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Arrival of household a fruits of two years fraught with homicide, peril, bribes, secret networks, shut escapes and mind-numbing pink tape.
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Michelle Downey remembers the day she started worrying about households in Afghanistan.
“I keep in mind it clearly, it was the day of the Taliban takeover and I used to be overwhelmed by the misery of the folks making an attempt to get on the airplanes,” Downey mentioned. “I simply thought, ‘How can I assist?’”
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Downey is the lead on a group of 12 from Campbell River who on Saturday will welcome seven of 10 relations after they arrive at Comox’s airport — with three extra the group is hopeful will arrive earlier than the New Yr.
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It’s the fruits of greater than two years fraught with homicide, peril, bribes, secret networks, shut escapes and mind-numbing pink tape. It felt at occasions like residing in an Ian Fleming novel.
“The Taliban had been simply reckless, they had been killing and it didn’t matter who they killed,” Downey remembers pondering.
On Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban took management of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. Afghans who had labored with Canadian and different worldwide organizations had been particularly focused.
Downey has a good friend in Edmonton, Spencer Sekyer, who had taught in Afghanistan and he informed her in regards to the household that can arrive on Saturday.
The household patriarch, Ghulam Ahmadi, had been murdered by the Taliban in Might, 2022, for refusing to surrender his 16-year-old daughter for marriage. That left his son, Gul Ahmadi, as protector of his youthful brother and sister, his mom, his spouse and their 5 younger ladies.
After the Taliban returned to let the Ahmadis know they now anticipated not simply the teenaged lady however the household’s house as properly, the Ahmadis fled, hiding the place they may in Afghanistan earlier than fleeing to Pakistan alongside harmful, clandestine routes.
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Gul would later wind up being shot, too, two bullets to the stomach in June, 2022, when he sneaked again into Afghanistan to attend a household funeral in Kandahar. Nobody would deal with him on the first hospital — medical doctors feared for their very own security in opposition to Taliban retribution — and he’d been bleeding for greater than 5 hours earlier than a health care provider at one other hospital tended to his wounds.
Gul didn’t have a lot time for restoration. A nurse on the hospital had ties to the Taliban and he escaped only some hours earlier than the Taliban arrived on the lookout for him.
The Campbell River group wound up elevating $90,000 by means of storage gross sales and different fundraisers, plus assist from two Rotary Golf equipment, and jumped by means of sundry hoops required to sponsor the ten Afghans, for whom the group is liable for one 12 months taking care of their wants.
Not too long ago, the neighborhood chipped in to furnish a four-bedroom home the group was in a position to lease for the Ahmadis in Campbell River and it was with a lot reduction and emotion that Downey informed the story.
“That is the primary time we’ve been in a position to point out their names or have their footage seem,” she mentioned.
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The group Downey leads is non-denominational however she has robust Christian roots and commenced serving to refugees six years in the past.
“It was totally different,” she mentioned. “It was Africa, for one, however this truthfully is the toughest factor I’ve ever needed to undergo so far as making selections that had folks’s lives at stake.
“It was a whole lot of turmoil, nearly day by day.”
Even in Pakistan, the household felt unsafe.
“Gul has prevented dying I don’t know what number of occasions,” Downey mentioned. “Just a few days in the past he was strolling down the road in Islamabad getting suitcases to come back to Canada and he watched an Afghan man get killed within the store the place he usually will get his paperwork printed.
“So I’m grateful that they’re on an airplane.”
Gul and his spouse Farida are 32. They communicate Pashto, not English; they’re Muslims arriving simply in time for Christmas.
Downey, a 56-year-old mom of 4, sees the Ahmadis’ harmful journey as a narrative of hope and peace, of coming collectively in a world the place intolerance appears to be ballooning.
“I really feel like we had been in a James Bond film the previous two years,” she mentioned. “We’re a bit giddy — this sort of closing realization that that is panning out.
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“Issues are grim the world over, there are some actually ugly issues on the market. For me, this household has proven me time and again their humility, they’re very sort and loving to one another. Gul is respectful to his mom and his spouse and his sisters.
“And he’s obtained 5 little ladies to point out that there’s a distinct life for them.
“We will love one another regardless for the proper causes, proper? It’s not about faith, it’s not about race or tradition, it’s about doing the proper factor. I believe that’s the important thing — that’s why it’s a excellent news story as a result of it’s not about race or faith, it’s about caring about different folks.”
gordmcintyre@postmedia.com
x.com/gordmcintyre
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