Windows of Home

My birthday has many versions. I was born in 1988 in a hospital in Mashhad, where my family lived as Afghan refugees.

Over time, my date of birth was changed by different people. April 1, 1988 is the date a relative wrote down through a mistaken correction at a Kabul passport office. It has remained in all my passports ever since — a typo that became part of my identity.

My mother sometimes took small jobs to help the family. She would bring home saffron flowers, and I helped her separate the red stigmas to earn a bit of money. Other times we broke big sugar cones into small pieces with a hammer, so people could buy them in plastic bags and have them with tea.

One of my earliest memories is running through a crowded bazaar in Shiraz, where my father had gone for a construction project. I got lost near a poet's tomb and somehow found my way home. Years later, when my father homesick brought us back to Mashhad, he called leaving Shiraz one of the biggest regrets of his life.

Between 1998 and 2001, life became very difficult for Afghan refugees in Iran. My school stopped accepting Afghan students. My aunt, who managed most of our affairs, paid monthly bribes to public schools so I could keep studying. The fees grew. The atmosphere worsened.

The house was full of ants from the sugar dust. Our hands were yellow from saffron. Some days I skipped class. I felt intensely lonely — and that feeling grew stronger when my family decided to return to Afghanistan after the Taliban fell in 2001.

My family left Iran first, and I stayed behind. My uncle had once registered me as his son so I could receive a refugee identity card while my father was away, so I couldn't travel on my mother's papers.

For four months I waited for my uncle to return from the Netherlands. Sleep was a stranger to me in those months. Almost every midnight I woke from nightmares and walked until sunrise. The films I had watched were the only thing I remembered on those long walks. I imagined myself into them.

Just after I had found a few friends in Kabul, we had to leave again because of my father's financial troubles. We moved to Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. I spent the loneliest days of my life there.

My father kept changing jobs. I walked the alleys until I had no idea where I was. At school, my attention was always outside the window. The school had a small library, and I spent most of my time there. The crime novels attracted me most — stories of an inspector who traveled the world.

My father used to tell me, while I sat in the shade of someone else's construction site, 'One day, while I still have strength in my hands, I will build a nice house for us too.'

He kept the promise. The two of us built our own house together. I was fourteen. The house became our home for many years. Now it is abandoned. In August 2021, the Taliban captured Mazar-e-Sharif. Nobody was there to defend it.

We held a small wedding ceremony in the basement of my uncle's house in Kabul. All my friends were there, and my mother too — but my father's absence was heavier than anyone's presence.

A few months later, Laila and I came to Germany. Leaving wasn't only a change of location but a change in how I acted and spoke — a change in my personality. Leaving meant I could no longer feel the safety of my father's voice.

The camp smelled like metal doors and languages I could not place. We did not feel safe there, not even in Germany. But Laila and I were together, and our expectations had fallen so low that a room with a tiny sink and fridge felt like fortune.

The men's toilet was always dirty, so many used the women's. I had to walk Laila there like a bodyguard. My father didn't speak to me during that first year. I missed him so much.

After August 2021, home became even harder to imagine as a place I could return to. My family moved again. Fear spread again. The history that had shaped us once before returned in full force to shape us again.

In September 2021, my parents arrived in Le Tréport, France. In December I saw them for the first time in many years.

All I have are the pictures my family took and sent to me before they were torn up. What do I do with them?

Maybe I will print them out and create a new family album — one my children can use to watch my family's story. A story about a home that has been lost again and again. The rise, fall, and resurgence of the Taliban are woven into our history. The new album will have pictures of my grandmother, my father, and me. And the picture showing my siblings tearing up the old album.