A journey paved with thorns and stones for Afghan woman

ManIzah Kahn’s very first words as an infant were “tak” and “duhm”.

A girl of the 1980s, the Russian war with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan had invaded her childhood.

“‘Tak’ was the sound of a missile when it was fired, and ‘Duhm’ was the sound when it exploded. I was born in war,” Manizah explains.

By the time of her birth in 1984 the conflict had been underway for five years.

Born in Kabul , Manizah has “good memories of the peaceful times” although she suspects this could also be due to the naivety of youth.

“I also carry with me the memories of bomb attacks, the memories of missiles, shootings, many people dead and me moving with my parents walking through the Afghanistan/Iran border.”

This was how Manizah became a refugee for the first time. She would become a refugee for a second time years later, bringing her to Cork in 2021. Manizah was a guest speaker at the ‘Safe, Seen, Supported’ event at Cavan’s Johnston Central Library last week. Hosted by the Local Authority Integration Team, it was organised to mark World Refugee Day.

Age 6, Manizah and her family made their way first into Iran in a dangerous and thrilling night time crossing by Jeep, and the on foot across a surging river using a narrow log as an impromptu bridge.

The family tentatively lay down roots in Pakistan, and this is where Manizah learned her perfect English- to go with her four other languages. She began studying medicine but ended up becoming a dentist, training in China.

After the US occupation and the overthrow of the Taliban, Manizah and her family eventually returned to Afghanistan, and the city of Herat.

These remained turbulent times. Manizah lost a very close friend to a terror attack on a military hospital in March 2017.

“It was the last day of her medical degree - she had just gone to the hospital to get signatures from her mentor. She wanted to say goodbye, she was the mother of a three year old.”

Manizah suspects the attackers had insider help. She claims her friend was shot by a classmate, who collaborated with the attackers.

“The shooting continued for six hours and no one intervened, no one,” remembers Manizah, the injustice detectable in her voice.

While news reports of the attack suggested 50 people died, she believes the real figure was at least five times that.

“The attack was so violent that if they couldn’t kill someone by bullet, they suffocated them and they killed them with knives they had - most of the people were just patients there.”

Despite such tragedies marring her life, Manizah got married to a fellow dentistry student and had a daughter. Her dentistry career was progressing well and she rose to become Dean of the Dental School at Herat University.

“We persevered, we lived we loved we had marriages, we had children, but still we did not wish Taliban to take over.”

The Taliban swiftly re-exerted control across Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the US military’s chaotic exit. A woman in a prominent position of relative power didn’t sit well with the new rulers. Manizah received numerous threats and recalled her one meeting with the new Taliban head of the university when she was seeking a period of sick leave.

“He looked at me really angrily and said, ‘We don’t care if you leave or if you stay, you are a nobody’.”

It was a wrench to leave her home, and a life Manizah had worked so hard to build.

“I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan, I wanted to stay there. We protested, we did so many things.

“Someone asked me ‘Why were you not like Ukrainian people? Ukrainian people fought for their freedom but you didn’t’.

“But that’s not true - we did, we fought for our freedom. Many of my students fought for our freedom - they went and they fought against the Taliban. The only difference is our leaders did not fight for freedom, they filled their bags with money and fled the time the Taliban took over.

“Some mornings I wake up and I cannot believe I’m in Ireland,” says Manizah, reflecting on the 20 years of hard work and gargantuan sums of international funding spent, only for her home country to once again fall under fundamentalist control.

Thus Manizah’s life as a refugee resumed. This time she made Ireland her home, qualifying under a sponsorship scheme.

Having travelled to Ireland in safety and, after a year or so, being permitted by the authorities to practise as a dentist, she counts herself as a “very privileged” amongst refugees.

The vast majority of refugees face more testing circumstances, she accepts.

“This road is such a difficult road. It’s paved with so many thorns and stones that you lose who you are. You are under constant pressure. You lose your children, many people cannot even bring their family with them. Many people can’t bring anything with them. Imagine a life you’ve built for years and then suddenly you just leave it.

“When you reach a new country where you become a nobody. You just have one word and that is ‘Refugee’ - and that is if you are lucky. Before that you are just an asylum seeker, a ‘burden on a system’. You are just another person trying to make trouble.

“Even if you are given a tent to stay in Dublin - then you see people protesting against that tent as well saying, ‘Oh my God why are they receiving tents and our own people don’t even have tents’. You just feel you are so unwelcome.”

She observes how the strain can be too much for many relationships.

“If you are a couple - if your spouse is with you, that’s the only person you can argue with because that’s the only power you are left with. That’s somebody you can tell how you feel, but both of you are in the same mental state that is so much torn, that you cannot heal each other, so instead of healing each other you start blaming each other for this situation you are in. Many, many couples can’t survive - especially if they are going through routes with smugglers, in boats, walking through forests. Many of these women get raped, many of them lose their children, many of them get left behind because someone is so sick they cannot continue the journey. So they start hating each other - they have that hatefulness in them: ‘You couldn’t save me, you couldn’t help me’.”

How do you feel when you see protests happen or you hear ‘Ireland’s full’?

“Ireland is one of the very few kind countries in the world still helping refugees. For every one person protesting there are 10 people telling them, ‘Stop protesting - this is not who we are’. And that is something that’s really assuring, it’s really good.

“Whenever you hear people protesting against refugees, I feel scared. I really feel scared. I don’t know should I leave home? If I leave home will somebody be asking me why am I here - this is not your country?”

Manizah sometimes fixates on how she might respond if confronted in the street by someone telling her, ‘This is not your country - go back to your country’.

She insists she will try not to cry, and will strive to have a positive answer. However she asks how others who are more easily identified as a refugee feel in this climate.

“All of them say it really scares them. Many people don’t leave their room anymore. Many have seen racism, they haven’t seen racism before in Ireland but these protests are bringing change, one person at a time.

“Even people who were kind to refugees before, now they are starting to believe there must be something in these stories. Maybe we are in danger? Maybe these people are taking over the country?”

Addressing the invited audience, made up of service providers, local authority staff and local politicians, Manizah is eager to stress one message: “Every refugee needs support. You want refugees to integrate - refugees also want to integrate. People are scared refugees will take over Ireland, but refugees - I think 95% of them - are wanting to be Irish so so badly. They don’t want to be different. If they receive support from day one, something that is happening now in Ireland I think it will really work.”