It is 10:35 pm on Monday (11) and the Afghan Khalida Nasimi, 28, checks if her children are sleeping, caresses their faces and carefully arranges the blanket over each one. The ritual, which unites mothers from all over the world during their children’s sleep, is followed by her while Ahmad, 10, Sofia, 8, and Surab, 6, sleep on benches on the mezzanine floor of Terminal 2 at Guarulhos International Airport.
Khalida and her husband, Mohammad Nasimi, 31, arrived in Brazil with their three children on Friday (8), after months of waiting for a humanitarian visa in Iran. On Tuesday morning (12), they told their story to the reporter, in a mixture of Persian and English, with the help of a translation app and a video call with an interpreter.
That day, there were nine more Afghans there, waiting for vacancies to appear in some shelter: three women, five men and a child. The situation is becoming common among refugees of this nationality, who resort to the Brazilian humanitarian visa to have a chance to leave the country dominated by the Taliban, but arrive without knowing anyone and with exhausted financial resources.
Mohammad and Khalida lived in Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, near the border with Uzbekistan. She says that she worked in a social organization and he, who was a judge and worked helping women to get divorced.
When the Taliban returned to power in August last year, the ex-husband of one of them, a member of the Islamic fundamentalist group, wanted to retaliate against Mohammad – in fact, reports of Talibans persecuting judges who made unfavorable decisions are common. against them during the previous government.
The couple shows on their cell phone the photo of the subpoena they received from the group. They say they hid with the children for a while, until they managed to cross the border into Iran.
They spent almost six months there, waiting for the visa granted by the Brazilian embassy. When they were about to board, they say they were extorted by Iranian police, who pocketed the $3,500 they had left – many Afghans say they have to pay bribes to guards and airport workers in Pakistan and Iran, who take advantage of the vulnerable situation of these refugees. .
Upon arriving, with no money and no contacts, the family found the Advanced Post for Humanized Assistance to Migrants closed. Maintained by the Guarulhos City Hall, the service used to work 24 hours a day, but it closed at 7 pm at the beginning of the pandemic and remains without service at night.
On Saturday, as the city of Guarulhos does not have specific shelters for immigrants or families, the Nasimi were taken to reception centers that serve homeless people and other vulnerable people. Khalida and Sofia went to a female dormitory and Mohammad and the children to a male one. They say, however, that they were threatened inside and left, afraid.
“They tried to take my cell phone, it was a place with dangerous women. I cried all night,” says Khalida. “I hope no more families have to go there. It was very painful.” The next morning, Mohammad was found by police officers wandering with their children through rural Guarulhos, trying to find the woman. They ended up heading back to the airport.
On Monday, the staff at the service center took them to downtown São Paulo to try to refer them to a shelter for immigrants. They spent the day waiting, but there was no vacancy. They returned to the airport at 10 pm, where they slept another night in the lobby.
The family says they have been eating with the help of workers at the migrant service station, who use their own resources to keep them from going without food.
On the night of the second, another flight arrived with Afghans, including three women and their three brothers, one of them a minor. They said they will meet their parents again at a reception center in São Paulo, but were told to wait two days, as the place is being fumigated.
The rest are men who came alone, including Dawood Kaymar, 34, who spoke to the reporter on Tuesday. He says he worked in a government ministry deposed by the Taliban and was also a girls’ teacher, which fundamentalists don’t like. “I’m already happy that I escaped death and got here,” he says. “Now I need a place to stay and a job.”
When questioned, GRU Airport, the airport’s concessionaire, said that “it is sensitive to what happened and closely follows the case” with the Guarulhos City Hall, which has been providing assistance to the family.
On Tuesday afternoon, after the Sheet asking for a response on the situation to the Secretariat of Development and Social Assistance (SDAS) of Guarulhos, the ministry informed that the refugees would be sent that night to reception centers. In the early afternoon, they had been taken for the first time to a place where they could eat and wash themselves.
The prefecture stated that it has equipment specialized in institutional reception with a guarantee of five meals a day. Asked if there are options prepared to receive immigrants and families, she replied that “all municipal facilities are prepared to receive situations such as violation of rights” and that the municipality “has no demand for family reception, but has a cooperation agreement with institutions that provide to the migrant population”.
about the Nasimi family, said that she has been accompanied since Friday and that she had been referred to the two local reception centers. “But, by their choice, they did not remain in the equipment and returned to the airport,” the note added.
THE Sheet found that the demand for a family shelter for immigrants in Guarulhos is old. Starting in 2014, with the arrival of a large influx of Syrians to Brazil, a mosque in the city accommodated dozens of refugees for weeks, for lack of other suitable dormitories.
The separation of men and women into different shelters is taboo especially for Islamic families, but it is also reluctantly viewed by non-Muslim refugees, particularly those who have experienced a traumatic situation such as war.
This Tuesday, the DPU (Defensoria Pública da União) sent a letter to the city of Guarulhos asking for information about the 14 refugees sleeping at the airport and adding that the Brazilian Migration Law provides for the right of immigrants to social assistance and places in reception centers. tailored to your needs.
The agency stated that it has seen “a significant increase in demand for emergency care for people from Afghanistan in highly vulnerable situations” and that it sees the need to adapt the social assistance service to provide care that does not separate men and women, something that would cause “a serious disruption of the family bond”.
On the mezzanine floor of Terminal 2, relieved to be back with her husband and children, Afghan Khalida tried to keep her tone optimistic as she spoke, but exhaustion was visible on her face. “We’ve been through so much trouble… We just need a place. A rest.”
