Four days after 98 Afghans who slept at Guarulhos airport were taken to a city hall hotel, the mezzanine of Terminal 2 was once again occupied by another refugee family.
This time, what caught the eye was the patriarch’s age: at over a hundred years old, Ali Ahmad faced, with his children and grandchildren, a journey of almost a year to escape the Taliban.
With white hair, a wool vest, jacket, dress pants and leather sandals, he got up with difficulty from the mattress where he was taking a nap on Wednesday afternoon (21) to attend to the report – and answered all the questions in a lucid way. Grandson Kamram Ahmadi, 19, served as a translator from Dari to English.
Trolleys with the suitcases of the 11 family members protected mattresses and blankets from the direct view of passersby. At the time, Ali’s wife, 86, and their youngest granddaughter, 5, were also asleep.
Ali is not sure whether he is 102 or 103: while many Afghans still fail to register their children today, when he was born this was even rarer. He also doesn’t know the day and month of birth, only the year: 1298 in the Persian calendar, used in Afghanistan, 1919 in the Gregorian.
Their only document, the hastily taken passport, shows a different year, but Kamram says he is wrong: it would be a random date set by the person who sold them the document – almost every migrant reports that it is almost impossible to obtain passports through legal means in Afghanistan today. .
It would be even more difficult in the case of Ali and his children, as they were all soldiers linked to the previous government, which the extremist group defeated in August last year.
Ali says he was a general. He had seven children — five still alive —, seven grandchildren and one great-grandson. He speaks four languages, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi and Dari, the Afghan version of Persian, and he is passionate about geography: he quotes, without fail, all the countries of South America, Central America, North America and the Caribbean. He also likes to be up to date and frequently accesses the BBC’s Instagram in Persian on his grandchildren’s cell phones.
His health is good, and only the pain in the sciatica bothers him. He also barely hears in one ear, the result of a grenade that exploded near him once, according to Kamram. The two are very connected. “He told me: wherever you go, I go. I will never leave you alone”, says the young man.
Ali claims that he has fought the Taliban in the past and repeats that they are “not human”. “He fought so many years for Afghanistan and now he can’t do anything. We’re sorry for what happened,” says Kamram.
Ali’s wife came with the group. Khadija says they’ve been together for so long that she doesn’t even remember the date they got married. They were promised to each other from a young age by the families, who were friends. Ali often affectionately calls her the “queen of flowers”.
She says the Taliban came to her house to look for her children. “I said they weren’t,” reports the fragile-looking woman, with white hair, a black winter dress and a thin white scarf on her head. She remembers well the other Taliban period, more than 20 years ago. “They whip, they kill. They do what they want.”
On starting from scratch at such an advanced age, Khadija says she had no choice. “My country was delicious. If it wasn’t for the Taliban I wouldn’t have left.” Brazil, as in almost all cases of Afghan migration, was not the first option. They have tried to obtain the US visa, but claim it is restricted to military personnel who have worked in specific special forces divisions, which does not apply to Ali and his children.
Practically the only country in the world that created a humanitarian visa after the Taliban coup, Brazil has become a destination for thousands of Afghans — more than 6,000 have obtained the document so far, according to Itamaraty.
Kamram’s cellphone photos show the young man in his father’s military clothes, a nice car and a comfortable home. He says the several months he spent in Iran waiting for a visa had exhausted his financial reserves. After two days sleeping on the floor of Terminal 2, the family was taken to a temporary reception center managed by the Guarulhos City Hall together with Cáritas Arquidiocesana de São Paulo.
Ali says he is very proud of his family and that they have not abandoned him. He regrets losing what he built for his children—”Everyone loves the land where he was born”—but his spirits are good. “I’m so happy to be in Brazil. And that the Taliban aren’t here. When I was young, I read about Brazil and the Amazon River in geography books. And now I’m here, so close, talking to you.”
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
