From Afghanistan to Admissions
Victoria Muradi especially relates to helping kids and families who never imagined attending a school like DA
By Kathy McPherson, Associate Director of Communications
Vdoorictoria Muradi’s earliest memory is hearing banging at the of her Kabul home and opening it to see a blond, blue-eyed
Russian soldier, Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder, looking for her father. Muradi was 3 years old when her father fled Afghanistan in the dark of night, leaving his wife, son and two daughters. It was 1980, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and her father, who was politically active and pro-democracy, was on a death list. The soldiers were convinced the family was hiding him, and it became so unsafe that the family also fled. “My mother didn’t bathe us for a week so we wouldn’t seem like city people, we would seem more like peasants. We were told we shouldn’t talk. Our grammar, accent would give us away because we had been educated. We left by bus and then by foot and on donkey, went into Pakistan and through Sri Lanka to the U.S. My mother was doing that with three children, 3, 5 and 12. I think about that now with my own two children.” Muradi has come a long way, from a kindergartner who could not say “hello” in English to a Smith College- and Harvardeducated administrator who has served as Durham Academy’s director of admissions and financial aid since 2007. Her family had led a comfortable life in Afghanistan — 24
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Kathy McPherson
RIGHT: Victoria Muradi, who is in her 10th year as Durham Academy’s admissions director, fled Afghanistan when she was 5. She began kindergarten not able to even say “hello” in English and went on to earn degrees from Smith College and Harvard University.
Muradi’s father owned a clothing factory and her mother taught school — and the family’s world was turned upside down when they fled. Father, mother and three children reunited in New York in 1982, sharing a one-bedroom apartment in a Queens building that was home to dozens of Afghan families. “My parents had taken English in school but they had to start from scratch here, taking night classes while trying to keep a family going — a hard life. Now when I go to a gas station or a Dunkin’ Donuts and see someone from overseas, I think they might have been a doctor or an engineer back where they were from.” Her father, who as the oldest male in his family held a position of high status in Afghanistan, came to the U.S. and worked as a busboy. Her mother also worked in restaurants, making her way from dishwasher to waitress as her English improved. “My father had this tremendous loss of dignity. He had nothing when he came here, he had lost everything, his family, what it meant to be somebody in a culture, he had to figure all that out here. I was too young to get it, now I really get it. He sacrificed a ton for us.” The family moved to South Florida when Muradi was in middle school. Her father worked his way up to managing