Hossna Samadi. “Twenty years of women’s hopes and dreams collapsed in one day.”
That’s how New Havener and Afghan refugee Hossna Samadi described the 2021 fall of Kabul.
She wasn’t in her home country at the time, having left Afghanistan with her family five years earlier. But the shock of seeing the Taliban return to power reverberated thousands of miles away — and sticks with Samadi as she gets to know her New Haven neighbors and explains what it’s like to be Afghan today.
Samadi was the featured speaker last Thursday at the Fair Haven public library on Grand Avenue for a Big Read event called “Meet Your Neighbors.”
To her disappointment, only only one woman, English tutor Susan Hackett, showed up for Samadi’s library talk. This reporter, who was also in attendance, nevertheless had a chance to sit down with Samadi to hear about her life before and after arriving in New Haven.
Growing up in Afghanistan, Samadi said, she attended an underground “school” run out of the basement of a private home. To avoid suspicion, she and the other girls came in everyday at different times, with their books hidden deep in their bags beneath layers of scarves. They all knew their story if they got caught: they were just here to sew. Samadi reflected on this time of her life with admiration for the woman who “risked everything” to educate her, even if it wasn’t the best quality education.
“School after the Taliban fell was a dream, everyone had their own classrooms,” she said. Samadi finished high school in Kabul, and after three years of waiting for Special Immigration Visas, she moved to New Haven with her husband and two sons in 2016.
IRIS welcomed her and she felt safer, but not knowing English made everyday life challenging. Samadi shared stories of how she used to spend hours in the supermarket looking for the right groceries. “I learned English because I had to,” she said.
She learned English in an IRIS class among other refugee women, whom she shared her “embarrassing experiences” with and didn’t feel judged. She praised New Haven for its diversity, saying her experiences with people even then were still “mostly positive.”
Samadi later cofounded Collective for Refugee and Immigrant Women’s Wellbeing (CRIW), which teaches women literacy, self-advocacy, and how to navigate essential services in New Haven. She said many of the group’s members find motivation to learn English out of fear that they won’t be able to communicate with their children.
Samadi said watching the Taliban take back over her homeland in 2021 was the biggest shock of her life. Three years later, she remains at a loss for words. “A whole new generation who knew this only as nightmares,” she said. Every women, even her sister who had since gained a masters degree and worked in the government, was forced back to the home.
“It was a hot topic, but people forgot. I didn’t. The problem is still there, and we are still suffering,” she said. She continues with her public speaking engagements to prove that despite the Taliban’s tyranny, “you can’t stop me, you can’t stop every single Afghan woman, you can’t silence us all.”
Samadi hopes others will recognize Afghan women for their “resilience” and “how positive they are for the future of their children.”