Jawad Rahimi has been glued to his phone.
The Downtown West bodega owner grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. He came to St. Louis by way of Azerbaijan, where he was a dentist. He learned English, got married, had two daughters, became an American citizen. He’s owned and operated J.R.’s Market on Olive Street for more than a decade.
I first wrote about Rahimi in 2020, when he was displaced because of the new soccer stadium being built for the St. Louis City SC. He has since relocated down the street and rebuilt his business.
Lately, though, his mind is elsewhere, in Kabul, where the Taliban have taken over the country of his birth since the withdrawal of American troops and the end to this country’s forever war. In the past few days, President Joe Biden has sent more than 7,000 troops back into the country, most of them to secure the airport to evacuate Americans, interpreters and people who want to flee the country.
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Rahimi has been calling and texting his brother and sister, and trying to get information from them, but mostly, he gets no answers. He’s worried about his mom, who is battling cancer. He’s worried about the women of his country, who will be abused and raped under Taliban rule.
“Afghanistan is a really bad situation right now,†Rahimi told me from his store this week, on the day Biden addressed the nation and defended the troop withdrawal and its aftermath. “Everybody is hiding. A lot of women are really scared. Families are sending people to hide.â€
Just a few weeks ago, things were different in Rahimi’s world. He was traveling the United States, raising money for a nonprofit that helps educate children in Kabul. raises money for the Hazara people, one of the oldest Islamic sects in Afghanistan. The Hazaras have a sad history that is much like that of many of the people of Afghanistan, having once been a majority of the country, until more than half of their ethnic group . Now the Hazaras are a tiny persecuted minority.
The school the foundation operated had opened in May, with 100 students, and plans to expand.
“It was very good. Right now, the Taliban has taken over and we have to close our school,†Rahimi says. “I try to reach them; and nobody answers. I don’t know what will happen to our schools, to our family. Our women are really in a danger zone.â€
When talking about the Taliban, Rahimi doesn’t mince words. “They are animals,†he says. “The only thing they know is how to kill.â€
As he watches the military planes fly out of the airport in Kabul, full of Americans and Afghans who want to leave, he hopes that the people he loves can get out. He had tried to get more of his family to join him in St. Louis previously, but the broken American immigration and refugee programs, practically halted under the previous presidential administration, are slow even when they are working.
Now, because of the tragedy of the rapid fall of Kabul, there is bipartisan support, it seems, for getting rid of the red tape that stood in the way to bring as many Afghan refugees to America as the military can safely evacuate.
From his standpoint, Rahimi hopes some of them come to St. Louis, a city that — despite his brief troubles battling city bureaucracy — has been welcoming historically to immigrants like him, or like the thousands of Bosnians who settled here in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Rahimi may get his wish. On Tuesday, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and St. Louis County Executive Dr. Sam Page announced that the region was ready to take in “at least 1,000†Afghan refugees through the Special Immigrant Visa program.
“The government should help us bring those families here, so we can take care of them. We don’t know what’s going to happen to the people of Afghanistan,†Rahimi says. “If the government opened the border for the Afghan people it would be very helpful to the people who need help. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ will work hard, like when I came to the United States. I work hard because we are living in a great country. Please, send a message to the government that we need to take in as many Afghan people as we can.â€