Leaving Afghanistan: A Refugee's Story.

• Author: Yagana, Zahra

On August 15, the Taliban entered the city of Kabul, the government collapsed, and I went into hiding. On the third day, I was contacted by a woman in the U.S. Department of State. She said I was considered at high risk and should be evacuated. She told me to take my children and head to the Kabul airfield. It was an important call, and we needed to act quickly.

Due to my years of activity in human rights work, I was quite well known, making me not just a possible but an easy target of Taliban retribution. We decided that my two adult children and I should try to leave.

Fear was everywhere, from everyone. Not only Taliban, but also those other extremists who were not happy with us and our human rights activities. On the way to the airport, I deleted and removed from my cell phone anything that could possibly put my life at greater risk. I disabled accounts, deleted photos and documents, and changed my appearance. Except for a small bag containing our passports and a few necessary items, I decided to leave behind everything else--belongings, jobs, family.

Despite the travel visa received from the State Department, we spent more than two hours dodging bullets before we gained admission to the airfield. The U.S. military was not letting anyone get near. The soldiers guarding the airfield fired indiscriminately at people rushing toward the gate.

The whole time I was trying to hug both of my children, Parisa and Jawed, hoping to protect them from the rain of bullets. The noises I remember from those moments, now turned into nightmares, were the voices of children crying, the successive gunshots, and the voices of foreign soldiers screaming loudly, "Go! Go!"

On August 23, after a short stay in Bahrain and Kuwait, we flew into Washington, D.C. We took a bus to a temporary accommodation, where a group of soldiers and translators welcomed us with clapping. I couldn't stop crying.

After a few hours of rest, we were transferred to the Fort McCoy military facility in Wisconsin. I noticed that several families there had to live under the same roof, which was shocking. All of our group members were well-known women activists in Afghanistan. We needed to...