Sarah Bartenstein
The Ahmadi family at their home in Henrico County
Ahmadi family continues to make strides The family of three who arrived here from Afghanistan has grown to five In 2011, when Sultan Ahmadi began receiving strange phone calls and texts, he didn’t take them very seriously. They were more warnings rather than threats. But that would change. Living in Taliban-controlled Kabul, Ahmadi worked in logistics for a large U.S-based government contractor. “If By Lisa Antonelli Bacon you know English and technology, you could get a well-paying job,” says Ahmadi. All went well until 2013 when things took an ominous tone. The phone calls and texts became more menacing, and taunts turned to threats. “They said that I had to stop working for the American infidels,” Ahmadi says. His managers encouraged him to break his routines, change times and routes wherever he went. His work entailed going from village to village to determine just what was needed to get special immigrant visas for local people who were working or had worked for the Americans in Afghanistan. “People were getting beaten,” says Ahmadi, and kidnappings began accelerating to killings. Sultan Ahmadi was a logical target. In his job with the U.S. contractor, he helped obtain special immigrant visas for people who had worked for American concerns in Afghanistan. His facility with languages and his willingness to informally serve as an interpreter made Ahmadi doubly valuable to the insurgents. 16
“Regular people like our families have no life there,” says Ahmadi. “They don’t know what will happen today or tomorrow. They are looking for someplace to go if there is any possibility of getting out.” Ahmadi realized it was time for him and his family to leave Afghanistan. “It took me three years to get here,” says Ahmadi, sitting in the living room of the West End townhouse he and his wife Nooria recently bought. “We were afraid the whole time.” When the necessary paperwork finally came through, elation was quickly followed by heartache. Ahmadi could only take immediate family, in his case, Nooria and their toddler daughter Sana. It was painful leaving family behind. “Somehow, the people of St. Stephen’s appeared as we began our third week here,” says Sultan. The “somehow” was actually through St. Stephens’s affiliation with Commonwealth Catholic Charities, which has a long history of successful refugee resettlement in the Richmond area. James Price, now a member of St. Stephen’s vestry, and Deb Lawrence, who at that time the parish’s director of outreach, were among the first to come to the Ahmadis’ aid, providing a full range of necessities from transportation to school registration. “Both Sultan and his wife Nooria seemed nervous and anxious at first but were happy to be safe in the U.S. They faced such danger and threats to their lives in Kabul,” says Lawrence. “Sultan’s English was SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT
