Clueless, Afghanistan medical tourists make desperate calls back home

Sumedha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Gurugram, August 18

“Taliban are here. I will try to save myself and call. If not, then move on. Don’t ever think of returning.”

This was the last text message Mohseen Quereshi (38) received from his wife, who is in hiding at a village near Kabul, while he is here to get his father treated for a liver ailment.

“I have a six-year-old daughter and three sons. My daughter had asked me to get a doll for her from Delhi, which I had bought last week. I had never imagined that I would not be able to return. I am desperately trying to get in touch with my wife, but in vain. None of us saw this coming,” says Quereshi.

He is among many medical tourists left high and dry in the city, worried about families in Afghanistan after the takeover by the Taliban.

An Afghan MP, who is in the city to get her mother treated for blood clot, says: “My brother sent a one-line message — ‘Taliban are here’. I came with my mother leaving my twenty-month-old daughter behind. I am numb and don’t know where to go and what to do.”

She insists on remaining anonymous. She has been making efforts to get in touch with Indian MPs or someone else in the Central government.

United by grief, Afghan nationals are seen huddled together at international lounges of hospitals, making desperate calls and messages to loved ones back home. Many of them were scheduled to return this week, but now they have nowhere to go.

Sakima Wahid, who came here for a cardiac procedure for her two-year-old son, says: “I have no clue what my next step is going to be. My visa expires this month. I went to the embassy, but there was a huge rush. I could not get help. The hotel, where I am staying, is ready to keep me for some more days. But for how long? I want to know about the well-being of my family.”

Not just medical tourists, Afghan translators and students here are terrified. They are reaching out to social media communities for the elusive help.