Devastation, danger and desperation – Hamida’s story

One of Bruno Catalano’s sculptures

I saw one of Bruno Catalano’s extraordinary and powerful ‘Les Voyageurs’ sculptures last week. He’s a French artist, born in Morocco to a Sicilian family and a former sailor, and his eye-catching bronze sculptures depict realistic human travellers with large parts of their bodies missing.

 

Each has some sort of bag or suitcase with them and it is clear they are on a journey, but it’s as though in making the journey they have left a part of themselves behind that will never come back. They have arrived somewhere new but part of them has been left behind, they are there but not yet whole somehow, and that is what makes them so beautiful, so unique.

 

It made me think even more about people who have left their countries for better lives or because they haven’t had a choice and it has been necessary for their own safety. In particular, we are watching with horror and sadness at what is currently happening in Afghanistan and people trying to flee the country; a land which has faced decades of appalling conflict. Some of you will remember Marzia Babakarkhail who spoke at our annual general meeting two years ago. She was a judge in Afghanistan who was driven from her home by the Taliban and found herself alone and struggling with her mental health after settling in Oldham.

Marzia spoke movingly at the AGM about our Oldham Healthy Minds team helping to get her life back on track and has since been working as a passionate women’s rights activist in the UK. Marzia has become the voice for hundreds of terrified female judges forced into hiding in Afghanistan and fearing for their lives.

As well as patients, we have some colleagues who have also made difficult and traumatic journeys. Our staff come from an incredible 109 different countries, and each will have their own unique story.

Hamida Sakhi is one of our cleaners at Fairfield Hospital and fled Afghanistan with her family twenty years ago. Her story is truly remarkable and absolutely heart-breaking and it is a privilege and honour to have Hamida for our ‘guest blog’ this week.

Hamida Sakhi

 

I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1969, the youngest of eleven children. My childhood was wonderful until the age of eleven when everything changed.

My father managed oil for the government and was a very wealthy man; we lived on a big private estate with chefs, cleaners and gardeners. I remember playing so happily in our garden which had a river running through.

But the Russians invaded in 1979 and little did we know that this would be the start of a continuous state of civil war until today. My beautiful country and my heart have both been torn apart by these conflicts.

Russian soldiers came to our home and shot my brother and his wife who were living on our estate with their children in a separate building. It had been snowing and I remember seeing the red blood in the snow. My brother was a doctor, saving people’s lives so it was incomprehensible why he would be killed. I still cry every time I think about losing him and my sister-in-law.

After I married, I moved to a village near Kabul with my husband and started teaching geography and history in the local school.

But there was soon more trauma and tragedy for my family. Two of my brothers, who were identical twins, were thrown in jail for criticising the government. We were still so devastated about the murder of my other brother that they had understandably been voicing their anger.

They were given jail sentences of 18 and 20 years without any proper trial and were beaten and tortured. They were set free after three years, when a new government came in and they then fled to Pakistan - but the emotional and physical scars remained. One of the twins had been finishing his last year in law at university and the other was a writer who never recovered from the torture. It haunts him.

A few years after my brothers had fled to Pakistan, the Mujahidin starting burning down schools. My husband was a businessman and had to flee across the border to Tajikistan as his life was in danger. I had three children by then, two sons aged six and four and an 18 month year old daughter. There were rockets and bombs every day which were terrifying, especially for my children.

These years were so incredibly hard and the family loss continued with the murder of my brother-in-law and his 26 year old son by the Taliban. My sister was also injured in a suicide attack in a Kabul school where she worked.

I knew that I also had to leave the country and join my husband in Tajikistan. We faced horrible prejudice in Tajikistan however, with my husband even being beaten up and robbed when he was bringing vital medicine back from the pharmacy for my sick son.

And so, we made plans to try and get to England where we knew we could finally be safe. As a multi-cultural country, known for its inclusion, we hoped we would be accepted.

We had no idea what lay ahead though; an unimaginable 11 months where we would face fear, cruelty, hunger, cold, imprisonment and even death almost every day. Twenty years on, we still have nightmares about this journey.

After paying $26,000 for the journey, we spent the first three months hiding in Moscow. There were 57 people in our group, most were Afghans like us. We then tried to cross over into Hungary from the Ukraine several times, but kept getting caught.

It was the start of winter and bitterly cold. Some of the time we had to hide in forests or walk for days, with no food or barely any water. We didn’t have mobile phones, so when the traffickers weren’t with us we had no idea if we had been abandoned and left to starve.

And even when we were housed, it was distressing. Many were freezing, dark, damp rooms with no electricity, a single bucket as a toilet for 57 people, no washing facilities and days without food. My stomach ached for nourishment, but the worst thing was seeing my three children so hungry and not being able to feed them.

We also experienced near suffocation packed together in the back of vans, and dangerous river crossings in tiny boats, knowing we would drown if they capsized as we had no life-jackets and didn’t know how to swim.

When the Czech police caught us and put us in jail for two months, we were so happy to have a shower, blankets and food!

The most devastating event happened to a young Afghan couple in our group. We will never get over this, it was so horrific. They had a very young child and a 20 day old baby, when we were being taken through a wood by the lead trafficker, the baby would not stop crying.  

The trafficker took the baby off the woman saying he would help make it sleep. He then held it tightly to his chest until it stopped breathing and handed the dead baby back. He had suffocated a three week old baby, and we could do nothing about it as he had a gun. The grief and fear was overwhelming.

We never even saw his face as he wore a balaclava the whole time he escorted us. Our hearts broke for the family and I weep every time I think about their tiny baby.

We eventually made it to Calais after several attempts to travel through Germany and were there for three months until we finally arrived in Dover. My husband sold his gold chain, watch and ring and used his last few savings to pay someone to help us get to England by hiding in a lorry, but he disappeared with our money.

And so, after 30 failed attempts, when I finally stepped foot on UK soil – traumatised, exhausted and overwhelmed - I couldn’t quite believe it. It was in 2001, I was 32 years old and on my own with my three young children as my husband was still in Calais as we couldn’t all get on the lorry.

The British police took us to a hotel in Dover and my children were wide-eyed and joyous to see piles of toast at their first breakfast. They couldn’t believe there was enough bread to fill their stomachs.

Thankfully my husband managed to join us two months later and we were housed in Radcliffe whilst our asylum applications were processed.

One year after arriving I had another son, followed by a daughter in 2009. We then moved to Bury in 2011 which has been our home for the last decade. My father had died when I was 16, but mother was thankfully able to join us although she died three years ago. I still miss her so much.

My husband now works as a taxi driver and I have been a G4S cleaner contracted to Pennine Care for the last three years. I feel very proud to support the NHS and work with so many amazing, lovely people.

But my heart is so heavy. The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan is devastating. For the first few days we were crying non-stop as we watched the news unfold; unable to eat or sleep properly.

I have some family members still over there who are now in hiding and I am terrified for their lives. My identical twin brothers, who eventually returned to Afghanistan after Pakistan, are both in hiding. My nephew is a police officer and hiding with his family and the fiancé of my second son can’t get out of the country. She is petrified as apparently the Taliban know that my son, who she is engaged to, is an actor and has been in a US Netflix film called ‘The Outpost’ which makes her more of a target.

I love my country. The UK is my second home and I have my children and husband here with me, but a huge part of my heart will always be there. It runs through my blood and my soul. It is unbearable seeing what is happening on the news and feeling such hopelessness and despair. It’s impossible to shake off the dread and distress.

I just pray that the western world doesn’t turn its back on the people of my country.