My Escape
from the Taliban
By Shams Erfan
Shams Erfan shares his powerful life story in Maclean's magazine.
My Escape From the Taliban
“My brother and I were teens when we last met. Now we’re in our mid-twenties and he’s a father.”
SHAMS ERFAN
AUGUST 7, 2024
I attended a private English school in the Jaghori District of Ghazni province, Afghanistan. We’d walk for hours just to reach the old, two-storey mud building where we’d learn English—a language the Taliban consider to be the tongue of traitors and occupiers. In 2013, when I was 15, I graduated from advanced classes and got a job teaching basic English there. More than 400 students attended classes each week.
In February of 2014, I left home for what should have been a short trip to buy books in Kabul. My brother Rohullah woke up as I was leaving. We didn’t know it would be years before we’d see each other again.
I boarded a bus at the station. As we crossed onto the highway, two men on motorcycles stopped us. They had long hair, with eyes painted black, robes and guns slung over their shoulders. They ordered me off the bus. One shouted, “Are you the servant of Westerners, teaching English to Muslim children?” The Taliban have intelligence networks in every district; someone must’ve reported me.
The woman next to me on the bus, a stranger, stepped out onto the sandy ground. “Please don’t harm him,” she said. “He is my son. He is travelling to work in a restaurant.” The man put his gun to my head, but the woman kept crying until they relented. I didn’t know her name, but she saved my life.
In Kabul, I realized I couldn’t return home. I had to flee. That day, the bus driver introduced me to a smuggler, who charged me US$5,000 to help me escape Afghanistan. My family sold property and paid the smuggler in installments. I flew to India, and then a month later to Malaysia. A month after that, 20 other refugees and I sailed to Indonesia; our shoddy fishing boat sank, and the Indonesian navy saved us.
I thought I’d found a sanctuary. Instead I slept on the streets. Eventually, I ended up in a detention centre. There, I shared one washroom with 180 refugees and received meagre food rations. I smuggled a phone into the camp through the cleaner and reported on the human rights abuses, suicides and medical negligence unfolding there. I wrote on my social media, then for media outlets. For my efforts, I was beaten and placed in solitary confinement.
In 2018, Wendy Noury Long, an advocacy leader from Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Renee and Bill, a couple from Burlington, Ontario, learned about my story through Northern Lights Canada, a non-profit that facilitates refugee sponsorship. They volunteered to support my immigration application. I was overjoyed, but I knew my family back home was struggling, especially after the Taliban returned to power in August of 2021. Working from my phone, I found a smuggler to aid my siblings’ escape to Pakistan.
It took four years for my application to be approved. In February of 2022, I finally arrived in Canada. At the airport, Renee, Bill and Wendy held a sign that read, “Welcome, Shams.” I stayed with Renee and Bill for 10 months. In August of 2022, I became a writer-in-residence at George Brown College and moved to Toronto. And last September, after nine years out of school, I enrolled part-time at the University of Toronto. I’m the first person in my family to attend university.
Ten years after I left Afghanistan, it was my turn to bring my siblings to Canada. In May, after a long wait at Pearson airport, I finally spotted Rohullah, his wife and my 15-month-old nephew. Rohullah and I were teenagers when we last met; now we’re in our mid-twenties and he’s a father. I ran toward them, arms open wide. My friend Natasha Freidus’s family are hosting them in Toronto while we search for a home to move into together. Rohullah’s wife, Khatera, can finally attend school; she recently took an English language assessment test. My sister and her family, still in Pakistan, may join us in the coming weeks, as their applications have been recently approved.
Two years ago, I was still in detention in Indonesia. The world rejected my humanity. But Canada opened its borders to me and my family. The term “grateful” doesn’t adequately express our gratitude to Canada and its people.