A message to Mom
Text by INES LEGRAND
A
Photos compiled by INES LEGRAND
REFLECTIONS OF A FIRST-GENERATION AFGHAN AMERICAN
UG. 14 WAS A HAPPY day this year, maybe even a joyous one. I know I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted with you, but even the small moments made my sweet sixteen special. Aug. 15 wasn’t so great. That was the day you told me about the Taliban capturing Kabul and gaining control of Afghanistan. The fall of the capital marked the end of an almost three-decadelong war, with thousands of deaths on every side, a war closely tied to our family’s history. I was aware of our family’s immigration story from a very young age. When you told me about Grandma’s great uncle, the last king of Afghanistan, and our relation to the Afghan royal family; in my young mind, you made me some kind of distant princess.
46 OCTOBER 2021
I never realized how indulgent of a lifestyle you lived in Afghanistan. I’m in awe of your family’s modern 10-bedroom house made of glass, complete with an array of personal nannies; one for each of your siblings. Khaled Hosseini, the writer of the “Kite Runner”, was a family friend and lived in the same neighborhood, a district characterized by extravagant wealth in a country of severe economic inequity. But out on the streets, you saw the haunting image of the little kids scavenging for crumbs in the gravel in front of bakeries. Even decades later, I felt the intensity in which this affected you. However, much of the material comfort you enjoyed vanished in 1979 when Russia invaded Afghanistan. Grandma’s driver was driving you home from school –– bodies litter-
ing the street gutters, blood staining the streets below. Grandpa, the economic minister of Afghanistan, was arrested, as the threat of his execution loomed over you and your family. That was when you first touched a machine gun and war tanks, as the Russian soldiers continuously patrolled the house to monitor Grandpa. Paralyzed with fear, you and your siblings stayed locked in your glass mansion for the next six months, leaving only when essential. In February 1980, Grandpa went looking for a birthday cake for your little sister’s birthday, searching for three days in the snow-filled streets of Kabul before returning with only a single roht — an Afghan sweet bread resembling a sweetened naan. After years of elaborate birthday cakes and parties with hundreds of guests, a mere sweetbread was quite the shock. Several months after that, you left Afghanistan in the dead of night, escaping to Germany with fake passports, leaving everything you owned behind. I will always look up to your bravery, perhaps bred by necessity, but bravery nonetheless. You made your way to the U.S. and started life in a very different, foreign en-
