Sixth Year, Entry Seven - Ismail's Story

The Man Who Kept the Warehouse

Day 1,835

When Ismail applied for his visa, he thought it might take three or four months. His daughter was two years old then. She is seven now, and she has never been to school.

Ismail did not carry a rifle or walk a patrol. From 2010 to 2011 he was a stock keeper in Mazar-i-Sharif, working under the U.S. contractor ANHAM. When the work crews came back from the corps headquarters and the district commands with lists of what they were missing.

Whether it was lumber, wiring, parts for the cooling systems, or anything else needed, Ismail was the man who signed it out of the warehouse and got it to the sites. He never met the American supervisor whose name he'd heard; the man stayed in Kabul. The war did not need Ismail to be a hero. It needed the warehouse to run, and he ran it.

Five years later, Ismail is in Pakistan with four children under eight. The family sold what they owned in Afghanistan to pay for the case and the journey, and now there is nothing behind them and a closed door ahead. For weeks at a time they do not leave their rented room, because the police outside mean deportation, and deportation means going back to the country an ally cannot safely return to. The three oldest children, ages seven, five, and four, are not enrolled anywhere; there was no money and no paperwork to do it. They spend their days inside, in the heat.

The hardest part right now is the baby. He is two months old. 

The room has no cooling, as the electricity costs more than the family can spare, and the heat has left the infant's skin raw and broken out. A fan is all they have.

“It's even worse than being a refugee,” Ismail said. “Here it's like a prison.” 

His family lives in a room that they cannot leave and a country that will not keep them.

No One Left Behind has been sending emergency cash, and Ismail says that without it, the family would not have lasted a single week. 

SIV issuance is paused. For Ismail, the pause is the distance between his two-year-old at the start of the wait and the seven-year-old she is now, still in the room, still not in school.

He does not ask for much. He asks the country that made the promise to make good on that pledge.

He kept the warehouse. He is still waiting for the United States to keep its word.

Support allies like Ismail as they wait for the promise to be fulfilled: https://give.nooneleft.org/campaign/831559/donate