Day 1,822 - Rafi's Story

Time is Gold

Five times in every twenty-four hours, Rafi checks his visa case. 

The check takes a minute; the status has not moved. Some hours pass, and he checks again. 

Every day he also watches the news for any announcement that the United States has begun issuing Afghan Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) again. His whole life now fits inside the space between those two habits.

It is a strange life for this particular man, because Rafi's defining trait was never patience.

"Time is gold. You must learn to value it." Rafi took this guidance from his site manager and rebuilt himself around it. 

From April 2018 to April 2021, he was a supply monitor on U.S.-funded maintenance operations for the Afghan army in the north. He became the man who knew every part and its number, and who printed the job cards that confirmed battle-damaged vehicles were ready to return to service. He documented the write-offs when combat destroyed what could not be fixed. 

The work ran through nine provinces and was never safe. A convoy he traveled with was rocketed; two colleagues were gravely wounded, and a soldier was killed. Another time, a close colleague was shot riding to work and died before reaching the hospital. After one mission, his team was stranded forty-five days in Badakhshan until American soldiers brought them out by helicopter.

"We worked together like brothers," he said. 

When the supply trucks arrived, everyone unloaded together, supervisors handing out chocolate and energy drinks. He still prays for his site manager's health.

When Kabul fell, his supervisor told him to get to the airport. He stood outside the gates for two days and two nights with his family. In the chaos, his young daughter was knocked down and trampled, his wife screaming that the girl was dying, until Rafi pulled her from the crowd and took his family home.

Then the man who valued time watched his own become worthless. 

The Taliban came looking for him twice; he spent years moving between relatives' homes with a scarf wrapped across his face. His savings went, then the household, piece by piece. The bed he and his wife had bought when they married sold for 2,800 afghanis, about thirty dollars, and she cried as it was carried out. He dressed each morning in his work clothes and left the house; the work was collecting cardboard, bottles, cans, and anything else that he could from roadsides to sell for food.

One day his second daughter asked him a question he could not answer.

"Dad, you leave home every day wearing your work clothes. What is your job?"

He had been rocketed in a convoy and lost a colleague who was shot riding to work.

Asked to name the hardest moment of his life, he named the fact that he could not tell her the truth.

There was one interval of joy. The CARE team called and sent airline tickets. Then, they brought the family through medical examinations and biometrics. 

"It felt like a storm of happiness had entered our lives," he said. 

Then the flights were canceled, and they went home to wait.

The waiting continues in Pakistan, where he cannot go outside. Without a valid visa, a police stop can mean deportation, so his wife and daughter run the family's errands while he stays in.

Monthly support from No One Left Behind covers the rent, the bills, and the food, and it returned one daughter to school, with two more children he hopes to enroll. His side of the case is complete. What he is waiting for is the announcement.

Someday his daughter will ask again what her father does and how he spent his time. After all, his site manager told him that time is gold.

Rafi is asking for the chance to answer her with pride.