Forced to Flee: A Tale of Two Afghan Refugees

By Afzal Nasiri

Drawing from a deep well of Indian and Afghan knowledge, Nasiri has compiled a capitulating story of his father's escape from Afghanistan at age twelve in 1929 to India while Nadir Shah usurped Kabul throne from Habibullah Kalakani. Kalakani was illiterate and the only Tajik Amir in the history of Afghanistan. Nasiri's grandfather, Malik Zaman Nasiri of Farza, Kohdaman, was a supporter of Kalakani and was executed by Nadir Shah along with Kalakani after he lost the throne, following a nine-month hiatus.

Nasiri writes a gripping story of his father suddenly waking up in the middle of the night, bullets and bombs flying all over. As if a stone was hurled at the sleeping birds' nest, they all had to fly in the dark night, ironically guided by the light of the cracking bullets and shattering of cannon fire.

In 1980, walking in his father's footsteps after almost fifty years, Nasiri goes on to narrate the story of his retreat from Afghanistan to save his life and that of his young wife and eighteen-month-old son from the clutches of Marxist regime of Kabul, who overthrew the ruling republic of Mohammad Daoud in a bloody coupe in April 1978. It was an age of tumult, Nasiri writes. Nasiri lands in India with the desire and urgency to migrate to the safe haven of the United States, his lifelong dream and subject of his dissertation when graduating from master's at Aligarh University India

Nasiri has written his story as an outsider looking in Afghanistan's social and political upheavals. He returned to his fatherland, fulfilling his dad's desire to start a new life in his land in 1971. He was back in India in 1980.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662486104

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Forced to Flee

A Tale of Two Afghan Refugees

Afzal Nasiri

Copyright © 2022 Afzal Nasiri

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8592-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8585-5 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8610-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Commendation for Forced to Flee: Afzal Nasiri's Memoirs

Afzal Nasiri's Memoirs

Author's Note

Acknowledgment

Chapter 1

Reaching Kabul

Chapter 2

My Early Education

Chapter 3

Education in India

Indian culture and religions

Dussehra

Diwali or Deepavali

Holi

Rakhsha Bandhan

Muslim festivals of Ramadan, Eid, and Shab-e-Barat

Shab-e-Barat (Night of Deliverance)

Nowruz

Christmas and New Year

Chapter 4

British Legacy in India vs. Afghanistan

My school days

Chapter 5

My Education at Aligarh University

Chapter 6

My Indian Connection

Growing up in Shahjahanpur

Chapter 7

About My Father

My father's story continues

My father becomes refugee, flees Afghanistan

Chapter 8

Amanullah Khan (1919–1929); Habibullah Kalakani (1929)

My visit to Farza

Nadir Shah snatches Kabul throne from Habibullah Kalakani (10/16/1929)

Chapter 9

The Modern State of Afghanistan

My father's story continues

Reaching British India border (father)

Chapter 10

My First Night in Kabul

Chapter 11

*

Kabul Intercontinental at Baghe Bala (High Garden)

My first day at work in Kabul, September 1971

Chapter 12

Prominent Guests, Kabul Elite, Rotary Club Visit Intercontinental

Rotary Club

Iranian delegation stays at Intercontinental

My parents' desire to visit Kabul

Westernized Kabul/Murder of US Envoy Adolph Dubs

Visiting Kabul historical buildings: Darul Aman

Shahe Do Shamshira Mosque (The King of Two Swords)

Babur Garden

Chapter 13

Prospecting to Join the Kabul Times

Daoud Khan heads coup d'état against cousin King Zahir Shah 1973

Back to work at the hotel

Chapter 14

Daoud Khan (July 17, 1973, Coup)

