This narrative was told to Zan Times via phone:
I am Hosina Hashimi, the wife of Qasim Hashimi, a journalist and film activist who has been missing in Pakistan for the past three months. I now live in Pakistan with my four children and my two brothers-in-law.
We arrived here on August 20, 2021, five days after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.
I brought my gold with me, and we survived by selling it. We endured a thousand hardships in the hope of being moved somewhere safe.
Now my husband’s disappearance has added to our troubles. We have forgotten our other problems; we just keep our eyes on the door, hoping he will come back alive.
Since my husband went missing, I have packed all our household belongings as I live in constant fear of being evicted because we haven’t been able to pay rent for three months. My children are young and they have been very frightened since their father disappeared. They can’t sleep at night, and they say they feel something is following them. When I have to leave the house, I also feel that I’m being followed. Because I can’t leave my four children alone, I take them with me, even if I go out just to buy a piece of dry bread.
My husband used to bring in some money by making videos with my daughter and his brother. As of today, it has been 81 days since my husband last came home. Since then, nothing has been posted on our YouTube channel.
After my husband disappeared, I couldn’t go to the police myself. I’m afraid that I would be arrested and deported because I have no visa. If I’m forced out of Pakistan, I fear for what will happen to my children and to each of us.
How did my husband disappear?
Eighty-one days ago, a family friend in Islamabad was holding a birthday party for their daughter. At three in the afternoon, my husband told me he was going with them and that the party would start at seven in the evening.
He said he was taking our daughter and son so they could make at least three videos for the YouTube channel. I asked him to also take one of our children, but Hashimi refused, saying going out at night was not safe for young children.
At three o’clock in the morning, I called my husband. He turned the camera toward our daughter and said, “Look at your daughter.” Then we said goodbye and I went to sleep. The next day at eleven in the morning, he sent a video of the birthday cake from the home of Hamed Ehsas (an actor who went missing with my husband).
We didn’t talk for the rest of that day. At 6 p.m., I called again. He said he was going with Hamed Ehsas to another part of Islamabad and they would be back in an hour or two. Our daughter and son would stay at Hamed Ehsas’s house. Before leaving, my husband said they were going to buy a lens for Hamed Ehsas’s camera and then they would come right back.
At 7:10 p.m. I sent him another message: “Hello, where are you?” I saw that it got two ticks, meaning it was successfully delivered to my husband’s phone. After that, every message I sent went unanswered.
I thought his phone might have died. It stopped working entirely after 8:30 p.m. I was still calm because I knew my husband’s phone sometimes switched off.
After 11 p.m., I grew uneasy. Hamed Ehsas’s wife called to ask whether I had heard from her husband and mine. I hadn’t. It was at that point that I realized she hadn’t heard anything either.
Mrs. Ehsas and I tried to think of what we could do. Then it occurred to us that Hamed Ehsas’s rental car had GPS. We called the car’s owner and asked him to check its location. He reported that the car was parked on Margalla Road and told us to go and check it ourselves. But the car was two hours from where we live, and we couldn’t travel there without visas.
The owner agreed to go. He reached the area at 5 a.m. He found the car and sent a video showing its interior, which was empty. Inside the car were only a water bottle belonging to Hamed Ehsas and a child’s toy guitar.
At my request, the driver searched the park, the roads, and the area around the car, but there was no trace of my husband or Hamed Ehsas. We asked others for help tracking their phones, but the phone tracking showed nothing.
To get police help, we asked an Afghan who had a visa to act as our representative and register the case, but the Pakistani government paid no attention. They said, “We don’t register or pursue cases of Afghans who don’t have visas.” This happened five times.
Eventually, Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, arranged for a lawyer to work with us. A judge summoned our lawyer to court, where the judge asked the police why they had not registered an FIR (First Information Report) and pursued our case. The police said, “These people are Afghans and they didn’t have visas.” The judge said, “When someone doesn’t have a visa, should they go missing in our country, be beaten, be blamed?” Even with this judicial reprimand, the police still refused to register and pursue the case.
Civil activists also advocated on our behalf. Civil society and human rights organizations, the women’s movement, and even Amnesty International responded to the case, but to no avail. To date, no trace of my husband has been found.
We are registered with UNHCR, have a UNHCR token, and have gone through seven interviews. I contacted the UN organization to ask it to at least move me and my children to a safe place inside Pakistan.
Until some trace of my husband is found and his fate is known, I don’t want to go anywhere.
Raha Malik is the pseudonym of a Zan Times journalist. Raha Malik conducted the interview with Hosina Hashimi, from which this narrative was created.
