siberia? Or had these friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens simply been executed?

While the coup had succeeded in the capital, dismantling the central government, the picture across the country was different. Groups who opposed the new government rose up in arms against the atheistic, rather than Islamic, regime. These rebels were known as the mujahideen. And soon the government effectively lost control of much of the country outside the major cities.

As resistance grew, the Soviet Union became concerned that this Islamic fighting might spread into its territories and, consequently, they launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. They sent in tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and other heavy weaponry. That’s when the situation really started to worsen.

Kabul was quickly put under Soviet control. I remember a terrifying day, looking out the window and seeing a MiG-23 dropping bombs over the area of the city where the presidential palace was located.

Menacing-looking Russian gunships flew over the city, and explosions in the distance continually rocked our daily existence. Columns of tanks and other military vehicles regularly drove past our house. This escalation into a full-scale military takeover made the time when the streets were simply filled with soldiers and secret service Jeeps almost seem casual in comparison.

Then, a curfew was imposed. No one was allowed to leave his or her home for any reason after seven p.m. And, if you dared venture out, you’d be arrested.

The communist government’s influence quickly extended into our schools, and we were issued books about Stalin and Lenin, and shown black-and-white films extolling the merits of Russia and the glory of communism. At my all-boys school, Naderia High School, and every school, an office for the Communist Party was instituted, and we felt pressured to join, but I never did. There was little in communist ideology that I could relate to. One annual ritual that epitomized the false premise of an idyllic communist model was when we were forced to participate in a parade that passed in front of the presidential palace commemorating the Russian invasion of our country. Our obligatory involvement included frenzied flag waving, an exhibition of Soviet banners undulating in the air in a sad display of compulsory theatrics.

Despite the creeping influence of communist ideology at school, I enjoyed my time there. I had understood from an early age that education was the key to my future. I always worked hard and was eager to learn new things. I did my homework and took extra classes in English, math, and science. My mother paid for private math lessons with a mathematics professor, Dr. Osman. His classes were in high demand, so he only agreed to tutor a few, select students. He had a white beard and long hair and became known as Kabul’s Einstein. His house was in Shahr-e Naw, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city, and he had built a custom room at the back of the house where he tutored his students. The days with Dr. Osman are vivid for me. I can still see him, small in stature, standing on steps he’d built in order to reach up and write on a wall, which acted as his white board. His method of explaining mathematical concepts seemed like genius and were a large part of his success as an educator. And he had another side that contributed to his mystique and fame. He had a girlfriend, a flight attendant for Ariana Airlines, the Afghan national airline, who was incredibly attractive, which, to a young boy, only added to the fascination of studying with this brilliant mathematical expert. After taking his course, I was able to tutor university students in math and science. 

He asked me one evening if I was enjoying my classes. Very much, I replied.

What do you like about mathematics? he asked.

I just love anything to do with numbers. They’ve always fascinated me.

Dr. Osman looked at me intently.

Numbers are particularly important in life, he said. Then a smile crept onto his face.

If you keep working hard, when you are older, perhaps numbers will become a key for you, they have the power to change one’s life.

In just that short discussion, I felt like he’d given me something to look forward to, because life in Afghanistan was rapidly heading downhill.

The realization of how much my country was changing, and had already been disfigured by Soviet occupation, made me more nostalgic for the life I had once known.

I had grown up with and enjoyed a fair amount of privilege. I was born when Afghanistan was a more peaceful country and, compared to other countries in the region, was isolated and rural; you heard little about crime in Kabul, and you never saw people in the street carrying guns.

Our family lived in a modern five-bedroom, three-bath house in a middle-class neighborhood called Karte Parwan, near the center of the city, which was close to the Hotel Intercontinental.

My father was profoundly literate, a poet and a Renaissance man in every aspect of the term. He had a library with hundreds of books on a wide variety of topics, from history to politics, religion, and literature. He would normally begin a conversation by reciting a line from a poem or make a reference to a World War II detail or a thousand-year-old historic Afghan event.

He was the guiding light in my life. From childhood he had taught me to believe in myself, work hard, and never give up.

My father had also read extensively on all the world’s major faiths and believed each had valuable ideas to contribute to a global dialogue, but he didn’t believe that any single faith had all the answers. We were nominally a Muslim family but never went to either of the two mosques in Karte Parwan. Because my father was open-minded about religion, Islam for us was more about culture. And when I look back on this philosophy now, I’m touched by how this simple viewpoint could be applied today to help bring different people and cultures more into harmony.

