Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Feature 2 - The long road back for Afghanistan

A doctor’s tale of survival and determination to help his countrymen

The sun had gone down and the temperature was dropping as Doctor Kiram Qayumi and his group of refugees struggled up a 45-degree trail to the entrance of a cave covered with a thick piece of old carpet. The cave was a hotel at the summit of White Mountain, 6,000 metres above sea level on the Afghanistan side of the Hindu Kush Mountains .

Inside the cave were packed another 40 Afghan refugees. A small hole had been cut for ventilation and a cooking stove served for warmth. Just a few candles lit the gloom where people sat on the floor eating. The smell was very bad. The "hotel manager" asked Qayumi what he wanted to eat.

"Bring me the best you have," Qayumi replied.

The best they had was a potato cut in two pieces served in a metal bowl of water with globules of oil floating on the surface. A piece of bread embedded with big pieces of rock salt completed the meal.

Qayumi left the cave at six o’clock the next morning more determined than ever. Nine hours later, just before crossing the border of Afghanistan into Pakistan, he stopped and kissed the land.

"When the conditions are right for me to serve you, I will be back," he promised.

That was in July of 1982. On May 13 last year, Qayumi returned to his native Afghanistan, from his new home in Vancouver, to help repair that country’s medical system. Working with Partnership Afghanistan Canada, Qayumi wants to help establish 90 medical units throughout Afghanistan. Each unit will consist of one hospital with 90 to 100 beds surrounded by five clinics. There will be a total of 90 hospitals and 450 clinics. Qayumi is planning another trip to Afghanistan sometime near the end of March or beginning of April.

A part-time Whistler resident and full-time professor of surgery at UBC, Qayumi’s extraordinary tale began back in December of 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Qayumi was a student at the Kiev Medical School at the time of the invasion. A month later the secretary of the Afghan embassy in Moscow spent a nervous evening in Kiev trying to convince Qayumi to join the Communist Party. Qayumi told the secretary. "I’m not a politician, I’m a doctor."

The secretary returned to Moscow early the next day.

One Sunday morning, a month after the secretary’s failed attempt to recruit Qayumi, there was a knock on the door. Ten soldiers rushed in while Qayumi and his family were having breakfast. With rifles pointed at them, they were told not to move for two hours while the soldiers went from room to room, checking under carpets and in closets for weapons and documents – anything to connect the medical student to the mujahedeen fighters battling Soviet troops for control of Afghanistan.

Qayumi returned to Kabul to work at Jamhuriat Hospital, but over the next several months his life became increasingly difficult.

In the middle of July he was chairing a meeting of his assistants and associate professors in his office at the hospital when a Soviet advisor came in. Qayumi had been working on a textbook about surgery and had a portion of the manuscript with him.

"Why are you doing this?" The Soviet advisor asked.

"Because the students need textbooks," Qayumi replied.

"No, I told you to do other things," the advisor said.

Qayumi had been instructed to put what amounted to communist propaganda on the university corridor walls.

"Look," Qayumi said patiently. "I understand what you’re saying but that’s insignificant compared to writing a textbook for students who don’t have textbooks."

"What I tell you, you have to do, not what you think you have to do," the advisor goaded.

Qayumi had had enough.

"I am a qualified surgeon and you’re no better or different than me," he told the advisor. "The only difference between you and me is that I am Afghan and this is my country!"

"You still think this is your country?" the advisor asked mockingly.

"Get out of here!" Qayumi demanded throwing the textbook and scattering loose papers on the table. "As long as I’m alive in my country, I don’t want to see you here! When you kill me then it’s not my country!"

The Afghan countryside, mostly controlled by the mujahedeen, was largely lawless, but tensions within Kabul and within the Jamhuriat Hospital were also mounting. Casualties with gunshot wounds were coming into the Emergency Room where Qayumi was teaching his students.

Qayumi was working at his desk at the hospital in July when two students rushed into his office and implored him to leave the country.

"Her brother is head of the secret police," one of the students cried while pointing to the other, "and last night they said they were going to kill you!"

The plan was that the Communist Afghan government would blame the killing on the mujahedeen.

Qayumi was on call on a Sunday morning at the hospital as ambulances arrived with people wounded by gunshots.