Daoud Khan's coup brings me hope

My visit to The Kabul Times

My extended leave from the hotel to join The Kabul Times

Working at The Kabul Times

Separation with Intercontinental Hotel

Chapter 15

My First Column, Afghan Diary

Hashim Maiwandwal, former PM, arrested and murdered in detention

My father's advice on marriage

Khalilullah Khalili, Marie's father

Women in civil service / journalism

Life goes on at The Kabul Times

Chapter 16

Kabul Times Appoints Pakistani PM Bhutto as President of Afghanistan

Attending Population Year Conference in New Delhi 1974

I was smitten; it was no infatuation; I gifted Taj Mahal

Cementing friendship

Marie's effect on me

I pop the question and get the ball rolling

Our engagement

We decide to marry in Baghdad

Chapter 17

We Reserve Bus, Train, Airline

Bus hits Kuchi camels

We cross into Iran

We miss the train to Tehran

Flight to Baghdad

Meeting Marie's father in Baghdad

We exchange vows (Nikah) in Baghdad at a holy shrine

Chapter 18

We Move to Our Rented Place in Micro Royan

My mother visits Afghanistan

Marie is pregnant

Chapter 19

Drastic Change in Afghan Political Spectrum

Parcham theoretician Khyber murdered

The communist march toward April 27, 1978, coup

Chapter 20

Afghan Communists stage Coup with Soviet might/ Slaughter Daoud & Family; Taraki New President

Coup d'état continues

Let the purging begin: Pule Charkhi becomes Hanoi Hilton

Marie gives birth to my beautiful son, Khalil

My rental place was confiscated, reallotted to a communist underling

Finding a way to escape the turmoil of a looming civil war

Chapter 21

Taraki Overthrown/Assassinated

Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amin (Khalqi) killed, Karmal (Parchami) takes over

Chapter 22

Goodbye Kabul Forever, Hello India/USA

Chapter 23

We Reach New Delhi

I meet Kuldip Nayar, discuss Report on Afghanistan

Visit to Kashmir

US embassy rejects visa, work with Kuldip Nayar on Report on Afghanistan

Our visit to Shahjahanpur (my mother's place)

US response on visa request

Going to America / Khalil Gibran

War in Afghanistan

Epilogue

Forced to Flee: A Tale of Two Afghan Refugees

Timeline

Selected Bibliography

To my father, Ghulam Kadir Nasiri

To my beautiful wife, Marie Khalili

My boys, Khalil Nasiri

and Shaun Nasiri

Commendation for Forced to Flee: Afzal Nasiri's Memoirs

Afzal Nasiri's Memoirs

It is my privilege to commend to the public the memoirs of Afzal Nasiri. Afzal and I got reconnected right after 9/11 when anti-Muslim hatred spiked in the United States. That chapter in his life has yet to be written, but suffice it to say that although our countries of origin are some eight thousand miles apart, our paths first crossed forty-two years ago, and we now count ourselves fast friends, even brothers. Not because we both believe all the same answers to the central questions life poses, but because we have found a deep respect and care for each other as fellow travelers.

What made that possible was a human phenomenon experienced in every age and place and identified three thousand years ago by a song-writing poet in the Middle East as tumult of the peoples (Psalms 65:7).

This is the memoir of a self-avowed second-generation refugee, a casualty of one such tumult in 1929 in Afghanistan that forced his father, at age twelve, to flee for his life and leave his beloved motherland. Before Afzal's story is brought up to the present, he will have been made a refugee twice over.

This book is a potpourri of things for the heart, the mind, the imagination to feed on; an array of colorful characters; the intrigue of the ever fragile political order in Afghanistan's history; the rich aromas and tastes of Indian and Afghan food; the harrowing experience for the children that the tumult of displacement usually is as well as their amazing resilience in the face of hardship; the strength of family bonds even when strained with ethnic differences; the truth that life is more than politics, sitting side by side with the truth that political tumult can alter the course of people's lives as floods can change the course of rivers.

For so many refugees, in the upheaval of their lives, there are deeply painful losses but also new relationships and rich opportunities given. I think the life of Afzal Nasiri and the background and families that shaped it—as they unfolded before us in Forced to Flee—illustrate this so well.

Afzal Nasiri is a man of wide experience and a keen understanding of many things. He wants what we all want: a place to call home that is bigger than a house. He writes his story with frankness, humor, and a deep personal knowledge of Afghanistan, India, and human nature. I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Ron Lutjens

Retired Christian pastor

St. Louis, Missouri

Author's Note

Whatever life has gifted me through experience and anecdotes, hereby I am returning those…

—An Urdu poet

This is my highly personal memoir. It is not an official chronicle. I have tried to present a vivid and detailed picture of the life of an Afghan political refugee in India and Afghanistan.