Before his government job, my father had been a newspaper editor for a while, and he always seemed to have a pen and paper in hand. His thirst for knowledge of the wider world dated to his own youth. As a teenager the government had wanted to send him to Germany to study engineering, which was an opportunity he was looking forward to. However, he was forced into manhood at age twelve when his father died. From then on, he helped his mom raise two sisters and a brother and was unable to go to Germany to fulfill the opportunity of studying there.

My father also had a debonaire side. He was always immaculately dressed, in a sharply tailored suit, a different one each day. And, every morning, one of us would have to polish his shoes. It was with enormous pride that I stood curbside each morning and held open the car door as a chauffeur, in a peaked cap, would arrive to pick up my father and take him to his office. He usually arrived back home about four, and in the evenings, he would sit outside with his friends in the street or go for a walk with them around the neighborhood.

He’d listen to the news on the radio and would pay particular attention to the BBC World Service or Voice of America. He knew it was a diverse and complicated world and was interested in keeping up on all the latest global developments. He involved us too, making sure that we knew what was happening in different countries around the world.

Because of my father’s job with the government, we moved around quite a bit. When I was seven, he was transferred to the city of Charikar, a town about sixty-nine kilometers north of Kabul. Our new home was on the top floor of the building where my father had his office. My brothers and I would stare out the window and look down at all the cars passing below. It was very different from our house in the suburbs. My brother Wade and I used to sneak under the fence at the back of the building and buy packets of cigarettes from a store, feeling very excited and grown up smoking them behind one of the electricity transformers behind the building.

My father was clearly my idol, and I remember going to his office at times. After he’d finished work for the day, I’d sit in his chair, barking out orders to imaginary people. I’d say things like, You, go bring me my car! and Take these papers over there! Sometimes he’d catch me and would laugh, pat me on the head and say,

You know, you’re going to be a great boss one day.

After a year in Charikar, we returned to Kabul, and a few years later moved again, this time to Sarawbi, about sixty-four kilometers east of Kabul. My father had been put in charge of the Naghlu Dam, which was a large industrial waterworks engineered and built by Germans with a labor force of Russians who had come to construct the dam. My father knew the complex well because he had worked there in the 1960s when it was being built. The Russian workers and their families lived in a compound, a little Russian enclave with its own movie theater, shops, and canteen. We were sometimes allowed to go visit them and would occasionally buy candy and sliced bread from the canteen.

My brothers and I would sometimes go fishing for trout in Sarawbi and occasionally even managed to commandeer a boat.

After a year and a half in Sarawbi, my father was sent back to Kabul once more, where he was appointed a senior official in the Ministry of Water and Power.

Back in Kabul, as I got older, I began to explore more of the city, and I would take a bus or tram to Shahr-e Naw, a modern area of the city where diplomats lived and where tourists would visit. Most people I saw on these forays were from Eastern bloc countries, but it was still exciting to see them, knowing they represented other cultures and lands. I enjoyed hanging around there and began to feel more of a person of the world because of it.

Sometimes I’d wander around the old part of the city, like the Pul-e Khishti Mosque, with its impressive blue dome. And even though it was a major landmark, I felt no affinity with it. But the rest of Kabul held a fascination I couldn’t deny. I wandered the crowded, narrow streets, noisy and bustling with people shopping and bartering with merchants who lined the sidewalks and had come from various parts of the country to sell watermelons and grapes, shoes, rugs, and clothes. Men would push carts through the streets, and you could buy a newspaper or magazine in many different languages. I was always intrigued when I saw copies of Newsweek because it was American. I can remember one man who used to sit at a table exchanging different kinds of currencies, and in front of him would be the glorious bundles of colorful afghanis, Indian rupees, Russian rubles, and US dollars, tied with pieces of string. There was even a bird market, though it distressed me because I didn’t like to see birds in cages or being sold.

People imagine that Afghanistan is a hot country, but the weather in Kabul was quite temperate, experiencing a perfectly balanced four seasons. Summers were hot, but not too hot, and we had a lot of snow in the winter. It was an arid landscape, and the city was always dry, except for the Kabul River coursing through the city center. I wondered if it had always been so.

Afghanistan is a land-locked country, sharing borders with Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and China. That means the only way to bring supplies into the country is overland through one of these countries. Many products Afghanistan needed were imported through Pakistan, but as the mujahideen began to control the rural parts of the country, they blocked roads to prevent goods arriving. The government then began rationing such essentials as cooking oil and flour. We were given a ration book and allocated one day each month when we were allowed to go to the local ration store to buy supplies. Standing in line became a national sport, although possessing a ration coupon was no guarantee of getting anything; once all the goods had run out, the store would simply close, leaving every unlucky citizen still standing in the line empty handed.

During this time my father spent his days meeting with friends