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Fatema Samim (right) with her family in Kigali, Rwanda: the dean of a university in Afghanistan fled after the Taliban took over her homeland
Photo: Simon Wohlfahrt / DER SPIEGEL
When people fall to the ground like stones from the wheel housings of the heavy transport machines, when gun salvos ring out in front of the airport in Kabul, Fatema Samim looks at gorillas.
Gorillas hitting their stomachs with their fists.
Gorillas looking into the distance from hills.
These gorillas are looking at her from her laptop, they are the Google search results for the keyword “Rwanda”.
A few hours earlier, Samim had found out that she was going to travel to the small country in East Africa.
You, the dean of the renowned engineering faculty at the University of Herat.
Samim, the daughter of a professor and former member of parliament.
Her life in western Afghanistan was good, she was doing research on a renowned US scholarship, and as a woman she had made it to the top of the scientific community.
Now the Taliban were standing in front of Herat and wanted to put women in burqas.
Fatema Samim fled with her husband and children to the capital Kabul, but the Taliban invaded there a little later.
Then this call came.
It was the turn of the US National Academy of Sciences - the organization that funds Samim's research in Afghanistan.
The callers made her an offer: she and other Afghans could be evacuated to Rwanda, where they would be safe.
From there they will try to get a visa for the USA.
"I had never heard of Rwanda before," Fatema Samim recalls the absurd situation.
“So I turned on the computer and did some research on the Internet.
And then came all these pictures of gorillas.
I showed it to my kids and we thought they'd be walking the streets all over here."
Samim is now sitting in a chic café with a view of the green hills of Rwanda's capital Kigali, carefully stirring her tea glass with a spoon and straightening her dark blue headscarf.
No gorillas far and wide, they only exist in the national park.
"The children were already disappointed," says the Afghan with a smile.
Through a large window she sees the US flag waving in the wind, the American embassy is directly opposite.
At the time of the conversation with SPIEGEL, Samim was still waiting for an appointment for her visa hearing. She had been stuck in Rwanda for more than four months, uncertain.
The so-called special immigrant visas for Afghans who were in US service should actually be quick.
"The Americans probably think we're safe now because they don't bother with our cases anymore," says Samim.
Anyway, you're safe.
Even if in a country that is completely foreign to them.
“The hardest thing is not knowing what's going to happen next.
The people here are very nice to us, but we would like to start our new life,” she says.
A life in the USA.
'In general, we're fine here.
My children's school isn't that great," says the Afghan woman.
A lot is different than in her home country: the landscape is green, it often rains, and then the smell of damp earth hangs over the city.
Samim and her family could hardly take anything with them into their new life, they quickly packed up the most necessary clothes.
In their new apartment in a chic area of Kigali, there is nothing to indicate that an Afghan family lives here.
She was only able to take two items with her from her home country, which Samim guards like a treasure: a pack of tea and a small sack of Afghan seeds.
From time to time she serves these treasures to visitors, drifting off into the illusion of her old life for a few minutes.
Until Rwandan music blares outside or one of those tropical thunderstorms sweeps over the city.
Then she is reminded that she now lives in a strange world.
The children romp in the yard, after all, everything is taken care of in this new world.
The National Academy of Sciences in the USA pays for the rent, and the top scientist should lack for nothing.
Only the home that is missing.
The other day they all went to the lake together, the children were swimming.
"They had so much fun, there were no bodies of water nearby in Afghanistan," Fatema Samim recalls.
You and five other refugees from Afghanistan even got a job in Kigali, they are supposed to develop a curriculum at the university and organize an international conference.
Every morning they unlock the office at the very end of a long hallway, they all sit here together, and only rarely does anyone drop by.
It's semester break.
"We don't have that much to do, but at least we have a task," says one of Fatema's colleagues.
But most of the time they look at their cell phones, following the news in Afghanistan.
more on the subject
Evacuated Afghans: From Kabul to the Hotel in Africa – at America's ExpenseBy Nicola Abé, Heiner Hoffmann and Jan Petter
Afghanistan evacuation: Federal government admits "individual deaths" of Afghans in the admission procedureBy Steffen Lüdke
UN experts warn: US punitive measures worsen the situation of Afghan women
Pictures from Afghanistan: »I sold my son's kidney to save us all« By Mads Nissen (photos) and Maria Stöhr
On the phone you get the man who planned the crazy operation: Vaughan Turekian, Executive Director of the Department of Global Affairs at the National Academy of Sciences.
He still sounds a bit rushed despite having a few days off.
Rescuing the fellows from Afghanistan became his full-time job, with long days and very short nights.
»When the Taliban took over the country, it quickly became clear that the US government felt in no way responsible for these people.
So we had to do something ourselves,” he says.
At the very beginning there was the question: Where can the Afghans in danger be taken to?
The US dropped out as a quick fix, so an alternative was needed.
