‘The taste of our home’: inside an Afghan restaurant in Arizona run by former refugees | Environment

An aromatic mixture of spices and sick peoplestuffed pan bread and the voice of Asad Badi, an Afghan pop singer who rose to stardom in the 1980s, heralded a dining experience one could easily believe was happening thousands of kilometers away.

It was actually almost 1 PM in Tucson, Arizonawhen Ritiek Rafi and Ahmad Bahaduri began greeting and taking orders from customers in Dari and English at the only Afghan restaurant in town.

As Rafi and Bahaduri would say, it’s like eating on a corner in Kabul—a nostalgia that inspired the restaurant’s name.

“Our love language is food,” said Rafi, an American citizen who came to Arizona as a refugee in 1999, shortly after the Taliban first seized power in Afghanistan.

“After the fall of Kabul in 2021 we realized that the Afghans who were resettled here were asking themselves “where can we have authentic Afghan food?” We decided they needed a place like this and called it Kabul Corner.

Kabul Corner opened in September 2023, more than two years after the Taliban took over Afghanistanforcing the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from the capital. The Taliban quickly stripped women of basic rights and threatened to kill anyone who opposed her regime.

Fearing reprisals after 20 years of US military presence, tens of thousands of Afghans rushed in to Kabul International Airport, trying to escape the country at all costs. US evacuation flights were technically designed for those assisting US forces. But in reality, those boarded from Kabul are the lucky ones who managed to board in time. Many were abandoned.

In total, more than 77,000 Afghans have been resettled in the US under Operation Allies Welcome, according to figures provided by the Department of Homeland Security. From 2021 more than 3,600 of them settled in Arizona. That’s more than the total number who arrived between 1981, when Arizona’s Refugee Resettlement Program began trackingand 2020 According to the program, funded by the US Department of Health, at least 1,000 Afghan immigrants live in Tucson.

When asked how Kabul Corner manages to offer authentic Afghan food in Arizona’s second largest city, Rafi and Bahaduri gave a quick and irrefutable answer: Enayatullah Sherzada.

Long before the 38-year-old immigrant became the chef at Kabul Corner, Sherzada worked for a company that supplied oil to U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, he said.

When the Taliban regained power, Sherzada knew his involvement in the US made him a target. He rushed to Kabul airport and managed to board an evacuation flight. After a rigorous screening and vetting process conducted by US intelligence officials, Sherzada arrived in Arizona in late August 2021.

As soon as he arrived, he applied for asylum, which was eventually approved and allowed him to become a permanent resident. Rafi and Bahaduri were impressed by his cooking at events for newcomers, and he promised to work for them if they ever opened a restaurant.

“When I got my green card, I felt a lot better. My stress level dropped because I was afraid of being sent back. Afghanistan is not a safe place,” Sherzada said with the help of Rafi, who translated for him.

“But my parents and two brothers are still in Afghanistan. They have no way out.”

After Afghan refugees like Sherzada are resettled in places like Tucson — which has been lauded for its effective resettlement efforts — local resettlement agencies help them integrate into a new society. Among those agencies is the International Rescue Committee, which has assisted more than 600 Afghan evacuees in Tucson since August 2021.

Housing security and the language barrier are some of the challenges Afghan immigrants face upon arrival, said Meheriya Habibi, a former refugee from Afghanistan and now deputy director at the International Rescue Committee of Tucson. But the biggest challenge is family separation, Habibi concluded.

“We have examples like this mother who boarded an evacuation plane thinking her young children and husband were also on the plane and ended up not realizing they were separated,” said Habibi, who started working as a translator for the resettlement agency in 2002

“We know that many members of our community have moved their families to Afghanistan and they are trying to get them out of there. And on top of that, dealing with their lives here, visiting their jobs, making sure they’re paying their bills, following up on our own applications, whether it’s asylum or adjusting their parole status—it adds a lot stress and anxiety.

Habibi said that although most Afghan families in Tucson have been able to obtain legal permanent residency, many are still awaiting decisions on their asylum applications or petitions to reunite with their relatives back in Afghanistan.

