Shortly after President Biden announced the country’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the Afghan government fell to the hands of the Taliban as the group took over the capital city, Kabul, on Aug. 15, one month before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.
A local student organization organized a rally immediately after receiving this news. Nebraskans gathered in front of the Nebraska State Capitol to raise awareness of the situation in Afghanistan and shared personal experiences of their lives before the extremist organization took control of the country.
Among the rally participants stood Tabasum Mahboub, who carried a “PEACE FOR AFGHANS” sign.
Mahboub, who resettled to Lincoln in 2018, is a human services major at Southeast Community College. She’s heavily involved with the group that planned the rally, the Afghan Student Association at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She considers members of AFSA her family and hangs out with them often.
It’s been six years since Mahboub left Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, but she still thinks about going home every day.
When Mahboub’s family realized their city wasn’t safe for them anymore in 2015, they started planning to move elsewhere.
Mahboub’s parents got their visa approved to come to Lincoln in the same year, so they reunited with their eldest daughter, Samira, who was already in Lincoln since 1998. Samira initially came to UNL to study on a Fullbright scholarship, and she was the first in her family to come to Lincoln.
“When they left, I had the feeling of ‘What's going to happen? Am I going to have an education or a future that I want?’” These were the questions that Mahboub thought about daily when she knew that her parents were leaving.
Leaving home
Mahboub and her second eldest sister, Silsila, stayed behind because their visa didn’t get approved. Knowing that the two sisters needed a guardian to take care of them, Mahboub’s uncle, who was in Bulgaria, welcomed them to stay with him under a travel visa.
Mahboub and Silsila took off to Bulgaria unwillingly with the only belongings they could carry, which was mainly clothes. Mahboub stayed with her uncle in Bulgaria for three years before coming over to her final destination in Lincoln.
The sisters made it to Bulgaria, but life wasn’t easy for them. They couldn’t enjoy the benefits of a Bulgarian citizen. Their visa status didn’t allow them to work nor get an education. Mahboub would stay home most of the time because she had nothing to do, or no one to do things with.
“We were just there to be there,” Mahboub said.
They slowly got used to living in Bulgaria after two years. They knew how to take public transportation and their way around town. Mahboub and Silsila eventually moved out of their uncle’s apartment to stay on their own. Silsila managed to find a job to support herself and her sister. The Bulgarian community was friendly and welcoming as the town that they lived in had a sizable immigrant population.
Near the end of the sisters’ stay with their uncle, Mahboub discovered her uncle’s secret- he had terminal cancer. His dying wish was to stay alive until the sisters managed to resettle to the U.S. But he died within six months of his diagnosis, before any of them got resettled. This memory was something that Mahboub didn’t want to bring up.
“Toward the end of his life he looked like he was 100 years old and small. He didn’t look like himself,” Mahboub said as her voice got smaller and smaller until it was a whisper.
In 2018, good news came for Mahboub. She got approved to move to Lincoln. "I got the green card right away at the airport," Mahboub said. However, Silsila’s visa wasn’t approved and she hasn’t heard anything back from the U.S. government for nearly seven years. For now, she is in Bulgaria staying with an Arab friend.
Coming home
Once again, Mahboub packed her belongings in preparation to move to Lincoln, like the hand-embroidered vest that she was wearing, called waskat. She finally got to reunite with her family after three years of being apart from each other. She had never been separated from her family and feared the most being away from her parents.
“We don’t really separate until we're married or old,” Mahboub said.
As Mahboub got comfortable with her life in Bulgaria, she was reluctant to move to another country and start anew all over again. It took her two years to get accustomed to American culture.
Even though it’s nearly impossible to go back to Afghanistan now, she would go back in a heartbeat if she could.
“I think it’s the same for everyone who leaves their country and comes here (the U.S.),” Mahboub said.
She feels most at home in Lincoln during family gatherings when everyone is speaking their native language, Farsi, and reminiscing with her parents about their old life back in Afghanistan.
Right now, Mahboub is content with her life. She’s recently engaged, she enjoys her studies and is satisfied with her job. She is just like anyone else who has ups and downs in their life, and like any newcomer who struggles to fit into a new place but still wants to be in touch with their cultural roots.
Mahboub had experienced microaggression at her workplace during her first year in Lincoln. Her coworkers would make fun of her makeup and the way she dressed. She later realized that she can just be herself and doesn’t have to fit into the norm.
"I was trying so hard to be American; I was trying not to have an accent; I was trying to dress the way everyone was dressing," Mahboub said.
Like most newcomers, Mahboub has depression due to the different culture that she is trying to learn and the uncertainty that her relatives back in Afghanistan are facing. Even so, Mahboub finds comfort from being with her family, who are open about mental health struggles.
She also found a community of Afghans in Lincoln who are in her age group. The Afghan American community in Lincoln is a tight-knit one where nearly everyone knows each other. Mahboub calls her Afghan peers her cousins even though they aren’t related to her by blood. She is often seen hanging around the UNL campus with members of AFSA.
“They’re like my family,” Mahboub said.
For now, AFSA is the only organization that gathers young adults together to learn about Afghan culture. Aaron Ebrahim, a UNL student and AFSA member, said everyone is welcomed, even non-UNL or Afghan students. The club organizes donation drives regularly to help incoming refugees. Ebrahim, a second generation Afghan American said there is a huge language and culture barrier between new Afghans and local American Afghans.
“I talked to people (staff) at Catholic Social Services and they find it hard to communicate with new Afghans. Most of them (Afghans) are homesick.” Ebrahim said.
Mahboub hopes that a larger organization will be built for the entire Afghan community in Lincoln to get together and to expose others to Afghan culture. Once, Mahboub’s coworker had to serve muslim customer, and they said “All muslims are nasty and unhygienic” after the customer left. That comment hurt her since she is a muslim too, and also because the coworker had painted a negative stereotype about muslims.
She wants others to know that refugees didn’t choose to leave their home countries, but were forced to do so because the environment wasn’t safe. She also wishes people would be more open to learn about different cultures.
"They just want to live a safe life and have the opportunities that everyone else has," Mahboub said.