PUNE: A city resident had lost all hopes of seeing her motherland again after she was “captured” along with her husband and a few others by Taliban fighters on August 21 morning while they were about to enter the Kabul airport to board a flight to India.
They, however, managed to return unscathed, after a nightmarish 12 hours, on August 22. The woman married an Afghanistan national in 2016 and went to Afghanistan on December 2, 2020, to meet her in-laws in Jalalabad city. She and her husband were among the 150 people who were taken from the gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to the base by the Taliban fighters on August 21 morning.
“I will never forget those two hours at the base. I was praying for my life,” the woman told TOI on Wednesday. She is currently staying with her husband at her parents’ house at Dhanori. Recalling her frightful experience, she said a total of 180 people, including, Afghan nationals who have Indian spouses, were waiting in eight buses outside the airport.
“One of the passengers had uploaded a video on a social media site explaining the difficulties faced by us. Within 15 minutes, gun-totting Talibani fighters hopped on to our buses and took us to their base, a few kilometres away from the airport,” she said. They separated the male and female passengers. “After 15 minutes, they asked my husband to collect our passports,” she recalled.
“After two hours, they arranged lunch for us. That’s when we felt a little comfortable. They sent us back to the airport on the buses without harming anyone,” she added.
However, the airport gates remained shut that day. She said, “We waited inside the bus till 6pm. Later, our coordinator took us to the Khalij wedding hall, where accommodation was arranged for us. Around 9 pm, we finally entered the airport via the VIP gate. After seeing the Indian Air Force aircraft there, I felt a little relieved. The flight took off at midnight and we landed at Hindon IAF base in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh early on August 22.”
The couple could not board a flight for Pune that day. They stayed in New Delhi overnight and arrived at Pune airport on August 23 morning. “We were booked on an Air India flight on August 19. However, we could not get inside the airport. We had to wait till August 22. Those three days in Kabul were the longest days of my life,” said the woman’s husband Najib Safi, who completed bachelor’s degree in computer application from a city college in 2016. Safi is worried about his parents, two brothers and sister back home.