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Awhen lunch reached its busiest time, the most popular dishes were brought out of the kitchen to half a dozen tables in the restaurant: banjan buranior fried eggplants stewed in tomato sauce with spices; makes pizzaor lamb stew with stewed onions; and generous portions of basmati rice and naan.

“We don’t want to Americanize our food because we’ll lose our purpose, which is to keep the taste of our home,” Bahaduri said as he brought a dish from bolani kacholoor fried bread with potato stuffing and a garnish of mint lutenica.

“That’s why we only make our food with Afghan ingredients.”

Shelves in the restaurant are piled high with dried fruit, desserts and spices in sealed bags and containers. The owners of Kabul Corner said they pay a food manufacturing company based in northern California – home to another large Afghan community – to bring authentic Afghan products to Tucson.

By 2022 the Afghan diaspora in the US consists of approximately 250,000 people who were either born in Afghanistan or report Afghan ancestry.

Advocates say the Afghans have been treated differently from similar refugee groups who were offered permanent status under congressional adjustment acts — which could allow those with parole status to become permanent residents — passed by Congress. such as Cubans fleeing communism, Hungarians fleeing Soviet repression, and Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon.

The Afghanistan Adjustment Act received bipartisan support, but it was stalled in Congress for more than two years.

The Biden administration created temporary pathways for those stranded Afghans, including by extending their work permits and deportation protections under the Temporary Protected Status Program.

But under the new Trump administration, temporary protections are at risk. Trump has called Stephen Millerthe architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policies, incl Muslim travel ban and on family separation policy, as his deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House.

Trump has also chosen South Dakota Gov. Christy Noem to be his secretary of homeland security. Noah resisted resettlement of Afghan refugees in South Dakota in 2021, citing concerns about the adequacy of the vetting process.

Meanwhile, because of the repression of the Taliban and the country economic instabilitythousands of Afghans have made their way to Latin Americahoping to reach the southern US border and claim asylum on US soil.

Trump did not say exactly what would happen to Afghan evacuees who have not yet been granted permanent status, but he promised to end Temporary Protected Status programs created by The Biden administrationwhich include the one about the Afghans.

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Ualthough the community has grown exponentially in areas such as Northern California, Los Angeles, Washington, New Jersey, and New York, Afghan resettlement in Arizona has occurred at a much slower pace.

Rafi recalled that when she arrived in the U.S. more than two decades ago, residents accustomed to Tucson’s predominantly Latino population mistook her for a Latino immigrant at bus stations and supermarkets. People often speak to her in Spanish, she added.

Before Bahaduri, now also an American citizen, settled in Arizona, he worked for the US government as an engineer in the reconstruction of areas affected by the conflict in Afghanistan. This qualifies it for a special immigrant visaavailable to those employed by or on behalf of the US Government.

In 2014, when he migrated to the U.S. as a refugee, there were about 70 Afghan families in Tucson and no Afghan restaurants or associations.

“In 2021 we started helping them find donations, providing transportation, translation for their immigration documents, and then we started a non-profit organization here, the Tucson Afghan Community,” he said.

“We were the bridge between the newcomers and the resettlement agencies.”

As of June 30, 2024 nearly 60,000 applicants have filed all the necessary paperwork for visas like Bahaduri’s and were awaiting initial approval to continue the process, according to the US State Department.

But those who did not work for the US government during the 20 Years War do not qualify for the special immigrant visa. And even those who have worked for Washington struggle to get visas under the program huge backlog, bureaucratic errors and highly limited supply. These millions of people are still living in Afghanistan under conditions that violate their basic rights.

Back in Tucson, Habibi, a resettlement agency official, said that with asylum restrictions from the Biden administration and Trump’s promise to monitor mass deportations, Afghans in Tucson are constantly wondering, ‘What’s going to happen to me?'” Will there be a chance for my family to move to the US?” “Will they put me in a camp?”

Rafi and Bahaduri said these are the same concerns raised by some of the Afghan immigrants who regularly visit Kabul Corner.

“It was important for us to show our people and others the culture and hospitality of the Afghan people here in Tucson,” Rafi said. “But we also want to let our people know that this is a safe place, somewhere they’re not going to leave hungry, some happiness.”