Stories like my father's and mine must have occurred in thousands throughout the history of Afghanistan, where the war has been a prime industry for centuries. Refugees are an offshoot of internal conflict or external war, and Afghans have a big share in both.

My father was twelve years old when he got caught up in the human refugee drama in Afghanistan, which took him to the natural source of escape to a neighboring country. In his case it was British India. This happened on a fateful night in November 1929. My grandfather was an authoritative landowner in Farza–Kohdaman north of Kabul. He had a large extended family. Malik Zaman Khan Nasiri, as he was known, loved his power base, accorded to him by the feudalistic society. He was an influential man.

In his Qala (fort or large house, as seen in the picture), Malik Zaman had an extremely gigantic old Oriental plane tree (chinar) in his compound. He had a wooden bench stacked up the tree trunk, and in the evening, his friends would stop by for tea. He would receive his guests under the expansive chinar tree.

According to my father, Habibullah Khan Kalakani, who lived close by, would also stop over once a while for a neighborly visit. Saying no to his visit was a definite invitation to disaster. Habibullah Kalakani lived a few miles away from Farza in a village called Kalakan across from the main road.

My father, or Agha Jan, as we would call him, used to say that Kalakani had visited his father in Farza before the insurrection of 1928–1929 against the ruling King Amanullah Khan. In January 1929, Habibullah Kalakani became the emir of Afghanistan and within nine months was dethroned by Nadir Shah. He surrendered to Nadir Shah's forces after assurances that he would not be harmed.

The brigand king (as his opponents had named him) and almost seventeen of his followers were executed and hung from poles for over thirty-six hours under the sun and the snow. My grandfather, Malik Zaman Nasiri, who was considered a supporter of Habibullah Kalakani, was executed along with the fallen emir and hanged from a pole on the order of Nadir Shah.

A few days later in early November 1929, Nadir Shah's forces returned to villages and towns in Kohdaman and bombed the houses of Habibulah Kalakani's supporters. My grandfather's house in Farza was one of them. My father and his brother were able to sneak out amid the chaos of cannon fire, bombing, and soldiers shooting point-blank to kill the survivors and destroy the habitat. Thus my father escaped to the British territory of Peshawar along with my uncle, who was twenty-six years old.

I was born and brought up in India. My father was adamant that I go back and start my life in Afghanistan. After I graduated from Aligarh Muslim University in India with a bachelor's degree in natural sciences and master's degree in political science in 1971, I decided to fulfill his desire and thus went off to Afghanistan to start a new life.

Following a brief stint at the Intercontinental Hotel, I joined the officialdom in Kabul and landed at the English language newspaper The Kabul Times as assistant editor. A couple of coups later, life in Kabul was becoming unbearable. The Marxist access to power was the last straw. I started planning to leave Kabul with my wife and my son, Khalil (eighteen months old). Thus, I was able to return to New Delhi in April 1980.

By this time from 1971 to 1980, Kabul had seen the overthrow of a forty-year-old stable monarchy of Mohammad Zahir Shah and Daoud Khan's proclamation of the Republic of Afghanistan, followed by his overthrow and murder by Marxist forces. Then came Noor Mohammad Taraki and his henchmen, followed by Hafizullah Amin and his murder, and finally the advent of the Babrak Karmal regime on December 27, 1979. All this came about in nine years.

This was beyond the pale for my patience. I arrived back in New Delhi in April 1980 as a refugee, looking for a place to settle; and we found that place in the United States.

Afzal Nasiri

Former editor of The Kabul Times

Afghanistan

01/31/2022

Acknowledgment

I am thankful to my family and friends who helped me publish my memoirs. Special thanks to my cherished wife, Marie, who has been patient and supportive at all times, and my boys Khalil and Shaun, who guided me through my modern-technology ignorance.

My special thanks to my friends who took time out of their busy schedules to read the manuscript and provided beneficial pointers in improving the narration of the story. Also, my thanks to my sisters Shah Obaid and Hoor Akhtar, who checked the manuscript for any factual family history errors.

