Power loss confounds Afghan new arrivals
Storm offered new challenge for those who fled Taliban
Zabit Popal fled the war in Afghanistan last year to have a peaceful life in Canada, but that peace was disrupted last weekend — not by a war but by a historic storm.
Popal, 32, stood at the window of his apartment in Halifax on Friday evening and watched Fiona arrive. He saw trees in front of his building uprooted by the winds and then, later, as his entire neighbourhood lost power, he was reminded of blackouts in his hometown of Kabul.
“I was shocked. What to do now?” he said.
Popal is a former air-traffic controller at Kabul Airport who was evacuated by NATO troops last year. A day before the storm hit, he bought food including bread and fruit.
“I was prepared for it,” he said, but “I got worried when the power went off.”
Kabul was often without juice; half of Afghanistan’s electricity consumption is imported from neighbouring countries and during their — now-victorious — rebellion, the Taliban had been blowing up electrical towers feeding power to the capital. (Sometimes snowstorms in the mountainous parts of the country also played a role.)
So Halifax plunging into darkness didn’t immediately bother Popal. But how to cook, here, without electricity?
“We used to cook food in our small gas cylinder stoves in Afghanistan,” he said. His stove in Halifax is electric. “I thought, ‘If the power goes off, it won’t be an issue.’ But it was really a big issue.”
Popal said the weekend storm was his first experience of a natural disaster in Canada. He describes the scale of damage and destruction in his neighbourhood as “unbelievable and shocking.”
“I was scared when the wind got stronger and downed several trees near my apartment. It was new to me,” he said. “We didn’t have such a dangerous storm in Afghanistan.”
The loss of internet and cellphone signals was even a bigger problem for him as he and his wife couldn’t check in with his friends in the city. “We were panicked,” he said. Fiona killed at least three people over the weekend and, as of Wednesday morning, more than 104,000 homes and businesses in Nova Scotia — 20 per cent of Nova Scotia Power’s customers — were still without power.
Like Popal, Abdullah Hamid found the loss of his electric stove to be the biggest deprivation. The 46year-old Halifax resident couldn’t cook for his wife and four children and they “had no way” to feed themselves other than eating frozen food that he had hustled to buy as the storm drew near.
“There were no cookies or snacks left in stores,” Hamid said. “I was worried if I could buy enough frozen foods that last for a few days.”
There are extra mouths to feed, too. Abdullah summoned his brother, Wahid Hamid, 32, who lives across Halifax Harbour from his brother in Dartmouth, to bring the members of his household — their parents and a brother — to Abdullah’s apartment. That made 10 people under Abdullah’s roof, where Wahid wants to stay until his apartment gets power back.
Ahmad Sherzai was perhaps lucky to miss the storm itself, but his plans were seriously disrupted all the same.
He had landed in Toronto just a day earlier from Istanbul after Canada granted him an entry visa, and was due to fly on Saturday with four family members to Halifax. Fiona, however, disrupted air travel bound for the region, and “we were told that our flight has been cancelled,” said Sherzai, who finally arrived on Monday night in the city where he has been dreaming of living in peace.
Wahid, Abdullah, their parents and siblings fled Afghanistan last year after the Taliban takeover of Kabul, and reached Halifax nine months ago from a U.S. military camp in Kosovo. They experienced their first Maritime storm a month later, but it was just a taste of what came this month.