Geneva (AsiaNews) – On weekends, when he can, Farid* climbs Swiss mountains. Sometimes he rides a mountain bike in and around Geneva; other times, he reaches refuges on mountain glaciers, with an alpine guide leading him and other refugees to 4,000 metres peaks. Or in the winter, he does indoor climbing. Three years ago, he would not have imagined doing any of them.
“In Afghanistan we have beautiful mountains which were often the scene of fighting, of war, with the Taliban,” he said, speaking to AsiaNews. “I used to go there, but very rarely.” In Switzerland, in the Alps, he was finally able to enjoy something that violence had taken away from him in his country.
Farid, 27, is originally from Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan. He left in 2018 for political reasons, he says, since he was already in danger even before the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
He arrived in Turkey on a student visa, enrolled in university and stayed there for five years. Then, at the end of 2023, once he obtained his degree, Turkish authorities told him to leave the country.
Going back to Afghanistan was not an option for him. “I couldn't, I didn't want to and I didn't feel safe,” he says.
Farid has no direct memories of the first rise of the Taliban, between 1996 and 2001, because he was too young. But his father's stories were enough for him. “He told me what a very hard period it had been," he said.
For this reason, when the Taliban regained power for the second time in August 2021, he immediately understood what it meant even though he was abroad. “I was very sad. I knew it would be catastrophic again, especially for my mother and my sisters.”
Once he made the decision to leave, Farid was not sure which European country he would end up in. He chose Switzerland because an uncle already lived there. But the easiest way to get there was the Balkan route through Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Italy, and finally Switzerland.
"I looked at the dangers I was facing. If I go back to Afghanistan, I have no escape. If I come to Europe illegally, there is a risk, but at least there is also a possibility of being able to arrive safely".
The journey on foot lasted three to four weeks, not very long compared to what other refugees have to go through, in some cases, up to a year, stopping to work to raise the money needed to continue.
Along the way, he explained, one may not even know for sure which country one is in. sometimes, you meet someone who really risked their life on that journey. “There are those who lose it, in the sea, in the forests”.
He said that he travelled with a group of dozens of people he did not know, linked only by their common route.
Once in Switzerland, he applied for asylum in late 2023. A long process followed: two interviews, the first lasting about five hours, the second, in Bern, lasting all day, from 8 am to 8 pm.
In all, he says, he was asked questions for around 17 to 18 hours in total, often returning to painful episodes experienced in Afghanistan before departure.
“They weren't nice questions,” he said. “They made me relive traumas and bad experiences. But if I hadn't answered, I wouldn't have obtained asylum."
Supporting him during the breaks in the talks was a lawyer from Caritas. "He encouraged me, told me that everything would be fine. Alone it would have been much harder." After about a year and a half of waiting, the decision arrived: request accepted.
But while he began to build a new life in Switzerland, his family remained in Mazar-e-Sharif under the Taliban regime. Farid has three sisters and a mother who is a teacher.
The sisters studied medicine at university while their mother taught at a girls' school. For the past four years, they have not been able to do any of this.
"My sisters would already be doctors if they had been able to pursue their studies. My mother, who was a teacher, is now unemployed, locked up at home. It's horrible."
Farid says he asked the Swiss authorities to allow at least his sisters to arrive, but the response was negative: family reunification, he said, is only provided for minor asylum seekers, not for those who, like him, are adults.
At the same time, he does not want his sisters to undertake an illegal journey to Europe, which would be too dangerous, he says, "especially for girls and women".
He speaks "constantly” with his mother and sisters, the only thread that still keeps him tied to Mazar-e-Sharif, to a past life which, for them, is suspended due to the bans against women.
In his first months in Geneva, when the permit had yet to arrive, Farid did not speak French, and had no friends or work, a time of great isolation for him.
It was a friend who told him about an association that organises mountain outings for refugees who were looking for an extra person for their activities for that weekend. Peaks4All was set up in 2021 in Geneva, by Laetitia and Clémence, two young women passionate about mountaineering.
Every year, they propose to climb one of Switzerland’s four-thousanders, and organise monthly outings during the year, ranging from excursions with professional mountain guides to meals where everyone brings something to share.
These experiences gave Farid the opportunity to stay in the mountains, which Afghanistan at war had denied him. Through Peaks4All he met most of his refugee friends.
Today he is an apprentice to be an electrician, following the dual path typical of the Swiss system: he attends a public school one day a week and spends four days at a firm that pays him. He just completed his first year of training and will begin a second in mid-August.
Looking back at the hardest moments, he says several times that he thought about giving up. “But when I thought about what I would have to do if I gave up, go back to Turkey, then to Afghanistan, I realised I had no choice. Those difficult moments, today, are also the ones that made me stronger.”
Now, whenever he goes up the mountains, he takes back something that the war had taken away from him.
*Fictional name, chosen to protect his name and his family, still in Afghanistan.
Photo: Peaks4All/Instagram
