HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Ruhullah and Zainab Shayan and their two children spent part of last Thursday decorating their Christmas tree at their new home in the FishHawk area of Hillsborough County.

"It’s a new thing for us because in our country we don’t have this kind of tradition,” said Zainab, an Afghanistan native. “Now we’re in the U.S. and we celebrate all the things that the U.S. people [do].”

There are many U.S. traditions and customs that the Shayans are quickly learning about as they resettle in Tampa Bay after a harrowing escape from Afghanistan this past summer.

Both were members of the Afghanistan National Army, which made them particularly vulnerable to reprisals from the Taliban. Like so many Afghans, they were desperate to leave last August after the Kabul government collapsed in the wake of the U.S. military’s precipitous withdrawal from the country after nearly two decades.

Zainab, 28, worked for the Afghan Defense Ministry, where she had established relationships with U.S. military officials. Those connections were crucial for Afghans desperate to leave the country this past summer, but even having access to a special immigration visa couldn’t get her family into the Kabul airport, which was blocked by members of the Taliban.

After a week of being denied access, the family then received a tip from one of their U.S. Army contacts about a bus that was going to Mazar-i-Sharif, where they could then get on a plane and out of the country. But it was a dangerous nine-hour trek, too dangerous for some of their friends, but Zainab said she felt that she had no choice.

“If I sit in my home, or if I sit in Kabul, the Taliban will kill me. Also, in my home they will kill me,” she recounted to Spectrum Bay News 9. “But if there’s a chance, I want to see if there is possibly a way, maybe I can be alive.”

The Shayans got on that bus, but it was a perilous ride. Zainab wrapped up her and Ruhullah’s ID cards showing their affiliation with the Afghan Army into a scarf that she then placed under her garment. The Taliban went on to stop the bus 15 separate times on the journey, but they made it safely to a hotel in Mazar-i-Sharif, where they then remained for nearly three weeks.

Those were also scary times, the family recalls. They stayed inside their room almost the whole time, as members of the Taliban frequently came by. They say the hotel manager paid bribes to the Taliban, telling them that those rooms were empty.

Finally, they learned one night that there would be a flight leaving to go to the U.S. military base in Qatar the next day. They boarded and were ecstatic after it took off. But 25 minutes into the flight, their hearts sank when the pilot announced that they would be returning back to Mazar-i-Sharif.

“All of the people, including my wife began crying,” says Ruhullah, 33. “They cried, and they thought that the Taliban were going to arrest all of us. We asked the stewardess and captain, ‘What’s the problem?' And they said they didn’t know.’”

They remained on the tarmac for about 20 minutes, he recounts, before the plane was allowed to leave. Ruhullah believes that there was a bribe paid off to the Taliban by the company owning the airplane. Ultimately, they landed and stayed for several weeks at the U.S. military base located west of Doha in Qatar with approximately 2,000 other Afghans.

One of the military contacts that proved crucial in helping them leave Afghanistan was Cornelius Batts, a lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army. He is currently based at MacDill Air Force Base. He met Zainab when he served in Afghanistan in 2019 as a senior advisor to the Afghanistan Deputy Minister of Defense.

“I knew that this was a serious problem and that these women in the military were going to have to go into hiding or probably try to leave the country,” Batts says. “I felt this connection that I needed to help in any way that I could.”

Batts reached out to Allied Airlift 21, a non-governmental organization that was facilitating evacuations for American citizens, visa cardholders, special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants, and at-risk Afghans like women. He says that through a “lot of coordination and engagement,” the Shayans were successfully able to get out of Afghanistan.

On Oct. 12 the family flew from Qatar to Philadelphia. They were processed in New Jersey and ultimately were relocated to Fort Pickett Army Base in Blackstone, Virginia. They then were transferred in late November to Brandon, where they stayed in temporary housing before moving into their home in the FishHawk area of Hillsborough County, where they live near Batts’ family.

The family is having their rent and utilities paid for the next two months, but they need to get Social Security cards, which are needed to open a bank account, obtain a driver’s license, apply for work and enroll their kids in schools.

“I just want to get a job,” says Ruhullah. “To make money for my family. To pay my bills and to continue my education to become a well-educated person.”

“I am hardworking,” says Zainab. “I had a good position in my duty when I was in Afghanistan. But now I am here, and I accept that I am a refugee, but I will be a citizen [soon.]"

They also lack transportation. So Nicola Batts, Cornelius’ wife, has recently set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for the family to purchase an automobile.

Other than an unexpected delay in getting their current housing, Ruhullah says his family is thrilled to be safe in the Tampa Bay area and has been warmly welcomed.

“We go outside the house for site seeing or to a grocery store and tell [people] about our new life here from Afghanistan to the U.S. and they become so happy,” he says. “They tell me and my wife, ‘We are so happy to have you here.’”

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