My sincere thanks to my friend Zubair Popal for providing firsthand information on my days at the Intercontinental Hotel Kabul.

Thanks are due to Eng. Hashim Rayek, Mr. Zia Nezam, PhD, Eng. Ahmad Wali Shairzai, and Pastor Ron Lutjens of St. Louis, Missouri, Lutheran church for perusing the manuscript and offering useful suggestions. Pastor Lutjens's Lutheran parents sponsored us to the United States when we sought political asylum in 1980.

Thanks are due to Mr. A. A. Usmani—a versatile Indian diplomat whose assignments took him to Iran (eighteen years), Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Bahrain—for promptly reading the draft and recommending improvements.

Sincere thanks to my cousin Rana Khan (professor of English at Jamia University New Delhi) for reading parts of the manuscript dealing with the Indian portion of my memoirs. Finally, last but not the least, my thanks to cousin Sarwat Jahan (teaching in London) for reviewing the memoirs and suggesting the book title. I might add here that Mahmud Khalili, my wife's nephew, also took time out of his busy life to read Forced to Flee and offer very valuable suggestions and advice.

My acknowledgment list will not be complete unless I thank Stacia Kelly, PhD, an author living in Prince William County, Virginia, for her prudent advice and guidance on the format and editing of the text. She gave clarity to my honest story.

Chapter 1

Reaching Kabul

It was an evening in September of 1971 at the beginning of fall that I reached Kabul. The weather was nice and cool. For me it was a little chilly. Coming from India and traveling across Pakistan, it was still cold for my taste.

A film of smoke seemed to be hanging all over. There was an unpleasant smell in the air. I did not recognize the smell; however, I remembered my father talking about how in the evenings in Kabul and other cold areas of the country people warmed their homes with wood Bokharis (heaters) or coal stoves. This stench smell was the gas by-product of the cooking stoves and home heaters.

The old and beat-up Afghan Post bus coming from Peshawar, Pakistan, had just dropped me off at Pashtunistan Square. From Peshawar to Kabul, almost a five- to six-hour ride through winding passes and dangerous-looking valleys and mountains with large tracts of barren land. Whilst it was picturesque, it seemed the artist was short on color green. I sat silently reflecting on my life and the future, which awaited me.

Pashtunistan Square seemed to be the hub of activity in those days. Passengers coming from Pakistan were dropped off here. From there they proceeded to their destinations. It was close to the king's palace, popularly known as Erg, a gray-looking building heavily fortified and short of greenery. I was supposed to have arrived two days earlier; however, at the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Afghan customs officials (Gumrukh) sent me back to Peshawar for not having the border exit seal on my passport from Pakistani officials.

Later, it dawned on me, after my cousins hinted that I had to give them a backhander and could have avoided the red tape delaying my entry into Afghanistan by sending me back to Peshawar to get an entry visa, it was never needed.

The Gumrukh official who I approached appeared to be a gentleman. He was in a white garb of a long shirt and baggy trousers. A karakul cap adorned his head with a matching vest coat. I could see the pocket watch chain hanging out with a neatly clipped ballpoint pen to his vest pocket.

It was the first time I had seen the Afghan border guards in an Afghan military attire. Their attires were different from those of India (olive color) and Pakistan army attires, which appeared green. The Afghan army unit guarding the border was dressed in a uniform that resembled the Russian soldiers. The fading colors matched closer to olive green with red stripes and brass buttons. They were sloppy looking. I was distracted by the soldiers' uniforms.

I could not imagine the border official was expecting some palm grease. I was further distracted with the karakul cap. My father had a karakul cap too, and I got lost in my thoughts about my father instead of analyzing what the officials' intentions were. There is a phrase in Afghanistan, when people want to give you a hard time, they come up with some convoluted puzzle, which one can never solve… They call it sending someone to fetch a black chickpea, or Nakhod-e-Siyah. It is like asking people in the US to find a five-leaf clover (very rare). So the man with the karakul cap sent me back to Peshawar, thus adding to my agony.

