“I don’t know how to get to the airport again,” Masi said. “It wasn’t easy for me.”
When he and his father, Ahmad Wali Stanekzai, arrived at Kabul International Airport in April, they were flooded with bad memories of eight months ago, when the whole family joined the crowd in a desperate attempt to leave from Afghanistan after the fall of the capital. Taliban.
Now, more than four months after arriving in Qatar from Afghanistan, and more than a year after that deadly attack, the family is still not back together.
Masi said: “I feel very sad when I remember how we broke up and lost my mother.
“I went through the worst trauma as a child,” he told CNN via text message. “I need my freedom. I want to reunite with my brothers and sisters. I want to live in my house with the rest of my family.”
The rest of his family is living in Virginia. His siblings – 14-year-old Faisal and 8-year-old Mina – ended up in the care of their aunt Ferishta Stanekzai after being separated from their parents in an explosion last August. Mina and Faisal, along with a neighbor, arrived at the airport and boarded a plane to Germany, where they were treated for their injuries at Landstuhl hospital before heading to the US, where they were also treated at the Walter medical center Reed outside Washington. , DC.
Ferishta said that this past year, and especially last month, the family in Virginia has had a lot of trouble.
Both kids are still trying to work through the trauma they’ve been through. Mina often has nightmares, gets angry and sometimes begs to go to Qatar to be with her father and brother, her aunt told CNN.
“Sometimes she asks a lot of questions about her mother – why was she killed and why is no one helping her,” said Ferishta.
It was also a challenge for Ferishta, as she took care of her niece and nephew, handled both their guardianship case and that of her brother and other grandson, while also doing normal work. her usual.
“Managing it all, everything became too difficult for me and day by day it became very difficult to manage,” she said.
“It was like overnight I became a single mother without knowing, for example, how to enroll the kids in school. It was like a whole new experience for me.” Ferishta added.
Mina, in third grade, told CNN she likes school. Her favorite subject is physical education. She likes to “jump and run,” and the doctor told her that her leg – injured in the attack in Kabul – is okay, but sometimes it hurts, she said.
Family members speak every day. Mina tells her brother and father that she loves them. Masi heard about their school. He said it was nice to see the children wearing school uniforms.
“I hope I can also wear a school uniform soon,” Masi told CNN.
Ferishta said she would like to see the US government work faster to process cases, and that she and her family have not received clear answers as to why her brother and grandson have not been able to. to the United States. She and retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Bradley, who runs the Afghanistan Lamia Foundation and is working with the family, both told CNN that Ahmad Wali and Masi had filled out forms, interviewed and had a physical exam.
“They were just left alone and never provided much information,” Bradley said.
“Family needs to get back together,” says Bradley. “None of us thought it was possible to keep people apart for a year, from their parents when they were kids.”
