Qareeb Urrahman has a degree in English literature and a good grasp of the language, but he tells an amusing story about his first day on the Camile takeaway counter on the Malahide Road, Dublin, where he’s now a manager. He was “really terrified of the telephone calls. We all are at the beginning!” On his first customer call, “for one minute I thought, is he speaking English or not? He was Irish, and he was a county [Wicklow] man. I was like, is this the English I was trying to learn my whole life?” He got help deciphering the accent. “My colleague, he’s a very good fellow to me, said ‘yeah, Irish-English is not easy to get’.”
By now he’s well used to talking to people with all sorts of accents, and has many Irish friends, from work and playing cricket.
Aged 26, Urrahman is from Nangrahar province in eastern Afghanistan. Generations of his family moved freely back and forth across the border into Pakistan (“just like Northern Ireland”). His father is a shopkeeper and he’s third in a family of six, with two older brothers and one younger, and two younger sisters.
Urrahman worked in marketing, online teaching and in food businesses to put himself through college in Peshawar, Pakistan. He moved to Ireland alone after the fall of Afghanistan in August 2021. He’d tried for scholarships in Germany, Italy and Australia without luck, then applied for a kitchen job in the Malahide Road Camile from an Irish jobs website. The Camile franchise applied for a work permit for him, and then he applied for a visa.
From Afghanistan to Ireland: ‘We had no choice. While we were sitting on the plane, everybody was crying’
‘The US has become really divisive. I definitely prefer the quality of life here. I like the people and the possibilities’
‘I feel like in Ireland we have women in higher positions and opportunities for women to grow’
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He started in the kitchen and was promoted.
“Working in a food outlet here is different to home. You’re not only making food, you have to record each and every thing you cook. There’s paperwork and regular training. Back home, it’s just, do whatever you want to do.”
His eyes light up when he talks about cricket: one of the joys of his life here is playing for Malahide Cricket Club.
“I wanted to be an international cricketer during my young age, and I played really good.” Because of war and lack of money, “I had to quit ... But I still love cricket. One of my goals is to play cricket at a good level, and maybe go to international.”
His family is still in Afghanistan. When he left, “Taliban were coming in, the war was at its peak. People just wanted to escape because it was not safe at all. They want to go somewhere to work, where they can afford themselves and their family.”
After school, his sisters “wanted to go to college, but there’s no opportunities for them”. They married at about age 18. Did they want to? “Yeah, they wanted to get married. In our family, there was no restriction on them. My parents asked them.” But did they have other options? “They had no choice. Truth.” When asked, he says he feels sorry for his sisters. “They’re brilliant. They should have gone for more education.”
He suggests “one out of 100 women has experience of work, education. The rest they never went to school, college.”
“I think it’s completely wrong, because we need females in each and every department, especially in medical.” But there was nothing he could do for women in his family. “Sometimes you wish to do a lot, but you can’t do anything. Even if you speak for the rights of the female, you could have been targeted. You could not even say anything. Not allowing female education is one of the biggest mistakes that is happening to Afghanistan right now.”
The only way he can help is sending money home to his parents when he can.
In Afghanistan “we’re kind of hungry for peace - people have died in every family”. When the US pulled out in 2021, “everyone had goosebumps” as life turned upside down. “Everybody was crying. Then gradually people got used to it. Now people kind of like it, because it’s more peaceful than before.” A girl cousin who can’t go to school and is forced to stay home cried, telling him it was better than going out “and not coming back”.
Despite the loss of women’s rights and functional banking, “it’s more peaceful than before. Right now, I hope it stays the same. I’m not in favour of Taliban or any other government. We are in favour of peace.”
Urrahman is upset by anti-immigrant protests. “You can’t really say to people you’re feeling sad, but deep in your heart you feel sad, because we have come all the way from Afghanistan, been in wars for generation over generation. We come to Ireland and we finally think, ‘I’m gonna make it now’. Then the same thing is happening here. People just don’t want to see you here. They say ‘go back home’.”
A few weeks ago he and a friend were grocery shopping at Tesco near Coolock. “The protesting people were all out there. My friend, he was driving. They peeked into the car and saw he’s non-Irish, and they had a baseball bat and smashed the car window. Not only us. They set fire to different cars. It was scary. Garda was there, they came to us, and they gave us a way out.”
But: “I wasn’t very heartbroken when I saw this in Coolock, because the same thing happened to us living in Pakistan. A lot of people saying, ‘Go back home’.”
Regarding protesters, “I can understand some of their points. Some people came illegally to this country, and we don’t have any of their records. We don’t know what were they doing back home, if they have criminal records. They just came into Ireland, got refugee status. But in most cases, I would say the protesters are wrong as well. I’m not a refugee here. I work 40-plus hours. I pay taxes. They can’t say to anyone, ‘just go back home’. Nobody has the right to pick up something and hit someone else.”
Since moving here he’s learned a lot. He’d like to study management but isn’t eligible for scholarships as he’s working, and “€16,000 fees is a big amount for me”. Urrahman dreams of opening an online educational academy, to teach children, “more specifically females”, in Afghanistan.
“I would love to go back. One of my dreams is to go back home and live there in a peaceful way, with no dramas, no wars, no sanctions. Right now, it doesn’t seem possible. To be honest, I love Ireland. Ireland is 100 per cent different to back home. It’s peace, calm.”