"It was 10 o’clock in the morning," Qayumi recalls. "I was climbing the stairs."

On the third floor of the hospital a woman came up to him.

"Can you please look after our mother?" the woman implored.

The woman’s mother had a severe gunshot wound to her leg. By the time Qayumi got to her, she was taking her last breaths.

"I’m sorry," Qayumi said to the daughter after examining the woman. "I can’t do anything."

He was rushing back to his ward where patients wounded by gunshots needed treatment when a childhood friend took him aside.

"You don’t have much time," the friend said. "You’ve got to leave at four o’clock tomorrow morning."

Qayumi went back to his office and changed out of his hospital gowns. At 11:30 a.m., with adrenaline pumping, he left the office through a back door, got into his car and drove to his home 10 minutes away. Qayumi, 29, had 15 minutes to say goodbye to his shocked wife, Shahnaz and young son, Tarek.

"I’m not coming home but you shouldn’t be worried," he said, trying to reassure his family.

Qayumi bent down and took hold of his son. "You’re a big guy now. You have to take care of your mom."

On the drive back to the hospital all Qayumi could think about was his wife and son and surviving the coming night.

That evening war raged in the streets of Kabul and casualties poured into the hospital. Qayumi was scrubbing up getting ready for surgery when he heard gunshots. The sons of the woman who had been brought in with the gunshot wound to her leg were members of the secret police and were looking for the nurses and doctors on call the night their mother died. The secret police and hospital security were shooting at each other in the hospital corridors.

"What’s going on!" Qayumi demanded trying to leave through the swinging doors of the operating room.

"Please Doctor Qayumi!" A nurse pleaded pushing against his chest. "Go back and don’t come out!"

Snipers and walk-by shooters were firing at anyone and everyone that night. A nurse caught in the cross fire was wounded in the neck. Qayumi and the other doctors jumped from operating table to operating table trying to save people with chest and abdominal wounds.

At 3:30 a.m. when the last of the surgeries was finished, Qayumi and a handful of doctors and nurses retreated to Qayumi’s third floor office for coffee and something to eat. After eating, Qayumi told them he had to get some sleep. When everyone had left, Qayumi quickly changed out of his surgical clothing into jeans, shirt and running shoes.

The hospital was very quiet. There were no nurses in the well-lit corridors, just light reflecting off the gray marble floor. Just before 4 a.m., Qayumi walked down three flights of stairs and out into the street.

The sky was just getting light as he crossed the main road in front of the hospital and went down a side street. By day this part of Kabul could be bustling with tourists visiting the antique shops, but at this time in the morning it was deserted. Qayumi had walked for seven or 10 minutes when, he saw a green jeep approaching without its headlights turned on. The jeep stopped and Qayumi got in.

Life in hiding

Two hours later, Qayumi was in Jegdaleg, a village in the mountains 80 kilometres outside of Kabul. There were beautiful gardens in the village but no women or children or older people. Just mujahedeen fighters.

"We would eat in the dark and then disappear into the mountains," Qayumi says.

Soviet soldiers entered the village in tanks and mined the roads and drinking water. The tactics of the mujahedeen were to fight and withdraw. Qayumi would treat patients in the village but the rebels never permitted him to go with them when they were fighting.

"We would see who was alive and who was dead and who needed help," Qayumi says.

For Qayumi, Jegdaleg was a time out of time, and he fell in love with the simplicity of the people. But often, he only had basic instruments like forceps and needles to administer medical care. And he saw things in rural Afghanistan he could not forget. People had tuberculosis, diarrhea and malaria and were desperate for medical attention.

Qayumi had been in hiding for two years, away from his family and under the protection of the mujahedeen serving as their doctor, when an official asked him if he would go to Peshawar, Pakistan where his skills could be more useful.

In July, 1982 accompanied by four bodyguards, Qayumi left Jegdaleg on a three and a half day journey over the 6,000 metre Hindu Kush Mountains to Pakistan. The road was alive with refugees – women and children leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan – and Afghan rebel commanders returning from Pakistan with rocket launchers and rifles. Desperate thieves willing to kill for their gains were a constant threat.

