It was midnight in late February and I was sitting behind my computer, as I did every night. One moment, I was thinking about my husband, who had been arrested by the Punjab police three days earlier; the next, I was looking over the edits to a report I was writing.
Suddenly, there was a violent knock on the door of my home. From the sound alone, I knew it was the police.
I got up. The hallway light was on. I usually turned it off every night, but that night I had forgotten. All three of my children had been sleeping but one woke and began to cry at the force of the knocking.
“Be quiet. The police are here,” I told him.
They feared the police. They cried quietly. They spoke quietly.
I walked toward the door. The knocking was getting louder as they said, “Open the door, or we will break it down!”
Because I had a visa, I felt somewhat reassured. I thought they could not arrest me.
I opened the door. Six police officers were standing outside, and I could see several others were in the corridor. As soon as I opened the door, three of them entered the apartment.
In Urdu, one said, “Pack your things. We are going to deport you.”
“I have a visa. I live here legally,” I replied.
“As of tonight, your visas have been cancelled and are no longer valid,” he said. “All Afghans, with or without visas, are being deported.”
My whole body was trembling with fear as I responded to that threat: “You have no right to come in the middle of the night and say my visa has been cancelled. Do you have a written order? I paid for this visa. I gave my biometrics.”
“Don’t talk too much. Pack your things and get out” one stated.
They kept shouting, saying I had to leave the house immediately, or they would take my children away.
“You are men,” I said. “You have no right to enter my home without a written order. Leave now, and tomorrow I will come myself.”
They refused and called for a female police officer.
By now, I was terrified; my hands and legs were shaking. I called a friend and told her what was happening. She said she would alert the media.
In that rush, I did not know what to do. I went to the closet, gathered my children’s clothes, and picked up my documents. My children were awake and crying. I tried to reassure them that nothing would happen.
Meanwhile, they broke down the door of a neighbour. He also had a visa. We were all taken to the police station.
When I entered the room, I saw women, children, elderly people and young men crowded into one small room. There were about 50 of us, and they kept bringing more people in and then locking the door as they left. There were so many of us that everyone was forced to stand. Children were crying and calling out: One wanted water, another wanted food, another wanted a place to sleep.
As I looked at my fellow Afghans, I began to cry — for their homelessness, for our own displacement, for our helplessness, and for how abandoned we are. Though we were legally in Pakistan, it was clear that anyone, at any time, could trample on us like this.. I cried for this state of utter abandonment.
They kept us in that room for about three hours. No one knew what would happen next. Everyone was distressed and anxious.
Finally, they recorded our names and made us stand near the entrance of the police station. One person said they would transfer us to Torkham. Another said we would be taken to a camp. Someone else said we were being taken to prison.
They loaded us into a vehicle and transferred us to a camp in the Punjab province of Pakistan. I saw that the sky had begun to lighten by the time we arrived. The camp was full of people. I stood in a corner with my children, thinking about my husband, who had been arrested three days earlier because his visa had expired.
Suddenly, my daughter saw a man she thought was her father and called out to him. I looked and saw that it was my husband. My children ran toward him and embraced him.
My husband said, “Why are you here? You had a visa!”
I said, “They arrested me too, even with a visa.”
Our joyful reunion ended when the police took him back to the men’s part of the camp, and he was deported to Afghanistan. My children were happy to see their father, but they did not know what bitter days lay ahead.
They confiscated our mobile phones and computers and took us to a cold room. My children wanted somewhere to sleep, but there was no space. There were too many of us — perhaps around 200 women and children. There were no blankets either.
In one corner, I found three old blankets that had been chewed by mice. I spread one under my children’s feet and pulled my scarf over them. Still, every few minutes, my eldest daughter would say, “My place is cold.”
In the morning, the police pulled us outside and counted us again.
In the camp, I saw that many people had legal visas. There were large families who had spent thousands of dollars on visas; girls who had come to study; and patients with cancer, high blood pressure and diabetes. All of them sat in corners, burdened by grief and a shared fear of an unknown fate.
We spent 15 days in that camp. They were difficult days. We were insulted. They called us ungrateful and traitors. Sometimes, they called us freeloaders. We had no right to object. They told us that if we raised our voices, they would take us to another prison.
The women’s and men’s areas shared a toilet. Sometimes we waited for hours to use it. Even as we stood in line, waiting for our turn, they mocked us: “Eat less, so you don’t have to use the toilet so much.” Mice ran beneath the room, and lizards moved back and forth above our heads.
The food was very spicy, and we could not eat it. At night, I survived only on dry bread and water. With the small amount of money I had, I tried to buy fruit and biscuits from outside for my children. One of the camp officials would charge high prices to bring us biscuits and fruit, while reminding us of the favour he had done by bringing goods for us.
Several times a day, they took us outside and counted us again. Even at night, they came several times, striking the doors and walls with sticks to wake everyone up. “At least knock before you come in, so we can make ourselves presentable,” the women said.
Contact with the outside world was almost cut off. Sometimes they would give us our phones for only 10 minutes. At other times, we went up to three days with no contact at all.
A week passed. Many of those without visas were transferred to Abakhan camp in Chaman.
There is one night I will never forget. Around 40 young men and one woman, along with her disabled child, were taken out for deportation. They lined them up in the courtyard and told them to place their hands on one another’s shoulders. Then they took photos and videos of them.
We women who had visas watched from behind the window and cried for our own helplessness and for the helplessness of our young people.
That same night, heavy rain fell. As there was no glass in the window frames, water came inside. Small children were coughing from the cold and could not sleep. Mothers were searching for a warm place.
I also stayed awake until morning, trying to stop the water from spreading and to keep the blanket under my children’s feet from getting wet. Until dawn, I sat with my knees pulled to my chest, thinking.
Some women who had lived in Pakistan for years were taken away in shackles. The police said they were being transferred to prison. Some families paid money and were able to leave the camp. I myself saw a woman come in and say: “If you pay, we will get you out of the camp right now.” But those who could not afford to pay large sums of money remained there.
Nearly 50 visa holders had been detained. Sometimes, I heard the police say to one another, “What is the reason you brought the people with visas?” Some of them did not know why those holding legal visas had been arrested.
The female police officers guarding us took money from us in exchange for giving us our phones so we could speak to our families. The cost of using a phone once was 1,000 Pakistani rupees. Over those 15 days, they extracted a large amount of money from me, and they did the same to people across the camp. When we asked for food from outside, they demanded transport money. Whatever we said, they asked us for money.
I saw pregnant women, and others who had given birth only 10 or 15 days earlier, detained with all their children. Though they had lived in Pakistan for many years, their hands were bound with chains, and they were transferred to prison together with their children.
After about two weeks, only those who had visas remained in the camp. On the fifteenth day, we were released. Everyone was exhausted and broken. Every day they had said, “today or tomorrow,” but in the end, we were freed because my visa still had 20 days of validity left.
When I left the camp and saw people waiting outside for us, I breathed the air of freedom and thanked God a thousand times. But one of the police officers offered this warning: “If you do not get a visa within the next 20 days, I will deport you.”
Mahtab Safi is the pseudonym of an Afghan woman journalist living in Pakistan.