I spoke no word of Dari or Pashto. Why not? I will come back to it later. At the time of my departure from India, my father was worried about me not knowing the language. Yet he was always confident that I would rise to any occasion and beat the odds. His trust in me was tremendous even though I was nervous leaving home and the environment I had grown up in and seemed accustomed to. My father's trust in me always weighed heavy on my shoulders. I often put up a brave face. Nonetheless, I felt overwhelmed by his trust.

He could not achieve much materially in his life because of circumstances forced upon him by luck (kismet). I was all he had. I didn't want to let him down. We will talk more about it in later chapters. My only qualification was a bachelor's in science and a master's in political science from Aligarh University, India. I assumed none of which made me desirable in the Kabul job market. I was wrong. I had underestimated the knowledge of the English language and its effect on people's lives in a third-world country far away from mother England. I received many job offers; working at the Hotel Intercontinental was by choice.

At Pashtunistan Square, equipped with the address of my aunt in Shahre-Nau (New City) in one hand and my suitcase in the other, I approached a cab. I could barely read the fading letters of Taxi written on the driver's side only. The driver did not speak English. I showed him the address my father had written in Persian before I left my home in India.

The man shook his head in affirmative and allowed me to enter the cab. After leaving India, it was my first interaction with an Afghan face-to-face. He had a camel-colored shawl wrapped around him called pattu with a cap on his head. Later, I was told that the cap is called Pakol and is popular in the north of Afghanistan. The driver had a cardboard paper cut out of the word Allah hanging from his rearview mirror. I felt secure.

Shahre-Nau was only a few kilometers from Pashtunistan Square. It was considered a new city with new roads and new construction all around. Within no time we were there. It was close to the evening prayers (Namaz), and I saw people returning to their home from the neighborhood mosque after performing their religious duty. I gave the driver the piece of paper with the address on it. He stopped a group of older men, who had just come out of the mosque, and shoved the address in their faces, pointing toward me. To my surprise and to the surprise of his friends and the driver, my aunt's husband was among them.

He cried out, "Afzal Jaan! (Jaan is a word for respect and love and is used socially. It literally means life.) We have been waiting for you for two days. Why were you delayed?"

I did not understand a word he was saying, so I kept smiling. I think smiling is the best way to avoid embarrassment and also to make friends. Observing his body language, watching the warmth of his actions, the kindness of his words and gestures of his hands, I figured I was welcome. It was a great relief. The commotion outside the front door drew the attention of the family inside the house. They all came out. I knew cousin Aziz Jan; he had visited India before and stayed at our house in Shahjahanpur. He was close to my age. He was leading my aunt and other cousins. They all helped me with the luggage and invited me inside the house.

Chapter 2

My Early Education

My father, a tribal Pashtun from Farza (Kohdaman, North of Kabul), was tall and handsome. He was fair complexioned and well-built. His lack of education had instilled in him the desire of having his children well educated. My parents had five daughters. I was the only son. Both my parents were very liberal when it came to girls' education and the modern way of life. Of course, religion (Islam) dominated our daily affairs yet never kept us behind modernity and progress. My parents, in any event, wanted us to pursue a contemporary outlook and not just adopt Westernization or embrace religious ferocity.

Despite my parents' financial limitations, they always encouraged us to read the daily newspaper and monthly magazines both in Urdu and English. They never complained about the cost of subscriptions of the print material.

As a result of their effort, especially my father, I am proud to write that all five of my sisters completed their master's degrees in various fields of education in India. My father was very particular about my education. He carefully crafted plans so that I could get the best education available even though much of this was beyond his means.

Thanks to my parents' sacrifice and help from my aunt (my mother's sister), my educational foundation was based on nine years of elementary, secondary, and high school education at St. Joseph's Collegiate in Allahabad, India. This prestigious boarding school was one of a few Roman Catholic convents in India with an attached seminary. Admission to this school was a pride for Indian parents. St. Joseph's not only prepared me for the future, but it also helped me learn English and the modern ways of life. The teachers were mostly British and Anglo-Indians.

There were plenty of Anglo-Indians in India in those days. They were slowly migrating after the end of the British Raj. Pakistan was