From the window of his fourth-floor apartment near downtown Orlando, the man who calls himself “M.Z.” has an expansive view of his odd new world. Amid oak-lined streets and tiny, tranquil lakes, he is starting over here at age 35.
Everything he worked for in his prior life, half his extended family and all his friends are 7,600 miles away.
“But I feel pretty much comfortable here,” Mohebullah Zyarmal says one recent afternoon. “I do not hear the sound of bullets or the sound of bombs in [the] nine months since I leave Afghanistan. When I was there, every single day I hear those sounds, but since I come here it is quiet. This is [a] good difference.”
Zyarmal — serious, polite, eager to prove himself — is a former translator and cultural adviser for the U.S. Marine Corps in his native country. When American troops withdrew last August, he, his wife, 3-month-old daughter and three brothers fled to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, pleading for escape as the city fell to the Taliban.
Had he stayed, he would have been hunted down and killed.
Though he has a master’s degree in horticulture and a decade of service with Americans in the military and intelligence operations, he now works in the maintenance department for Westminster Communities of Florida — one of 90 Afghan refugees sponsored by the faith-based nonprofit, which runs a range of retirement communities throughout the state.
Westminster helped him find an apartment, paid the deposit, co-signed his lease, brought him furnishings and cookware and linens, drove him to the Social Security Administration office and helped him set up a bank account. Some of the elderly residents, former teachers, organized English-as-a-second-language classes he and other refugees can attend four days a week.
“By the end of the first year, they’ll have a job reference, a credit reference, a landlord reference and education,” says Mary Klein, chief human resources officer for Westminster Communities. “It’s a win for us, because we were in need of [employees]. And it’s a win for the Afghans because they really get a jumpstart on rebuilding their lives in the United States.
Westminster has made it as convenient as possible.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
‘Everything’ left behind
Zyarmal was 14 when America and its allies invaded his country, beginning a nearly 20-year war. As the eldest son of a shepherd and farmer, he walked three hours to reach school each morning, then spent his afternoons tending to livestock and hauling firewood for cooking.
By the time he graduated high school and left for Kandahar University, his father was ill, and he had to work to support himself while earning a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s.
“I needed to be educated to keep alive my hopes,” he says. Jobs were so scarce a single opening would draw 1,000 applicants. Despite his horticulture studies, he worked in the field only briefly.
Instead, a stint at a language institute led to a position as a translator with the Marines, a post he held from 2011 to 2013. He then began working for the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, carrying out surveillance operations on the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Trained and supported by American advisers, Zyarmal said he led a team that arrested more than 7,500 terrorists, murderers, kidnappers and insurrectionists over seven years.
“When I leave for work in the morning, I don’t know if I’m coming home,” he says of that time.
But when the U.S. began withdrawing troops in 2020, Zyarmal feared the worst. The Taliban already had been gaining strength and, in the summer of 2021, its forces were rapidly advancing.
On Aug. 15, the day Kabul fell, he brought his family to the gates of the airport.
“We leave everything behind,” he says. “My parents, they were left behind. My brother’s wife, his children — they were left behind as well.”
In a single 10-day period, over 122,000 people were airlifted out of the country, some 82,000 to the U.S.
Zyarmal and his family were flown to Qatar for one day, then to a Navy base in Italy for 15 days, then to Philadelphia and later New Jersey, where they stayed for four months. On Jan. 7, they were flown to Bradenton, where Lutheran Services Florida helped them to resettle and navigate the byzantine, backlogged immigration process. Finally, Westminster offered them jobs and housing.
On Feb. 26, they moved to Orlando. The men all began working at Westminster, while Zyarmal’s wife, Wahida, who speaks little English, stays home to care for the couple’s daughter, now a year old. They have no car.
They know no one here.
“Since we come down here to Orlando, like nobody knocks [on] our door,” Zyarmal says. “Like in Afghanistan, in our culture we become so happy if someone knocks [on] our door, and we sit with them and share [a] story and share chai [tea].”
Until last week, Wahida Zyarmal was terrified of leaving the apartment, even to walk the gated grounds.
“I know that they have gone through a lot, especially staying at military bases,” says Lourdes Mesias, executive director for refugee and immigration services at Lutheran Services Florida, which has helped resettle 1,000 Afghans throughout the state. “They got out of one trauma to [experience] another.”
No going back
It is nearing 6 p.m. when Zyarmal finishes his workday and sits down for tea and fruit. His two-bedroom apartment, provided rent-free for 90 days, will cost him $1,800 a month after that — affordable enough on his salary, but leaving little to send back to his parents, who are elderly and frail.
“I’m concerned about them, that they’re going to be maybe kidnapped by someone or mistreated by someone,” he says. “Because the people that I fought for like [a] decade … now they are in power.”
The Taliban already has searched the family home twice and confiscated Zyarmal’s vehicle.
He hopes to get a second job to send more money to the family he left behind. And he hopes to work his way back to a professional position.
Klein, the human resources officer, understands.
“A lot of these folks are very highly trained professionals,” she says. “You know, they come in as lawyers and engineers and [military intelligence] officers, and they end up as dishwashers.”
When she can, she looks for opportunities for them to move up. And while she had worried that Westminster residents might not welcome the Afghans and their Islamic faith, that cultural differences would prove too wide, the opposite has occurred.
“It all happened so fast,” she says. “But our residents have embraced this, and the Afghans, to a person, have been so gracious.”
Though money is tight, Zyarmal bought decorations and a bounty of special foods for his daughter’s first birthday, walking 10 miles round trip to do the shopping. Then he invited Klein to the celebration.
He can work in the U.S. for two years under his current immigration status, though if he is granted the special visa for which he has applied, he’ll have a path to a green card, allowing him to live and work in the U.S. permanently.
He knows there is no going back. And he hopes the U.S. military he faithfully served — and its government — do not forget him, especially as a flood of Ukrainians seek refuge from a newer war.
“Our lives have ups and downs,” he says. “But we have fallen, and now we try to stand up.”
