HANIF AHMADZAI: My name is Hanif Ahmadzai. I'm right now in San Diego, California. Lara Gale is my friend.
LARA GALE: I'm in Ogden, Utah. So... thanks for doing this with me, Hanif. Before I came to Afghanistan, you and your brother had been working with the military for some years, and it's why you and I are such good friends.
HANIF AHMADZAI: Yes, I began working as interpreter for the US Army. In the same office, you were working, I was working as Afghan cultural advisor. Things happened that nobody wanted. The government collapsed. And we were all left behind. And I was hiding in my brother's house. So we were watching the military airplanes of the United States, hundreds of them were passing, and the same house where I was, and we were looking at these airplanes, my kids were asking, "Will we ever be one of those who could sit in these airplanes and leave the country and be safe?", and I didn' t know that, one day that is going to happen. But my friends here in the government, they very much helped me. And you were also working over there, putting my name in the list and helping with the State Department everywhere.
So with you and all my American friends, finally, I was able to leave the country. Nobody wants to leave their country. But the only thing we were looking, those days was to save our lives. That was our priority. The reason that my life mattered, was because of my wife and my kids, because they all rely on me. Here, of course, now the priorities and the challenges are different. The first priority, and the first good thing is that we are alive, we are safe. Here there is no one following us targeting us and killing us. There are opportunities and there are hopes. I'm very happy that my kids will be highly educated in the United States, especially my daughters, you know. I have four daughters, one son. My four daughters would very much suffer in the country. All these Afghan girls over there in the country, do not have the right to go to work and do not have the right to go to even Elementary School, everything has been closed for them. If the Americans wouldn't have helped us, today my daughters who would face the same thing. In the last one year, I very much see that my kids are very much improved their English, their knowledge. They are adjusting here; they're very much enjoying the freedom they have. And they live a life as a human, not mistreated as a boy, or as a girl. I'm very much happy and hopeful.
LARA GALE: I appreciate your eloquence and your insightful interpretation, I had to really take time to think about how angry I was in the wake of what happened in 2021. But I think it's Martin Luther King who said something about the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think I understand. The effort of the 20 years in Afghanistan in the larger story helps make it easier to swallow. It really bothered me for a long time that we considered the evacuation of Afghans to be some sort of mark of success because it was so far from anything that had ever been an objective. But it's not so much counting that as a win as it is recognizing that it gives us something to work with. The fact that you're here now, your kids are here now. Life is opportunities. That is worth counting as an achievement. And I'm so grateful if that's all we could get out of everything was to have you here. We're so fortunate to have the population of people who come to the United States from other countries and the depth of insight that you bring to this country because of your lived experience and the way that you embrace the challenges that you face and turn them into human wisdom. It's beautiful and I appreciate it a lot.