Turekian made a few calls, including calling an old friend, Rwanda's former education minister.
He suggested contacting President Paul Kagame directly.
It didn't take long for the offer to come.
“So we called the people in Afghanistan and told them they could go to Rwanda.
Most asked directly: Where is this Rwanda?
In the end, 5 out of 15 said yes,” recalls the NAS manager.
Rwanda has long attempted to position itself as a refugee-friendly country, much to the delight of the secluded Global North.
Because the African state is at your service when Europe is once again looking for a solution so that it does not have to take in refugees itself.
There are now several examples of this.
The EU is financing a refugee camp south of the capital Kigali.
This is where people are sent who had to endure the worst tortures in Libyan migrant prisons.
But instead of evacuating them straight to Europe, the EU is using Rwanda as a sort of parking lot – out of sight, out of mind.
SPIEGEL visited the camp last year, and many refugees complained that they had been stuck for months with no prospects.
Another cynical deal was added in mid-April: Great Britain wants to ship asylum seekers who come to England via the English Channel to Rwanda by return post.
Your application for asylum will then be examined in Africa - but not with the aim of being allowed to return to Europe afterwards.
The final stop is in Rwanda, which is intended to deter future refugees.
Numerous non-governmental organizations are already up in arms against this plan.
But these agreements suit Rwanda: On the one hand, the country receives money in return, a welcome source of income, especially in times of a pandemic.
On the other hand, the deals provide the autocratic President Kagame with political capital.
He likes to present his country as a model state, but human rights organizations paint a completely different picture: the opposition is mercilessly suppressed, and freedom of expression only exists on paper.
However, the more dependent the Global North becomes on Rwanda when it comes to migration, the less criticism of the African partner's governance becomes.
This could already be observed when British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced the new deal in Kigali: she praised Rwanda as a safe and democratic country.
The Rwandan Foreign Minister has repeatedly emphasized that Afghan refugees are already being accommodated in the country.
So the quick yes to accepting Fatema Samim and the other Afghans fleeing the Taliban was probably also a political move.
In any case, Vaughan Turekian from the National Academy of Sciences was happy that a country agreed so quickly.
But that was by no means the end of the mammoth task: He then spent days and nights on the phone to guide those affected to the airport in Kabul. The attempts on the spot repeatedly failed.
In the end, Fatema Samim and the others made it, some had to make their way across the land border to Pakistan.
Naeem Salarzai almost paid for the evacuation to Rwanda with his life.
He too tried to get onto the airport grounds, and waited in front of the entrance with his wife and two children for more than 20 hours – until he finally gave up.
When they got home, they heard on the news that there had been a huge explosion right where they had been standing moments before.
More than 90 people died.
The waiter in the café in Kigali brings tea while Salarzay talks about the days at the end of August.
»When I landed in Rwanda, I saw the green landscape, it was raining.
i love rain
That immediately relaxed me,” he recalls.
But the first few days were difficult, everything was strange, they could hardly understand each other.
Then Salarzai found an Afghan restaurant on the Internet and called directly.
»The owner told me that he was closed due to the corona lockdown, but then he cooked Afghan food at home and brought it to us.
It was such a relief to be able to talk to someone in my own language.«
Over the next few days, the restaurant operator showed them the city, the markets, the mosques.
“To be honest, we have little to do with the Africans.
We've built a mini-Afghanistan here," says Naeem Salarzai.
The images from the airport, the trauma of the flight, he still has it all in his head every day.
But sometimes they go on trips, have barbecues, camp overnight.
That helps with forgetting.
Salarzai and his family see Rwanda as a transit point on the way to a secure future in the United States.
After all, they are not in a refugee camp like thousands of others, do not have to queue for food or live in tents.
They are very grateful, they assure again and again.
And they want one thing above all: finally certainty about how things will continue.
Naeem Salarzai wants to do his doctorate in the USA, while Fatema Samim wants to find a job there.
The refugees who are to be brought to Rwanda from England in the future are less fortunate.
For them there is no perspective, for them this is the end of the line.
Even if the guest house they are to be accommodated in is called »Hope«.
The Rwandan authorities probably didn't even notice this cynicism when they presented the new abode of the involuntary guests to the assembled international media.
We Rwandans help people in need, that was the message that was supposed to get across.
Fatema Samim has now made it: Her visa has finally arrived, she could now leave for the USA, and at some point Rwanda would become little more than a memory, an absurd stop on the way to a better life.
But she hasn't booked a flight yet.
If she finds a good job, she would like to stay a little longer, she actually likes it in Africa, she writes via WhatsApp.
A crazy twist in a crazy story.
Maybe she'll even make it to the gorillas in the national park.
Naeem Salarzai doesn't want to stay, but he's still stuck, still no news from America.
But he hopes, he writes, that progress will soon be made;
several other families from Afghanistan could have left Rwanda in the meantime.
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