Halfway between Afghanistan under Taliban rule and countries like the United States, Canada and Brazil, a Brazilian has been the fulcrum for Afghans who have fled the fundamentalist group and are trying to emigrate to a more secure future.
Audiovisual producer Lucas Cabral Ferreira, 38, who has lived in Istanbul since 2018, has given these young people his own apartment and still helps them with food, language classes, documentation and visas, as they all live in Turkey in an irregular situation. .
Born in Boa Esperança (MG) and raised in Campinas, Ferreira went to Istanbul for the first time in 2014, on a tourist trip with his wife and two children. There, he saw interest in the third sector aroused when he became aware of the effects of the migratory crisis caused by the civil war in Syria.
The miner then began to organize caravans of Brazilian volunteers to help NGOs that provided assistance to Middle Eastern refugees in Greece and Turkey. In 2018, he decided to expand the project and rented a hall in the Tarlabasi neighborhood to house his own institution, called Borders of Love. Since then, he has offered English and jiu-jitsu classes to low-income Turks and Syrians.
Last October, through a Norwegian friend, he learned about the journey of two Afghan brothers, aged 14 and 16, who were heading to Turkey on foot and had nowhere to stay when they arrived. Ferreira decided to meet them and give up his apartment — he rented a larger property where he moved with his family, a ten-minute walk away, in the Ümraniye neighborhood.
The audiovisual producer, with other Brazilian volunteers, takes care of the two, taking them shopping and taking care of the documentation of the visa process for the USA and Canada, countries where the brothers intend to settle.
The youths, who do not reveal their names for reasons of security, made the journey on their own, for 23 days, passing through Pakistan and Iran. They left Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, encouraged by their older brother, Habibullah Hussaini, 26, who now lives in France. They say their father, who was a police officer, was murdered by the Taliban in 2016 and his mother died two years later of a heart attack. With her sister, forced to marry at 17, they no longer have contact.
“Lucas and his family came into our lives like angels. When I sent my brothers to Turkey, I didn’t have a plan, I just prayed that God would protect them,” says Habib, who worked at an Afghan radio station and left the family in 2015. , afraid that the Taliban would persecute him because of his profession. Upon leaving Afghanistan, he passed through six countries until arriving in Denmark, where he was taken in by a family for three years. Afraid of being denied permission to stay in Copenhagen, he moved to France.
His adoptive parents were responsible for contacting Ferreira’s friend asking for help for the brothers. “I am very happy that they are in Turkey safely, but worried about what is coming. My brothers need to go to a country in Europe, to Canada, USA, Brazil, where they can have a future.”
Ferreira sees Afghanistan’s political instability leaving more young people vulnerable and calls for help multiplying. In November, the Brazilian rescued a 21-year-old Afghan who, after paying coyotes to take him to Turkey, had been in an overcrowded house for more than a year, with other undocumented migrants without regular access to food.
“Everyone I picked up only had a bag and the clothes on their backs”, he says. Today, the Afghan is trying to travel to Brazil, where his parents are, who fled after the Taliban took Kabul. After three months of waiting, the humanitarian visa was granted by the Brazilian embassy at the end of March. Now the concern is to get a document that can be presented to the airline allowing the trip to take place even without a certificate of vaccination against Covid.
This type of reception for Afghans was regulated in September, as is the case with Syrians, Haitians and, more recently, Ukrainians. Women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities and their family groups have priority. The embassies in Islamabad (Pakistan), Tehran (Iran), Moscow (Russia), Ankara (Turkey), Doha (Qatar) and Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) process requests — Brazil does not have diplomatic representation in Afghanistan.
Also in November, Ferreira received another 14-year-old Afghan. He and his family were refugees in Iran and paid coyotes to take them to Greece, but at the Turkish border the police separated them: the young man entered the country, but his parents and brothers had to return.
In the effort with the miner to gather documents and try for visas is Cristian Alfradique, 27, who has lived in Turkey since 2019 and is the manager of an import and export company. Because of work, he travels constantly — including to Iran — and has been trying to create a network of contacts that can help the boy’s family go to Brazil before he does.
“It’s no use taking the son if the family can’t make it. He would stay in the orphanage indefinitely, not speaking English so well, in a country where he doesn’t know the language, with a different culture and climate”, he says.
While the Afghan’s parents are trying to contact the Brazilian embassy in Tehran, Alfradique, who has secured custody of the teenager, and Ferreira will try to grant the tenant a Turkish visa.
More recently, in January, a 16-year-old girl arrived at Ferreira’s rented apartment. Taken by coyotes, who she says raped and robbed her along the way, the Afghan is now trying to start the humanitarian visa process for Brazil. The producer communicates with her family, who emigrated to Iran, to try to find ways out — the lack of documents has been a barrier.
For the time being, Ferreira and his wife, Joziana, 38, have been helping the teenager learn English and have paid for her health care expenses. The family must pay around R$5,000 for her oral treatment, who had never used a toothbrush before being welcomed in Istanbul.
“She’s starting to read, doing well. Every now and then she hugs me and tells me she loves me.”
