[Among them was a 6-year-old boy named Bilal, who held tight to a small cage. In it was his parrot, Toti, his only friend in a country he had never been to, and his escape from the lonely days in the desolate gorge they would put up in to start their new lives.]
By Mujib Mashal
 |
|
Bilal
and his parrot, Toti, at their new home in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan,
in
February 2017. Credit Jim Huylebroek for Norwegian Refugee Council
|
BESHUD,
Afghanistan — The truck
wound its way through mountain passes in the pre-dawn darkness, stacked high
with the trappings of a refugee life pieced together over 30 years.
The Shah family had been forced out of the
haven in Pakistan that their patriarch had found them during the last war,
against the Soviets. Now they were returning to Afghanistan, a place in the
grips of a newer and longer war that has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing.
They clung to everything they could: tins of
clothes, bundles of blankets, pots and pans, 11 charpoy beds, 40 chickens, two
pigeons, a goat and more. The women and children, nearly two dozen all
together, either rode on the truck’s top or stuffed themselves among the
belongings on its back.
Among them was a 6-year-old boy named Bilal,
who held tight to a small cage. In it was his parrot, Toti, his only friend in
a country he had never been to, and his escape from the lonely days in the
desolate gorge they would put up in to start their new lives.
The large family built by Dawran Shah,
Bilal’s grandfather, was among nearly 100,000 undocumented Afghans pushed out
of Pakistan last year. Many of them were forcibly repatriated, but others, like
the Shahs, were fed up with being targeted for abuse by the police.
In Nangarhar Province, the rocky region in
eastern Afghanistan where they settled, one in every three people is either
internally displaced by fighting or is a returned refugee, according to the
International Organization for Migration.
The family’s new neighborhood is desolate,
just a few sparse homes in a mountain gorge. When they unloaded, the women and
children cried at the sight of their new home, Mr. Shah said. (Many of the
homes are built with the help of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Bilal was first
brought to the Times’s attention by a photographer who had taken photos of the
boy on behalf of the aid group.)
“Our house there had a balcony, three rooms,
and there was also a guest room,” Bilal said of their home in Pakistan. “Here
we have two rooms, and they don’t have doors. And we have two tents.”
Bilal was only 4 when he found Toti, in a
different country — a greener one, where life seemed abundant.
Bilal’s grandfather, Mr. Shah, had settled in
the Hashtnaghar area in northwestern Pakistan, fleeing his home in Kunar
Province not long after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He farmed tomatoes and
zucchini, and, over 30 years, grew a large family.
Bilal had accompanied his father, Jamshed,
into the fields the day they saw the parrot, perched on a branch of an aspen
tree.
“My father shook the branch. Toti fell, and I
threw my scarf on it,” Bilal recalled.
How big was Toti?
“It was a baby — this big,” said Bilal,
bringing his small fingers together.
Bilal and Toti were inseparable: together at
home, together in the fields, together when Bilal was out playing with other
children.
“I had 10 friends — Noor Agha, Khan, Mano,”
Bilal said. “We would make houses.”
The only times Bilal would put Toti down from
his shoulder was to feed the parrot grain and peanuts, or to slide the bird’s
cage under his bed at night.
Then came the move. For some refugees, even
30 years in one place is not enough to stay rooted in a new home.
For nearly two weeks after they settled in
Nangarhar, Bilal’s father, Jamshed, would try to find work. But each day, he
would return with nothing except new debt.
One day, Jamshed broke down.
“All these debts — they need repaying. And
when I see you worried like that, I don’t like it,” Mr. Shah recalled Jamshed
telling him. “Father, will you give me permission?”
Like that, Jamshed joined the army and was
sent to the restive south. A war that takes about 50 lives from all sides every
day requires new blood.
For Bilal, the new life wasn’t easy. His
grandmother died of diabetes there. He didn’t have many friends to play with.
His three sisters are young, one of them, Lalmina, disabled by what the family
says could be polio.
“I was scared here. My friends were not here,
they were left there,” Bilal said. “I got sick; my eyes hurt and I had fever.
The doctor gave me pills.”
But Bilal had Toti. All day, the bird would
be on his shoulder as they both would climb the mountain behind their new home,
and remain there for hours.
“Toti, Toti,” Bilal would call to the bird.
“Toti!” the bird would respond.
One night about two months ago, Bilal put
Toti in the cage and, like every other night, slid it under the bed. When he
woke up in the morning, Toti was on the cage floor, unmoving.
“I sent the picture to my father on the net.
I said, ‘Toti is dead,’” Bilal said. “He said, ‘When I come home, I will buy
you another one.’ ”
It’s difficult to know what may have happened
to Toti. Bilal’s grandfather says it was a change of climate in Afghanistan —
the same reason given for the deaths of the two pigeons and the 40 chickens.
“The cages are empty,” Mr. Shah said.
Toti’s death devastated Bilal. He had lost
the friend who helped make his days bearable. But, with time, some solace was
waiting around the corner.
About a 20-minute walk from Bilal’s house,
Asadullah Safi was holding classes every day at his house.
An aid group was funding the makeshift
school. Bilal started showing up toward the end of that program, tagging along
with Yasir, a relative he liked. He had no official paperwork, so he couldn’t
be registered as a regular student.
Unlike the rest of the 30 children, he had no
books, no backpack. But when one of those children dropped out, the family
returned the backpack and the books, and Mr. Safi gave them to Bilal.
Registered under someone else’s name, he began to learn.
The program has wrapped up, but the children
still come for a couple of hours a day, the house a day care of sorts. Once a
month, they get a biscuit and juice. They repeat after Mr. Safi as he reads out
loud from the board.
And then Mr. Safi takes them to the yard.
With a cow here, a goat there, and tiny chicks running under their feet, the
boys run after a plastic ball, kicking it, slapping it, from one end to
another, in a game of soccer.
Bilal is no longer alone. (In fact, there are
a couple other children named Bilal in the class.) He runs and plays.
In a crack in the wall outside his room,
Bilal keeps a handful of Toti’s feathers, a shrine to a little friend.
