An aromatic blend of spices and bolani, stuffed pan-fried bread, and the voice of Asad Badie, an Afghan pop singer who rose to stardom in the 1980s, foreshadowed a meal experience that one could easily believe was taking place thousands of miles away.
In reality, it was almost 1pm in Tucson, Arizona, when Ritiek Rafi and Ahmad Bahaduri started to greet and take orders from customers in Dari and English inside the only Afghan restaurant in the city.
As Rafi and Bahaduri would say, it’s like eating on a corner in Kabul – a nostalgia that inspired the name of the restaurant.
“Our language of love is food,” said Rafi, a US citizen who came to Arizona as a refugee in 1999, shortly after the Taliban first seized power in Afghanistan.
“After the fall of Kabul in 2021, we realized that the Afghans who were being resettled here were asking, ‘where can we have authentic Afghan food?’ We thought they needed a place like this and we called it Kabul Corner.”
Kabul Corner opened its doors in September 2023, more than two years after the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, forcing the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from the capital. The Taliban quickly deprived women of basic rights and threatened to kill whoever opposed its regime.
Fearing reprisals after a 20-year US military presence, tens of thousands of Afghans rushed to Kabul’s international airport, attempting to escape the country at any cost. The US evacuation flights were technically designed for those who assisted American forces. But in reality, those airlifted from Kabul were the lucky ones who managed to get on a flight in time. Many were left behind.
In all, more than 77,000 Afghans have been relocated to the US under an effort dubbed Operation Allies Welcome, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2021, more than 3,600 of them have settled in Arizona. That’s more than the total number who arrived between 1981, when the Arizona Refugee Resettlement Program started keeping track, and 2020. According to the program, funded by the US health department, at least 1,000 Afghan immigrants live in Tucson.
Asked how Kabul Corner manages to offer authentic Afghan food in the second largest city in Arizona, Rafi and Bahaduri gave a quick and irrefutable answer: Enayatullah Sherzada.
Long before the 38-year-old immigrant became the main cook at Kabul Corner, Sherzada worked for a company that supplied oil to US military bases in Afghanistan, he said.
As the Taliban reclaimed power, Sherzada knew his involvement with the US made him a target. He rushed to the airport in Kabul and was able to get on an evacuation flight. After a rigorous screening and vetting process conducted by US intelligence officials, Sherzada arrived in Arizona in late August of 2021.
As soon as he arrived, he filed an asylum application, which was ultimately approved and allowed him to become a permanent resident. Rafi and Bahaduri were impressed with his cooking at events for new arrivals, and he pledged to work for them if they ever opened a restaurant.
“When I received my green card I felt much better. My stress level went down because I had feared being sent back. Afghanistan is not a safe place,” said Sherzada, with the help of Rafi, who translated for him.
“But my parents and two brothers are still in Afghanistan. They don’t have a way to get out.”
Once Afghan refugees like Sherzada are relocated to places like Tucson – which has been lauded for its efficient resettlement efforts – local resettlement agencies help them integrate into a new society. Among those agencies is the International Rescue Committee, which has assisted more than 600 Afghan evacuees in Tucson since August 2021.
Housing security and the language barrier are some of the challenges Afghan immigrants face upon their arrival, said Meheria Habibi, a former refugee from Afghanistan and now the deputy director at Tucson’s International Rescue Committee. But the biggest challenge is family separation, Habibi concluded.
“We have examples like this mother who got on an evacuation plane thinking that her young children and husband were also on the plane, and at the end they didn’t realize that they were separated,” said Habibi, who started working as an interpreter for the resettlement agency in 2002.
“We know that many members of our community have moved their families around within Afghanistan and they are trying to get them out of there. And on top of that, addressing their life here, attending their jobs, making sure they’re paying their bills, following up on their own applications, whether that’s asylum or adjusting their parole status – it adds a lot of stress and anxiety.”
Habibi said that while most Afghan families in Tucson had been able to obtain legal permanent residency, many are still awaiting decisions on their requests for asylum or petitions to reunite with their relatives back in Afghanistan.
