Philly area connection gets family out of Kabul
Contractor wants to go back to ‘beautiful’ country
Even as events unfold thousands of miles away, sometimes they have entrenched local connections as is the story of Amir Sidiqi.
Sidiqi grew up in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District in Delaware County and graduated from Strath Haven High School. For 11 years, the 34-yearold worked as a contractor in Afghanistan and for months, he had heard that he was going to be leaving the country.
“I was very upset by the way that they had set up to leave from the very beginning,” he said. “They told me I was going to be leaving since June … Everyone realized that there would be a Taliban takeover. We didn't realize that it was going to happen that quickly.”
On the evening of Aug. 14, Sidiqi, who had worked at the American embassy, got word that groups were burning things there.
“The embassy was leaving and they kind of left everybody behind,” he said.
Then, a U.S. Department of Defense contact had reached out to him, saying, “Are you still in Afghanistan? Get the hell out.” That wasn't so easy. “The big issue that was holding me back, I hadn't been able to apply for a visa for my wife,” Sidiqi explained. With COVID protocols in place, the U.S. embassy wasn't offering nonimmigrant visas. “I'm not going to go until my daughter and wife could go.”
But after receiving that message from his DOD contact, he, his 23-year-old wife and their 21-monthold daughter, Baby Madina headed for the airport.
Sidiqi called their first attempt “disastrous.”
“People were getting killed all around us,” he said, saying there were dead bodies all around. “We were there for hours and literally thought we would die. Everybody was trying to get in. The police were killing them. We were trying to get out.”
They finally retreated from the airport back to their home in Kabul, where it was relatively quiet.
“It was just the airport that was nuts and insane,” Sidiqi said.
It was at that point that he received a social media message from his ninthgrade English teacher, Kevin Haney, asking if there was anything he could do.
“If you are a man of God,” Sidiqi wrote, “please pray.”
Haney knew someone whom he grew up with in South Philadelphia who worked at the U.S. Department of State. The morning
after that message, Sidiqi was speaking with him.
Calling him “JP,” Sidiqi said JP helped him, his wife and their daughter navigate the situation and it took two more trips to the airport before they finally passed.
“We were there for hours every time,” Sidiqi said of the airport. “The Marines helped us get in. They searched us a bit. They got us through. I was busy thanking everybody. We got a sense of relief.”‘
The Afghanistan of the last few weeks was not typical of the country he lived for over a decade, Sidiqi said.
“Kabul is not like Afghanistan,” he said. “Kabul I call home. I had lots and lots of friends. I had foreign friends. It was depressing at the end because a lot had left.”
For a while, Sidiqi said the country had been quiet.
“Up to a year ago, it wasn't that bad,” he said. “These explosions and attacks that were happening, they stopped happening.”
Then, it changed to the point where the Afghan Minister of Defense's home had gotten blown up and that was near Sidiqi's home in Kabul. And, a bomb had been put at one of his cousin's houses.
Yet, he has other memories of the country and its people.
“In Kabul, people are different than the rest of the country,” he said, explaining that it's similar to
American cities where people are not as friendly. He preferred the countryside.
“It's not Iraq, it's not a desert,” Sidiqi said. “Afghanistan has some of the most beautiful landscapes. We don't have the Jersey Shore. You have fresh water lakes, you have beautiful rivers … I have pictures of me being on top of these old artifacts with a river behind me, a desert on the side, and a huge agricultural area. There's no pollution. It's some of the most beautiful places I ever went to.”
And, as terrible as opioids are, he said the poppy fields were some of the most beautiful countryside to see.
“It's a sea of pink or a sea of white,” he said.
Then, there were the people.
“I'm Afghan American,” Sidiqi said. “My mother is white. When I've gone, I've never once felt worried. If you have reason to be there … they're going to be incredibly giving and very hospitable. People who have nothing will give you what you have and they will not hold back.”
Although he wasn't in country at the time of the previous Taliban, he said he heard stories that they were terrible. So far, this Taliban is different, he said.
“The Taliban that just came in is in charge of the government,” he said, adding that non-Afghanis ask, “How are going to work with those savages?”
“Nobody is giving them a chance,” he said, adding that they “have nice British accents. They have made a point to try to include women and minority groups.
“I see the same kind of stuff in America,” Sidiqi, who is neither Republican or Democrat, said. “If you are going to work against the president, it's counterproductive.”
He continued, “If the Taliban is in control, why wouldn't we work with them? It's better to work from inside.”
