Abdullah’s Story - Life in Afghanistan

Part 1

When most people think about people from Afghanistan living in other countries, their first thought is usually that they are a refugee. And while that is true for many, it is not the whole story. To understand Abdullah, you have to start at the beginning.

Abdullah grew up during the Afghan Civil War. He was five or six years old when he first started working. His father, who had fought alongside the Mujahideen, eventually led a group of about twenty men. When the fighting came too close, the family fled from his home in a big city to a small village tucked into the mountains. Abdullah was young, but the weight of the world had already found him.

After 9/11, things shifted. He started school for the first time in third grade, though he kept working alongside it. Childhood for him was not about play and learning but about responsibility and providing for the family.

When he was in high school, his father had to travel to India to care for a sick relative. His older brother had already left the house. For seven months, Abdullah became the de facto head of the family. He represented them at weddings and funerals. He spoke for the family in important matters, all while being young a teenager.

When he finally graduated and enrolled at a university in Kabul, something unexpected happened. Freedom. For the first time in his life, no one was depending on him in the same way. He stayed out late. He smoked hookah with friends. Occasionally, if someone had the money, they would all buy some alcohol and drink together (alcohol cost nearly a month's salary at that point and was difficult to come by!) His family funded his time there and saw his time in university in the big city as an investment. He saw it as something closer to a breathe of fresh air.

But real life has a way of arriving without warning.

After graduation, it took him a full year to find work. He was educated. He was literate. He was capable. But in Kabul, who you knew mattered more than what you knew. Without the right connections — what Afghans call wasifa — the doors stayed closed. His father kept supporting him, but the pressure mounted on both sides.

Looking back, Abdullah says he learned more in that year than he ever did in university. "Real life is all on you," he told me. "It puts more pressure on you." He found himself returning mentally to his childhood — to the accountability, the hard work, the sense of responsibility to others. University, by contrast, had been about him. Real life was about everyone else.

He eventually found work as a legal assistant, and then landed a government position working on the refugee crisis — helping internally displaced people resettle, find work, access clean water. It was hands-on, human work. It opened his eyes to what families sacrifice for one another and brought him closer to his own father in the process.

Around that time, a friend recommended him for a nine-month leadership program run by an NGO. He joined expecting to learn theory. The program introduced him to questions of spirituality and purpose that he hadn't considered before. "We are here for a bigger purpose," he told me. "We've been created for a bigger goal." That shift in thinking changed how he saw other people — not just as cases to solve or colleagues to manage, but as human beings with their own inner lives worth understanding.

By 2020, his contract for work had ended. He had spent years serving others. Now it was time to invest in himself. He applied for a Master's degree in Law, secured government funding, and set his sights on Turkey.

He was ready to begin something new.

Read on about Abdullah’s journey to Turkey in our next blog post!