Away from Herat

Ayoub was born and raised in the Afghan city of Herat.Together with his sister and two parents, he lived just outside the city centre. His mother and sister were both highly educated ( in economics and in medicine), and his father has always worked in a gold trade shop. When he was ten years old, Ayoub joined his father to help out in the shop, which was located in the middle of the centre. From the age of thirteen onwards, he was able to fully work in the shop, and he slowly began to take over the business when his father became sick. However, Ayoub tells us that having a big shop in the middle of Herat was bound to attract trouble.

There is a lot of organized crime in Herat – Ayoub refers to those criminals as a kind of mobsters: groups of thieves and burglars with different sources of information in the city, which they use to extort affluent people. Ever since Ayoub was young, he was used to the possibility that someone might break in at night. He often saw how all of a sudden a couple of men with kalashnikovs would show up, and take his mother to a separate room to threaten her with killing her children if she didn’t hand over the money. “My mother was always very, very strong, in her mind and in her power,” Ayoub says. When he was sixteen years old, several burglars entered their house again. This time the situation escalated, and Ayoub’s mother was murdered.

After Ayoub had fully taken over the gold trade shop from his father, he became prey for extorters himself. He was blackmailed and threatened, and had to give up a great share of the store’s revenue, until he was simply unable to produce the amount he was threatened for. One day, after having done his daily groceries and stepping into his car, a large, dirty truck approached him. Two men with kalashnikovs walked up to his window and told Ayoub to come with them. Ayoub hit the gas and drove away as fast as he could: “Was I going to die, or was I going to drive? I chose to drive.” The men fired shots at his car, and so he fled to the nearest police station. But he couldn’t stay there for very long, since he knew that the mobsters had informants within the police force as well. He left his car there, and slept in a place where he could remain hidden. That night he decided he had to leave Herat the next morning. He never stopped by his home, nor by his shop. He had to leave his whole family and all his belongings behind.