People who salute brothers Iqbal (26) and Jamal (22) Nasiri on the streets of Ballaghaderreen would never imagine the drama that preceded their arrival to the Co Roscommon town.
Nobody gave the young men from Afghanistan a second glance one chilly December afternoon this week as they lingered in the Square, chatting to local Pakistani-born barber Sajjad Hussein. One brother was on his way to the gym, the other was strolling "home", both savouring the ordinariness of this new life.
Four months ago, on August 26th, the family had been preparing to leave their Kabul home when they heard the airport explosion which killed about 170 of their fellow citizens and 13 US troops. Iqbal and Jamal, their mother, three sisters, a brother- in-law and two-year-old nephew had been about to literally close the door on their existing life when a suicide bomber plunged them into yet another spiral of fear.
“We were about to leave for the airport to fly from there,”explained Iqbal. “ Because of the bomb, it was impossible.
"We heard the explosion. Our house is 20 minutes away from the airport. We saw it on the TV and Facebook. Lots of people died that night," says Jamal.
The family had for some days been watching with horror on Facebook and on television as province after province fell to the Taliban, but they were stunned at how quickly the Afghan capital fell.
And they knew that even if the airport was closed to them, they had to flee.
A former UK naval officer who had served in Afghanistan had recently been appealing to his government on their behalf, explaining that they were being specifically targeted by the Taliban.
When Tim McCullough, from Bangor, Co Down, served in Helmand province in 2012, his interpreter had been Iqbal and Jamal's older brother, who was then aged 18. As a result, as McCullough explained to the media, the Taliban were knocking on the family's door every day.
‘Foreign forces’
“The Taliban did not like interpreters, especially everyone who was working with the foreign forces. Interpreters were a priority for the Taliban,” explained Iqbal.
"My brother knew we were in danger," he added. "He tried several ways to get us out. He applied to the UK emigration but he failed. He applied to Australia. Finally his Irish friend [McCullough] helped."
His older brother had contacted McCullough from Australia, where he lives with his wife and two children, to tell him he had been ordered to return home or his family would be killed. McCullough spelled it out graphically in an interview with the BBC on August 23rd: “He knows if he doesn’t go back, then the remainder of his family are going to be executed. But he knows if he does go back, he’s going to be executed.”
A week later, after McCullough's local MP for North Down, Stephen Farry, had turned to Simon Coveney for help, the Minister for Foreign Affairs recounted on Morning Ireland how the family of an interpreter had just been plucked to safety in Kabul.
The previous day the family had reached Pakistan, having travelled across the border in two rented cars after the airport explosion in Kabul thwarted their plan to fly to Ireland.
They saw Taliban checkpoints and had a heart-stopping moment at the border when they were told that their passports and visas were not recognised. After some negotiation they were admitted on the strength of their ID cards and spent a month in a guest house in Karachi.
Now they are in Ballaghaderreen, thinking about the future, clearly relieved to be living in the Emergency Reception and Orientation Centre (EROC), formerly the Abbeyfield Hotel, which started providing sanctuary to Syrian people in March 2017.
Jamal, who had been studying commerce at a university in India until Covid restrictions required him to return home during the summer, is hoping he will be allowed return to Bangalore in January to complete the final semester of his course.
Iqbal, who had been studying journalism in Kabul, says he and his brother-in-law are hoping they might get to do an apprenticeship as plumbers or electricians in Ireland. At home he also had a job as a site supervisor for an NGO, Shelter for Life International (SFL).
English test
His two younger sisters , aged 17 and 19, are already enrolled in St Nathy’s post-primary school in Ballaghaderreen, having successfully completed an English test which demonstrated their ability to keep up with the classes.
They miss their old life but also know that the life they knew in Kabul is gone.
“My sisters were going to go to university. They passed their exams. I was two to three months from finishing my university degree. I have left my personal car there, our personal house,” explained Iqbal. “This was our whole life. We spent our life getting a house, getting a car. These things are not easy. I have left my everything. My family had ambitions to do lots of things in their country but we couldn’t.”
