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As a teen, Mohammad Tamim Solhadost was obsessed with soccer. His family could n’t go assignments, so he turned to YouTube.
“ It was just me and the wall,” said the 23 time old, ignoring about hours upon hours he’d spend at his nonage home in Kabul, Afghanistan, rehearsing his soccer chops and likely driving his parents insane.
Solhadost came good. Like, really good. So good that when he was 18, he was invited on Afghan National Television to showcase his tricks. The Television spot pelted his career, and he’d go on to play for several pro brigades, including the Da Afghanistan Bank Football Club.
But his family’s fiscal problems persisted — soccer isn’t a economic trade in Afghanistan — and Solhadost was ultimately forced to quit and get a eatery job, where he said he made the fellow of$ 2 a day to support his family. He went to a government university in Kabul, studying English literature. He got a job with the Afghan Ministry of Defense’s social media and dispatches platoon.
But his dream of playing soccer professionally noway really failed, and he spent nights after class training, hoping that interest from a platoon in Europe could be his ticket out of Afghanistan.
All the while, the Taliban swept toward Kabul. Solhadost said he was noway bothered. “ Lots of people talk about how the Taliban will come, I’m not believing because I believe in our Afghan army. It isn’t possible that the Taliban can come into the capital fiefdom.”
On the morning ofAug. 15, Solhadost looked out his window onto what’s typically a busy road. It was empty.
When he checked again a many hours latterly, he saw men with ordnance flying the dreaded white flag that Solhadost noway imagined he’d see in Kabul. He allowed he was featuring.
Solhadost knew he was in peril. His social media featured filmland of him standing alongside high- rankingU.S. officers and State Department workers, and he heard the Taliban had attained lists of Afghans who had backed NATO forces. So the coming day he went to the Kabul field, armed with documents proving he worked with the Afghan Ministry of Defense, frequently alongside the dispatches staff of theU.S. Embassy. He was n’t ready for what he saw.
“ Did you see the movie‘World War Z? ’” he said, pertaining to the 2013 zombie movie starring Brad Pitt. “ It was like that.”
Thousands of people had crowded around a roadblock near the field, guarded by the Taliban. He pushed closer but started to have alternate studies — what should he do if the Taliban asked for his paperwork? Would they fete him from social media? Or would they find his name on one of their ignominious lists?
He noway got that far. Solhadost estimates he was 200 measures from the gate when the sound of machine gun fire ripped through the crowd and started a rush. He retreated to safety. As the dust settled, he saw six, perhaps seven bodies on the ground. He was n’t sure. Reuters reported five people were killed at the field that day.
Solhadost ran home, bursting through the door to advise his mama and family, who was eight months pregnant, not to go outdoors alone.
He logged onto Facebook and saw the vids from the field, of people adhering to an American Boeing C-17 transport aeroplane as it took off. Solhadost would latterly learn that his nonage friend Zaki Anwari, 19, had fallen to his death after holding onto the wheel of the aeroplane as it took off. The two had played on the Afghan National Youth Soccer Team together.
Solhadost’s family, who served with the Marines as a translator but had moved to Salt Lake City, communicated theU.S. Embassy. They were granted visas for the family, each given a reference law to show theU.S. dogfaces at the gate.
OnAug. 25, Solhadost, his mama and family went back to the field. The situation had deteriorated since his last visit, he said, with “ people, perhaps people trying to get into one gate.
“ And if you go into (the crowd) you ca n’t breathe, people are pushing, perhaps you fall down, perhaps lemon blast be. No bone knows. But we tried.”
By 3a.m., a scuttlebutt spread through the crowd that theU.S. forces were to start letting two people through the gate at a time. Whether it was true is unclear.
“ When people hear that, other people behind us are pushing to move near the door. And we fell down on the ground,” he said. “ Everyone walked on my body, I ca n’t stand on my bases because lots of people’s bases on me.”
While he was on the ground, Solhadost could hear his mama’s voice. He allowed she was dying.
He got up, and he ran toward her riots, shoving people out of his way. Solhadost said he saw children tromped to death in the rush. “ When I saw the people, the children dying and killed, I feel veritably bad at that time. Because those are children. And when you saw children not breathing, what do you feel?”
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He plant his mama and helped her to her bases, met up with his family on the edge of the crowd, and took off toward a different gate.
They did n’t sleep that night. They drank water when they could, and ate eyefuls from home. They stopped at three other gates, looking forU.S. dogfaces who could corroborate their reference law.
OnAug. 26 they stopped at a fourth gate. From about 300 measures down, Solhadost allowed he could make out the livery of aU.S. Marine letting people through. He told his family to stay on the outskirts of the crowd, also started pushing. He estimates he was 150 to 200 measures from the gate when a member of ISIS-K exploded a self-murder lemon, killing 183 people including 13U.S. service members.
