In August 2021, four months after President Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban took control in the capital of Kabul, the Noorzad family did not dare to venture outdoors.
The family’s father, Saboor Noorzad, had worked over the years as a recruiter, first for the U.S. Embassy and then the European Union. After four attempts to leave with the European Union’s assistance, the family finally made it out on Aug. 23, arriving at an air force base in Madrid. Spain would be their home for the next year.
Farhat Noorzad, the eldest of five and the Noorzads’ only daughter, was 14. At the time she spoke four languages, though none of them were Spanish.
“New house, new life — literally everything was new. It was hard because I didn’t know the language,” said Farhat, now 16 and a Berkeley High School junior. “I needed someone to translate for me, to be with me, to be my friend. Sadly, I didn’t have one. That’s when I promised myself that if I met someone like me, I would do anything to help them.”
Farhat has made good on her promise — and been rewarded for it. On Monday she received an award recognizing her kind spirit and an accompanying $1,000 check for being a major support to her peers in Berkeley High’s Multilingual Program. Farhat was nominated by her biology teacher Erin Smith.
She has acted as a go-between for teachers and students who, like Farhat, are new to the U.S. and still transitioning into the new culture. Farhat translates for other students and, because she speaks so many languages, has also brought together different linguistic communities, such as Spanish-speaking and Farsi/Dari-speaking students, according to the nomination. She also speaks Urdu and Hindi.
“She makes it her priority to counsel new students going through a tough time in their transition to the United States. A lot of them are left under fairly traumatic circumstances and there’s a lot of grief and trauma,” Smith wrote in the nomination.
“Farhat goes beyond helping people academically,” Smith said after the ceremony. “She helps them when they’re sad. She has first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to be a refugee and is able to connect with other refugees.”
An example of ‘everyday kindness’
UC Berkeley ethics professor Alan Ross created the Chris Kindness Award in 2022 to honor random acts of kindness that take place in Berkeley with a cash prize every month. “In Berkeley we focus so much on the problems. We need to balance that with all the good things that are happening,” Ross said at the ceremony.
Read more about the history and inspiration of the Chris Kindness Award
The Chris Kindness Award honors Chris Walton, an early childhood educator “who believed in the power of kindness and practiced it every day,” according to its website. Ross has funded the award with his own money, but now the organization is now taking donations to expand beyond Berkeley.
Citlali Perez, 18, was one of Farhat’s six supporters who attended the ceremony. When she arrived in Berkeley two and a half years ago from Guanajuato, Mexico, she spoke no English.
“I met Farhat and she was really kind,” Perez said. “Plus, she gives you personal advice. I always feel comfortable asking her about something I don’t understand.”
Watching his daughter receive the award, Saboor Noorzad said his daughter has always been kind. “Being kind is in our culture,” he said, “and we raised her to be like that.” But he admitted that the family’s experience in Spain also had a profound effect on her.
“When we landed in Spain we were met by volunteers — college students, teachers — who were all in red shirts. I told my children they are all working for no money. Their only aim was to support and help people,” he said.
Fleeing under the cover of night
It’s not hyperbole to say that for the Noorzads, their escape from Kabul was literally a matter of life and death.
“Our lives were at risk,” said Farhat. Once the Taliban came into power, Farhat said “the only thing we thought about was leaving.”
To help them flee, the EU gave the Noorzads an address where they could board buses that would take them to the airport in the middle of the night. They were told to take only one small backpack for the entire family. After four attempts, they never got past the airport gates, where they were joined by desperate throngs trying to flee.
“Everybody wanted to get out,” said Farhat’s mother, Shakeba. “All of the doors and gates were blocked by Afghan people.”
On their fifth attempt, which was successful, Farhat experienced a harrowing incident that still haunts her: a Taliban member firing his weapon into the air to scatter the crowds.
“It was very close to my face,” said Farhat.
While the main impetus to leave Afghanistan concerned the danger of her husband’s having worked for the U.S. and then the EU, Shakeba said she couldn’t imagine a future for her daughter in a country where women cannot be educated or work outside the home. Taliban rule had cut short Shakeba’s own career, forcing her back into the home after teaching English at Kabul University for 12 years.
“She wouldn’t be allowed to go to school past sixth grade,” Shakeba said of her daughter’s prospects. “And I wouldn’t be able to go outside alone,” Farhat added, “only with a male escort, even if that was a kid who was younger than you.” She also had to wear a hijab in public under Sharia law.
In Spain, despite her initial worries, Farhat adapted quickly, learning Spanish in six months, making friends and impressing her teachers, some of whom remain in touch with her. After a year, the family emigrated to Berkeley using a Special Immigration Visa for Afghans and Iraqis who had worked directly with the United States. Saboor had applied for the visa five years before.
Many of Saboor’s extended family, including his parents, live in the U.S., with some nearby in Walnut Creek, while Shakeba’s family remains in Afghanistan. “The women cannot work and go to school and the men are jobless,” Saboor said. “That’s how it is.”
Saboor’s disappointed that the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years. He had worked as a translator for the U.S. Special Forces and saw both American and Afghan casualties.
“That was the worst decision ever. Afghanistan was a very strategic position for the U.S. to have on that side of the world,” he said. “Having all those sacrifices and then leaving it behind and giving it back to those people [the Taliban] was not a good idea. We could have done much better.”
Once settled in Berkeley, Saboor was able to get the same type of recruiting work he did in Kabul, this time for San Francisco International Airport.
First stop in the U.S.: Berkeley’s Alcatraz Avenue
In Berkeley, the Noorzads shared a home with their landlord on Alcatraz Avenue and lived there for a year. Although the homeowner was generous and kind, and the family had four bedrooms and the entire first floor, having one bathroom for a family of seven — plus the landlord — proved difficult.
So on Jan. 20, the Noorzads moved into an Emeryville apartment with three bedrooms and two baths. (The Noorzad children are able to remain in Berkeley schools because Shakeba is an instructional assistant at Berkeley’s Franklin Preschool.) The furnishings include an important touchstone from the homeland: four Afghan rugs Shakeba’s family shipped to them.
As her youngest brother, Maseh, age 3, watched cartoons and Farhat sat cross-legged on the Afghan carpets, she did a compare and contrast.
“It’s so different here. I have rights. In Afghanistan the school was good but here it is way better. I can wear anything. I can walk outside without fear by myself.”
“The most important thing is that she can continue her education,” Shakeba added.
When discussing education, Farhat and her mother seemed surprised by the American tendency to encourage students to start thinking about their college major when they are high school freshmen. Farhat is interested in computer science, but won’t go so far as to say that that will be her major.
Clearly, she has an affinity for language that appears to be inherited. She’s on track to catch up with her parents, who each speak seven languages. Farhat doesn’t count Pashto as her sixth language because she understands it, but cannot speak it. She is also learning Turkish from her classmates, making herself even more valuable as a Multilingual Program student.
When asked what she misses about her homeland, she said, “not that much.”
“My life is here now,” she said. “I’m trying my best.”