His father died many years ago but there is clearly a strong extended family network and they worry about relatives.
Two cousins in particular have reason to be scared of the Taliban, they say, and they have now relocated to Pakistan where they live an uncertain life with no source of income.
“One of them was a judge and he was sending many Taliban to prison,” says Iqbal. “So he has left Afghanistan already. His brother was in the Ministry of Interior [Affairs]. They are facing lots of problems because they have no work, they have no source of income, their family is big.”
Anyone who worked with the previous government or with the Allied forces or NGOs are regarded as the enemy by the Taliban, explains Iqbal. “This is their ideology, that it is totally legal to kill them. Their mind is very small, their thinking is very small.”
Their cousin the judge was hiding out at different locations before eventually taking his family to Pakistan.
“The Taliban came to their house, knocking on their door,” says Iqbal. “The judge was changing his home [every few] nights. Finally he realised that this is not possible. He went to Pakistan with his wife and children.”
Jamal says that people in Kabul who worked for the previous government are in hiding now.
“There is no economy at the moment, no school, no university. Everything is damaged, There is no system, nothing”.
They are clearly stunned at how over a few days “everything changed” in their homeland. “They [the Taliban] took control of 15 to 20 provinces in one night. We were checking Facebook and every 30 minutes another province was gone,” says Jamal.
Never expected
Iqbal says they still never expected that Kabul, a city with nearly five million people, would fall to the Taliban so quickly.
“They took control without war. The Army left everything behind, all their equipment, nobody knows why. They left everything , all the heavy weapons.
“They had helicopters, they had aircraft, tanks, they had everything. They did not fight,” he says.
Jamal interjects : “At night it was one situation with one government and in the morning when we woke it was another government. Everyone was shocked.”
Do they expect to go back?
“No . . . maybe in the next 20, 30 years,” says Jamal, and then they both say, as if the thought has just struck them, “maybe never.”
“It is really hard for people now. Banks are not giving out money – only 50 dollars a week, because there is a shortage of dollars in Afghanistan. It is their own money, their own property,” says Iqbal.
Jamal says people who saved their own money “for bad days” can’t withdraw it now to get out of the country.
They arrived in Ireland on September 26th under the Irish Refugee Protection Programme (IRPP) for Afghan nationals which was announced a month earlier. They are at pains to express their gratitude to those who have been looking after them, saying the staff at the centre have been kind while the people of Ballaghaderreen have been “very friendly”.
They talk of a future in Ireland.
“We plan to get jobs to support ourselves and our family and start a new life,” says Iqbal, who has high hopes for his brother if he completes his university course.
“Finance is a good degree so hopefully there will be opportunities here.”
Cricket team
The only thing they knew about Ireland before coming here was that the Irish have a cricket team. Their eyes light up when they mention Paul Stirling, "a really good batsman". Last January they had been riveted to the Ireland v Afghanistan cricket series, little dreaming that in less than a year they would be living in a small West of Ireland town, chatting with a Pakistani-born local about the possibility of them joining the Ballaghaderreen cricket club which he founded.
Sajjad “Saj” Hussein arrived in Ballaghaderreen nearly 20 years ago and is so integrated that he stood as an Independent candidate in the last local elections .
When the Nasiri brothers recently visited his home there was much talk of new beginnings. Coincidentally, the previous day Hussein’s wife Saima received her Irish citizenship in an online ceremony, and the couple are expecting their fifth child In January. Saima prepared a feast as they welcomed their new neighbours to their home.
The brothers hesitate when asked what they miss about Afghanistan.
“There are lots of positive things in Ireland. But your homeland is home,” says Iqbal. “Of course we don’t like the negative parts.”
Jamal is philosophical. “You have to miss something to get something. For being out of danger, we need to miss something. We feel safe so that is enough.”
They say they will never forget what Tim McCullough did for their family. “He knew how serious the threat was. We can never repay him but we will try,” says Iqbal.