The coming several hours are a blur for Solhadost. It’s not a memory he wants to relive. He does n’t remember seeing the blast — but he could feel it, and he could hear it. He can still hear it.
“ I do n’t know what’s passing. I just turned. and I run. And I just see some blood. But I lose my mind and I run and I tried to find my mama.”
Solhadost has tried to “ validate everything in (his) life.”
As he talked about his time on Afghan TV to the chaos at the field, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through videotape after videotape, some of them graphic. He stopped on one from the field gate where the bombing happed.
“ Perhaps 30, 20 twinkles after this, lemon firing happed,” he said, pointing to hundreds of people crowding by the gate, some standing in a large, distinct fosse. Graphic footage taken from the fate of the bombing shows the same fosse.
After the fire at the gate, Solhadost and his family went back home, where he said they fell into a deep depression. His mama had all but given up, telling him they could n’t go back to the field, that they would have to stay in Afghanistan. He told her they had to go.
He tried formerly more, but again plant himself among thousands of people in front of a gate, this time guarded by Afghan National Army dogfaces. They shot live rounds into the air and flash grenades into the crowd, one wharf right in front of him. “ I ca n’t see anything, I ca n’t hear anything,” he said, describing the scene before pulling up another videotape.
Time was running out for Solhadost and his family.
OnAug. 30 he called his family in Utah, telling him “ we just have one day.” His family followed up with the Marines posted at the field — they were collecting a list ofU.S. citizens and abettors still stuck in Kabul, arranging motorcars to bring them close to the field, also coordinating with the Taliban to let them through their roadblocks.
At 8p.m., Solhahost and his family walked to an address handed by his family and got on a machine.
They sat there for hours. At 3a.m.,Aug. 31 — the final day of theU.S. involvement in Afghanistan — the machine jolted forward, sluggishly chugging through the thoroughfares of Kabul until it reached a gate guarded by the Taliban.
Everyone aboard was ordered out of the machine and told to sit on the pavement. Also, one by one, they heard their names read from a list. “ When they read my name, my family’s name, it’s unthinkable for me. And I run, I just want to run. It was like a dream.”
Once through the gate, Solhadost and his family walked the empty road to the field. A videotape on his phone shows a sick Solhadost, who kissers the camera toward his family, before fastening back on himself, flashing a relieved grin. The bags under his eyes are dark. In another videotape, distant machine gun fire can be heard.
Once in the field, he grandly-fived the firstU.S. dogface he could find. “ I tell him,‘I’m so happy. ’”
As his family began the biometric webbing process, an alarm cut through the field. Solhodast still is n’t sure what happed. “ I feel like perhaps the Taliban is coming into the field and attacking us,” he said.
The Marines instructed Solhadost, his mama, pregnant family and the other civilians in the structure to lie on their tummies and put their hands over their heads. Marines stood in front of every door, ordnance drawn, some yelling. After 15 twinkles, the alarm fell silent and they proceeded their webbing. The Marine’s hands were pulsing as he walked up to Solhadost.
With the webbing complete, Solhadost and his family walked out on the tarmac. “ My heart is beating veritably presto,” he said, describing a blend of excitement, unbelief and concern.
What if the Taliban started shooting at them, exposed on the runway? What if they shot at the aeroplane? What if they could n’t take off? What if they were left before in Afghanistan? A continuance of trauma, heartache, violence and chaos were packed into the last two weeks. Leaving with his family complete sounded too good to be true.
“ When our aeroplane is over really snappily, oh,” he said, clinging his heart and laughing. “ I feel so good and I sleep.”
The aeroplane landed in Qatar, where they stayed in a camp for one day before flying to Germany.
In Germany, his family suddenly gave birth to a boy a month before her due date. They spent 11 days in the sanitarium with the baby on oxygen before boarding an exigency aeroplane for Washington,D.C. Solhadost fell asleep nearly over the Atlantic Ocean. He woke up as the aeroplane was wharf, looked out the window and saw an American flag.
The weeks following are stylish described as a flurry of red vid, paperwork, phone calls and moves. They flew to Camp Quantico in Virginia, also to Salt Lake City where they spent several days in a hostel, also moved into an apartment near the megacity’s town. Catholic Community Services helped pay for a three-month parcel.
Solhadost does n’t have work authorization yet, so he spends his days at the near demesne, rehearsing his soccer chops. He’s determined to play professionally in America — not just any platoon, but Real Salt Lake.
“ It’s my big ideal in USA, is to play for Real Salt Lake,” he said. “ I’ll try out for Real Salt Lake in the future.”