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As lunchtime hit its busiest point, the most popular dishes were brought out from the kitchen to the half a dozen of tables in the restaurant: banjan borani, or fried eggplants simmered in a spiced tomato sauce; do piaza, or lamb stew with sautéed onions; and generous portions of basmati rice and naan.
“We don’t want to Americanize our food because we will lose our purpose, which is to keep the taste of our home,” said Bahaduri, while bringing a dish of bolani kacholo, or fried bread stuffed with potatoes and a side of mint chutney.
“That’s why we make our food with Afghan ingredients only.”
The shelves inside the restaurant are packed with dried fruits, desserts and spices in sealed bags and containers. Kabul Corner’s owners said they pay a food production company based in northern California – home to another large Afghan community – to bring authentic Afghan products to Tucson.
As of 2022, the Afghan diaspora in the US was made up of approximately 250,000 individuals who were either born in Afghanistan or reported Afghan ancestry.
Advocates say Afghans have been treated differently from similar refugee groups who have been offered permanent status under congressional adjustment acts – which can allow those with parole status to become permanent residents – passed by Congress, such as Cubans escaping communism, Hungarians fleeing Soviet repression and Vietnamese refugees following the fall of Saigon.
The Afghan Adjustment Act received bipartisan support, but it has been stalled in Congress for more than two years.
The Biden administration has created temporary avenues for those Afghans in limbo, including by extending their work permits and deportation protections under the Temporary Protected Status program.
But under the new Trump administration, temporary protections are at risk. Trump has named Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policies, including the Muslim travel ban and the family separation policy, as his White House deputy chief of staff for policy.
Trump has also chosen the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, to be his secretary of homeland security. Noem opposed resettling Afghan refugees in South Dakota in 2021, citing concerns about the adequacy of the vetting process.
Meanwhile, because of the Taliban’s repression and the country’s economic instability, thousands of Afghans have made their way to Latin America, hoping to reach the US southern border and claim asylum on US soil.
Trump has not said precisely what will happen to Afghan evacuees who have yet to receive permanent status, but he has promised to end Temporary Protected Status programs created by the Biden administration, which include the one for Afghans.
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While the community has grown exponentially in areas like northern California, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New Jersey and New York, the resettlement of Afghans in Arizona happened at a much slower pace.
Rafi remembered when she arrived more than two decades ago in the US, residents, used to the mostly Latino population in Tucson, confused her with a Latina immigrant at bus stations and supermarkets. People would often speak to her in Spanish, she added.
Before Bahaduri, also now a US citizen, settled in Arizona, he worked for the US government as an engineer in the reconstruction of areas affected by the conflict in Afghanistan. That qualified him for a special immigrant visa, available to those who were employed by or on behalf of the US government.
In 2014, when he migrated to the US as a refugee, there were about 70 Afghan families in Tucson, and no Afghan restaurants or associations.
“In 2021, we started helping them find donations, providing transportation, translation for their immigration paperwork and that’s when we created a non-profit organization here, the Tucson Afghan Community,” he said.
“We were the bridge between the newcomers and the resettlement agencies.”
As of 30 June 2024, nearly 60,000 applicants had submitted all the required paperwork for visas like Bahaduri’s, and were awaiting initial approval to move ahead with the process, according to the US state department.
But those who didn’t work for the US government during the 20-year war don’t qualify for the special immigrant visa. And even those who did work for Washington have struggled to obtain the visas under the program, amid vast backlogs, bureaucratic errors and a severely limited supply. Those millions of people are still living in Afghanistan under conditions that infringe on their fundamental rights.
Back in Tucson, Habibi, the resettlement agency official, said given the restrictions on asylum by the Biden administration and Trump’s promise to oversee mass deportations, Afghans in Tucson are constantly wondering: “What’s going to happen to me?” “Will my family have a chance to resettle in the US?” “Am I going to be put in a camp?”
Rafi and Bahaduri said those are the same concerns raised by some of the Afghan immigrants who visit Kabul Corner regularly.
“It was important for us to show our people and others the culture and the hospitality of Afghans here in Tucson,” Rafi said. “But we also want to let our people know that this is a safe place, somewhere they won’t leave hungry, a bit of happiness.”