In addition, Sidiqi said, “I did not see any Taliban kill anybody. The Taliban were working side-by-side to get us out.”
He said it was the Afghan commandos who were killing people at the airport, where he said everyone was “insane” and where a level of fear had been instilled in the people.
“What happened was not the fault of the Taliban,” Sidiqi said.
He presented a scenario in any other country, say India, where they're told the next 120,000 people who get on an airplane can go to America without any documents. “If you can get here, you're free,” he imagined, adding that there would be a rampage.
“The people who earned it, didn't get to come,” he said. “The people who followed the laws, they weren't contacted, they were left behind. I feel bad because I told them to follow the rules.”
Then, there were cultural differences in the process.
“Another thing Americans did wrong is they don't understand Afghan families,” he said. “People have more than one life.”
For example, in Afghanistan, men can have multiple wives, whom they provide for. Sidiqi said if these men wanted to come to the United States, they were told they could only pick one to accompany them, leaving the other wives and children behind.
Then, there were the elderly.
In Afghanistan, Sidiqi said, the son is responsible for the parents as they age. The daughters get married off and the sons take care of the parents.There are no retirement homes there, he added.
“There's nobody else to take care of the parents,” he said. so the son had to assess if it was more or less dangerous for him to stay … Somebody has to take care of them. It's not a burden like it is here in America.
They are part of the family. They could be fully qualified to come but they can't take their entire family.”
A lot of good people were left behind, he said.
“I know that it got screwed up,” Sidiqi said. “It's not all America's fault. I don't blame President Joe Biden. He had the best intentions to end this conflict. Where are the other … countries in NATO?”
He said Turkey had offered to take care of the airport, then that was up in the air. England said they would accept Afghans without passports but the UK, like each country, had separate operations at the airport. Germany said they would take Afghans for a limited amount of time.
“Why wasn't this more of an internationally concerted effort?” Sidiqi wondered. “They knew what the deadline was. A lot of the processes fell apart.”
America, he said, was the one getting people out — and he had high remarks for the American military.
“They came in, provided a safe perimeter,” Sidiqi said. “They did an amazing job … They showed incredible, incredible discipline. None of them had been to Afghanistan before. They didn't want people who had preconceived notions about the Taliban. From so many aspects, looking at the military, they did an amazing job.”
Even in that, there were Delco connections.
When Amir and his family finally got through the airport gate, he gave one of the crew members a gift of thanks — a shirt that read, “Straight out of Kabul.”
Again, through social media, he found a member of the crew with his shirt — the pilot of the C-17 that had gotten him and his family out of Afghanistan and as fate would have it, the pilot was also a Strath Haven alum, who graduated a few years behind Sidiqi.
Sidiqi said he remains in touch with some people in Afghanistan, including his driver and butler, Awaz, who's taking care of his house. “I can't live without you,” he told him.
There's also other employees Sidiqi has there, aunts and some cousins, as well as his wife's family.
“My wife's family is there, we are concerned about them,” he said. “My brotherin-law is there, they seem to be OK. I told everybody to stay in place and not move.”
He said it's not as bad as it's made out to be.
“The night everybody left, there was a lot of firing,” he said, with residents in some neighborhood not feeling as safe as in other neighborhoods. “Where my family and my wife's family live, it wasn't too bad.”
And, his family has been transitioning to their new environs.
“It's been all right,” he said. “My daughter was a little screwed up for a bit but my wife did a good job covering her face.”
Sidiqi said he and his family had gotten sick while at the refugee camps prior to coming to the United States but they feel better.
He said his daughter got to see the ocean for the first time in New Jersey. “She absolutely lost her mind out there,” he said.
And, he made certain to make a visit to a former teacher.
“Haney has always been such an amazing, amazing teacher,” Sidiqi said.
He explained that he arrived in the WallingfordSwarthmore School District shortly after Sept. 11.
“In ninth grade, I looked like I was about 40-yearsold,” Sidiqi said. “Haney came up to me and said, ‘If anybody ever says anything to you or makes you feel uncomfortable, you let me know and ill take care of it.'”
He said the teacher lives pretty close to his parents.
So after arriving in the United States on Aug. 23, the next day, Sidiqi said, “I knocked on his door, ran over and gave him a hug.”
And, despite everything, Sidiqi plans to return to Afghanistan as soon as he can for business purposes.
“I'm going to be going back there pretty soon,” he said. “As soon as the flights open up, I'm going back. My wife and my child are not.”