Pittsburgh has welcomed some 680 of the more than 76,000 people who were evacuated from Afghanistan after U.S. troops left the country almost a year ago, according to Squirrel Hill-based Jewish Family and Community Services. The nonprofit has resettled more than one-third of evacuees locally.
For one of the families now residing in Pittsburgh, their escape brings safety and the prospect of a brighter future. But the Shinwaris also face profound economic insecurity: Livable wages elude them, and they don’t know where they’ll go when they lose temporary housing subsidies this summer. The challenges of navigating the U.S. immigration system, as well as Pittsburgh transportation, further contribute to the heartache and isolation they've experienced in starting a new life in an unfamiliar place.
Abdul Rahim and Sarah Gul Shinwari arrived in Pittsburgh this winter with nine of their 11 children, ages 3 to 22. The two oldest children are married and still reside in Afghanistan.
Until fleeing in August, the Shinwaris lived in a mountainous region along the Pakistan border. Abdul Rahim worked as a laborer for the U.S., manually drilling water wells at military bases. He said the job paid well, though it put him in danger.
“There was always a risk. A number of my … Afghan colleagues were shot dead,” the 37-year-old said through a translator. “Once I was … arrested by the Taliban. … They said, ‘We are going to behead you,’ and they had a sword on my neck.”
Abdul Rahim talked himself out of that encounter. But when the U.S. ditched its 20-year war in Afghanistan, he knew he had to leave.
“I feel lucky that I was able to get out with my family,” he said. “Some of my friends who were not able to make it, they are now in trouble. They are facing life threats, and they are living and sleeping in secret places, not in the open.”
Broken promise of affordability
When Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, 2021, U.S. officials summoned Abdul Rahim to the capital city to depart the country. His labor during the war gave him priority in the ensuing evacuation. Although he worried he’d have to leave his wife and children behind, they found their way to the Kabul Airport within days.
From there, the Shinwaris flew to Qatar for three nights, spent two weeks on a U.S. military base in Germany, and then stayed for a night in Washington, D.C., before traveling to a military training post in Indiana. They remained at Camp Atterbury for several months.
At the camp, Abdul Rahim asked to be resettled in California or Pittsburgh. His brother lives in the Steel City, and Abdul Rahim made the same choice after resettlement staff told him it would be more affordable than moving to California.
After arriving in the winter, his family received subsidies to lease a house on the South Side. But the support will run out soon, and Abdul Rahim doesn’t know how he’ll cover the $2,000 monthly expense on the $13 an hour he earns working at a dry cleaning facility. Access to housing ranks among the top challenges for Afghans who have evacuated to the U.S.
“I am looking for better pay,” Abdul Rahim said. “I have a big family. So if I get another offer for better pay, I will change my job.”
He’s also considering finding a second job. But his hours already drain him. Every weekday, he catches a 4 a.m. bus to report to his 5 a.m. shift. He's on his feet all day before returning home late in the afternoon.
He and his wife hope to find public housing to ease their financial burden, but waitlists are especially long for families as big as theirs.
Love in limbo
Mismatched second-hand furniture fills the Shinwaris’ South Side residence. In the dimly lit kitchen, the handle on the oven door is missing, so they use a dish towel to open it. But Abdul Rahim said the four-bedroom house has plenty of space for his nine children.
The ones who are old enough attend Pittsburgh Public Schools. Seventeen-year-old Mariam Shinwari said she’s made a few American friends at her high school. They help her with her English.
“Sometimes, I’ll make a mistake. … Sometimes, they will laugh, which is fine. I mean, it's funny,” she said. “And also my teacher tells me, don't care about [how] people react. You have to learn.”
But Mariam said the attention isn’t always so kindhearted, such as when students make fun of her for wearing a hijab.
“It makes me a little bit uncomfortable when the classmates, they look at each other, and they smile or laugh. So I think they're picking on me. … So that's the one thing [about which] I get a little bit annoyed,” she said.
But Mariam has a bigger concern: Her fiancé of more than a year is stuck in Afghanistan. She fears he’s a target for the Taliban because he served in the Afghan special forces. She said he’s had no luck obtaining a Special Immigrant Visa, designated for Afghans who took significant risks to support the U.S. or coalition forces and those individuals' family members.
“It makes me sad because we are apart now. And I cannot help him, and he cannot help me,” Mariam said of her fiancé.
She speaks with him every day on the phone. She said it hurts when he asks how long she expects them to be apart.
“There is no clear future we can see," she said. "I cannot go and join him out there [in Afghanistan] because my dad worked for the Americans. … So if I go back, I will be in danger. So the only option, I think, is [for him to] come over here and we have a happy life.”
But even if he were to find a way through the U.S. immigration system, Mariam knows the process would likely last many months.
Strangers in the Steel City
Her mother, Sarah Gul, worries about Mariam, who’s had trouble sleeping. But Sarah Gul has her own struggles, too: She doesn’t speak English or have access to transportation, so she spends practically all of her time at home with the children.
“I never get to go out and see the city — not only me, but my children,” she said. “The only times we were able to go out and see a little bit was when … the caseworker [would come] and take us to our doctor appointments. That was the only … one or two or three times that me or my kids went out.”
“We want to go out and see,” she said. But her family doesn’t have a car, and her husband uses their lone bus pass to commute to work.
She longs for home.
“I miss Afghanistan because of all the people, the family out there – my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, my daughter and my son, and my grandchildren … and also so many other relatives,” she said. “That is my home country, and I miss it.”
“But this is our new home,” she added. “So my only wish is that all my kids study. They learn the language. They figure out how to be self-sufficient. That is when … we will get rid of [our] problems.”
So despite the hardship of starting over in a new country, her husband Abdul Rahim said his children give him hope, too.
“My main goal is to let my kids study. … I want them educated,” he said. “And since the Americans, its government and its people helped me, saving me and bringing me here, I want my kids to study and serve this country … to pay back.”
