VIDEO. "We live with pain": Firooz, Afghan refugee in France, saw his country collapse from afar

“The situation in Afghanistan, really, for us it's very, very hard,” says Firooz, 29. This Afghan refugee has struggled to sleep since the Taliban took power on August 15. "We are losing our country," blows this inhabitant of Val-d'Oise. More than 6,000 km from his hometown, he scrutinizes an endless stream of bad news on his Facebook feed: the portraits of local leaders brutally murdered by fundamentalists, the crowd massed at Kabul airport, the youngster's chubby face. Zaki Anwari, who fell from a plane a few days earlier. “It wasn't like that before. My friends were posting beautiful things. But now there are only terrible things. They have to publish this or else how can the world see what's going on? », Slips the brown man with the soft voice.

“Pain, we carry it.

Always, every second, every minute, we live with pain ”, murmurs the native of Herat.

In order not to collapse, he was able to count on a few Afghan friends, met on his arrival in Paris, in 2016, while they were surviving in a makeshift camp along the Canal Saint-Martin, north-east of Paris. : "We do not want to stay at home".

Tonight he will go smoke a few cigarettes and drink tea alongside a former traveling companion.

“It's like my brother now,” he breathes.

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For Firooz, the last few days have been particularly trying. He had to deal with a long wait before receiving the first news from his parents and four siblings who remained in Afghanistan: “Fortunately, today I received a message from my little brother. He told me they were safe ”. The Ile-de-France gathers some information on social networks, but struggles to know what is really going on in his country. "Since the Taliban arrived, television, social networks, the Internet, have been cut off a bit."

What he is certain is that his future was shaken up with the fall of the Afghan government.

After his studies in political science at the University of Paris VIII of Saint-Denis (93), he planned to return home to engage in political life.

“Unfortunately, all the projects I had planned have disappeared”.

“For me, it doesn't matter.

I will stay, work.

You have to think about the 40 million Afghans, the women and the children who remained there.

What are they going to do now?

They lost everything, ”laments the thirty-something.