ON THE NIGHT of August 23, 2021, nine women, three men, and a baby stood before Immigration officials at the Dulles Expo Center in Washington, D.C., debating how to proceed. They had departed Kabul three days earlier, each with one small backpack. Negin Khpalwak, Afghanistan's first female orchestra conductor, brought diapers and snacks for her 1-year-old daughter, Maram, whom she carried in her arms. Helal Massomi, an adviser to the government, smuggled in her laptop even though its discovery by the Taliban soldiers at the airport would have scuttled their escape and possibly ended her life. Zahra Hashimi, who didn't have a passport, thought it best to bring her high-school and university diplomas.
There had been so much waiting: on flattened cardboard boxes at the Kabul airport for passport control and fingerprints, for showers at the filthy military base in Qatar, then again, inexplicably, on the tarmac in Bonn and again in D.C. Now, at the Expo Center, they had at last reached the front of the line. And the U.S. agent there was telling them, in a bullying tone, that they should wait to be shuttled to a refugee camp at a military base in Texas, then wait an unspecified number of months to receive the documents that would allow them to work and earn in the U.S. This was the most expeditious way, the agent said.
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