Tourist Magazine

“Before I met my Afghan friends I really didn’t know much about Afghanistan, probably as much as the average news reader. So I began reading books and articles on the internet, spoke to journalist friends who’d been there and spent hours sitting in the park speaking with the guys. We queued for donated meals, I pored over collected statistics and facts on refugees and the EU, peeked into their tents (the winter months spent outdoors with the refugees were grim) and met transient Afghans who passed like shadows through Paris and, albeit briefly, our lives.”

TOURIST magazine: What is important to you? 
SH: Space and time to think. Mediocre things depress me but innovative things fuel my soul so the freedom to explore and find things is very important to me. Also, tea and my dog are essential then nice periods of sobriety come in very handy. 

TM: How long have you lived in Paris?
SH: Since um, october 2005, the year the riots broke out in the Paris banlieu's. France can be a mysterious place, it took me two years to get settled and understanding the way things are done here is an ongoing adventure. I love France, I never want to be one of these expat journalist hacks who makes a living by being flippant about this country, the way things are done or it's people. I love Britain and hopefully conduct myself in a way that is respectful to us all. 

TM: What do you enjoy about living in the city?
SH: There's something about Paris that's very nourishing. It's not a non-stop party city like London or NYC but it has its own meandering rhythm that I find seductive. 

TM: Did you watch the Tour de France this year?
SH: No but by sheer accident I ended up at one of the end parties for it. Seeing tall, gangly cyclists stumbling around a club, drunk and jubilant was quite something.

TM: Tell us about your work with Afghan refugees in Paris!
SH:To be honest I'd describe it more as helping out new friends. They're not charity cases, they're lads in their twenties, just like my own brother and any of his mates, it's just that there's a violent war tearing apart their country and lives so they had to leave. If Paris felt impenetrable for me when I arrived, I can't imagine how it is for people coming from the Af-Pak border. All I've done is give a few language lessons in the park where they live, joined some marches to campaign for shelter when temperatures approached zero during last years winter and tracked down cricket teams for the lads to join. The English share more with Afghans than you'd think, our humour for a start, well the Afghans I've met at least are hilarious once they get going, they love a bit of banter and are top dogs at it. Banter, tea and cricket, we love a bit of that. These guys have lived extraordinary lives but at one level, a lot of them privately just miss their wives, mums, sisters or daughters but it's not something that they can openly discuss when they're living by the laws of the street. Never underestimate the power of simply sharing a cup of tea with somebody, even if you're sitting in silence together because that human experience can be profound and sometimes my Afghan friends take time to say what's really weighing heavily on their hearts. One guy just wanted to show me a photo of his newborn baby that he has never seen (he was kidnapped by the Taliban) and tell me about the greatest day of his life: the day he married his sweetheart.

TM: How did you meet your friends and begin your blog 'languagelessonsinthepark'? 
SH: I was walking my dog one day and saw well over fifty lads just milling around, playing football or chess. Unbeknownst to me you could say that I wandered into a DIY refugee camp because the Afghans congregate around one park in Paris nick-named Little Kabul. I just couldn't work out their ethnicity, had no idea what language they were speaking and was just super curious as to who they were. Anyone who has seen a huge group of Afghans together will tell you, their faces can be quite striking, going from brown hair and light green eyes to black hair and Asiatic eyes. I sat down on a bench and asked a lad, who's now one of my friends, "excuse me but who are you guys?" He found this funny and explained that they were all from Afghanistan and everybody told me accounts of escaping the Taliban, the Arab Al Qaeda with their foreign fighters and the Allied forces, civilians escaping a war basically.

TM: What is life like for someone homeless in Paris? 
SH: Charities are very active with all the homeless in Paris, sometimes I pop down to have tea and natter as my friends eat dinner at one of the food donation points. Medecins Sans Frontiers provide a mobile medics van and Les Enfants de Don Quichotte collect donations for tents. It can get bloody cold in the winter that's for sure. Last winter the Paris based Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi got energised along with Charlotte Rampling to press the Paris mayor to find shelter for the 300 homeless Afghans. I joined the rallies to protest for their rights, it was at night, in the freezing cold so a bonfire was built to keep us all warm. We were about 300 or so at this rally including, to my surprise, Jane Birkin and Agnés B. There was Jane Birkin with her British Bulldog and Agnés B who has always fought for human rights, bang in the centre of everything shouting passionately for these boys rights as if it were 1968 all over again. To me, that's rock'n'roll. Everyone at that rally achieved a change for those Afghans’ lives, not only Afghans but there were Palestinians and Eritreans living in tents on the streets of Paris then and now. Shelter was found for those homeless until March which just shows that governments can change if people get up off their arses, make noise and march. They are our employees not the other way around.

TM: Is this a growing problem? 
SH: The issue of Afghans migrating away from the violence will rise and fall with the war. This is an international community issue. There are 43 nations occupying their country, drones flying who knows where, spies and blood letting all over the place so what are these civilians supposed to do? Afghan refugees can tell you about all the innocent civilians killed, often by mistake, they have the real eye-witness accounts of what's going on over there, you won't read that in the papers.

In Paris, perhaps 200 Afghans were or are living homeless, not quite the deluge or swarm of numbers that all European right-wing politicians try to have us believe. The situation with the Afghans in Paris has recently just changed and a great deal of them have been found accommodation by the state. 

TM: What does the future hold for your friends? 
SH: My friend Mohammed dreams of opening his own Afghan delicatessen but Afghans take life day by day, some have been refugees all their lives due to all the wars. Pakistan and Iran have taken something like 5 million refugees from this war already, Europe, American and Australia are the very last countries to do their bit. Mohammed is just happy to be off the streets and working his way towards being accepted into Europe. He's 24 and comes from the Af-Pak border, one of the most dangerous places on earth. If he returned he'd be pressured to join the Taliban, no question, he's young, fit and of fighting age, he'd get a knock on the door to join their fight within days. 

TM: Do they have families left behind? 
SH: Everybody has a family member that's been killed or a house that's been bombed, some can show you physical scars where they've been tortured by the Taliban and all have emotional scars from the stuff that they've seen. Hundreds of thousands have joined the Afghan National Army to fight with our troops but what about those few who don't want to engage with violence? Islam is a deeply peaceful religion despite what the orthodox crazies who have twisted their own book might preach.

TM: How would you describe Paris today? 
SH: Today, it's August so the city is empty and the temperature is perfect. I am drinking a cup of tea with the windows wide open and listening to the BBC, heh, how British is that?

Read Sarah Hay's blog

By Seren Adams