"You should not carry a Kalashnikov because they might kill you for the gun," Qayumi’s camp commander had told him before leaving Jegdaleg.

Qayumi carried a small revolver inside his jacket. Bodyguards walked 20 metres ahead and behind him, but there were dangers everywhere. Drinking water was booby trapped with land mines. And anti-personnel mines disguised as toys and watches were left by the side of a road. Someone would pick up a watch and lose a hand.

Qayumi was one day out from Jegdaleg when a deep throbbing filled the air. Dark green helicopter gun ships were coming over the mountains. Qayumi immediately sat on the ground, covered himself with a shawl and didn’t move. He knew if he ran, he’d be shot.

Ten minutes later the helicopters disappeared and the refugees started moving again.

A new beginning

When they finally got to Peshawar, Qayumi – with the help of Union Aid for Afghan Refugees – opened a school to train people in medicine. Five hundred people were trained in three months at the school, which was open 24 hours a day.

"It was a crash course on war surgery," Qayumi recalls. "I tried to teach everything that I knew they could use."

Nine months after opening the school, Qayumi received a message from his father, via a businessman who carried fruit back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, that his wife and son were no longer safe in Kabul.

"We know where your husband is," Communist officials were saying. "And we know what he’s doing."

In March, 1983, Qayumi’s wife Shahnaz and son Tarek joined Qayumi in Peshawar, where he thought he’d open a medical practice. But Pakistan was a haven for extremist groups in the early ’80s and the country was not safe.

Qayumi decided to take his family to Portugal. But the family had no passports or documents. All Qayumi had was his diploma, which Shahnaz had brought with her from Afghanistan.

"My wife had some jewelry and we sold that, gathering about $15,000 US," Qayumi recounts. "I called my older brother in Germany and he sent me another $25,000 US. With that money, we went to Karachi and bought Iranian passports."

In December 1983, Qayumi and his family arrived in Lisbon, Portugal. Qayumi went to the United Nations office for refugees and applied to immigrate to the United States, Germany and Canada.

"I was in a desperate situation," Qayumi says. "I lost my country and, I was ready to go anywhere."

The family lived in a trailer at a campground near Lisbon for six months, waiting to hear word from one of the three countries. One day Qayumi was sitting outside the trailer having a meal with his wife and son when the owner of the campground came up. There was a phone call for him in his office. The family had been accepted into Canada.

On June 3, 1983, after arriving late that night in Vancouver, a taxi took the family to a hotel overlooking English Bay where they had been given a room for four days. The next morning Qayumi woke up at nine o’clock very curious about where they were. His idea of Canada was that it was a cold place with icebergs.

Then, he opened a window. The sky was clear, the sun was shining on the water and there was a breeze.

"Shahnaz!" Qayumi called out. "This is a beautiful place! Get up!"

The family went downstairs and out of the hotel to a Greek cafeteria on Denman Street for breakfast. Then they walked through English Bay to Stanley Park.

"This was the happiest day of our lives," Qayumi says. "Our journey was ended in the most beautiful place on earth."

But another journey was just beginning. Kiram and Shahnaz sat down on the beach that first day in Vancouver and faced reality.

"We had to start everything from zero," Qayumi says. "We had no material possessions. Just clothing."

Qayumi wasn’t going to come to Canada with the idea he had been a surgeon in Afghanistan and could step right into that position.

"I’ll start proving myself to be somebody," he told himself.

Qayumi went to the library on Robson Street and asked for books and cassettes in English. He spent 12 hours a day, seven days a week for months teaching himself English, until he thought he was ready to apply for a job. When he returned to the immigration office the official was impressed by how quickly Qayumi had learned to speak English.

"He took me to his boss, who introduced me to the Employment Centre," Qayumi says. "A lady said, ‘you’d better go to UBC and talk to the Dean.’"

Qayumi met with the Dean of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and gave him his resume and a translation of a synopsis of his thesis on the treatment of infected wounds. The Dean suggested that Qayumi talk to somebody at the Department of Pathology.

"The professor of pathology started talking to me on very detailed specifics about research tools and technology," Qayumi explains.

In February, 1984, Qayumi started working at the Division of Cardiovascular Surgery at UBC as a research assistant.

Qayumi, now a professor of surgery at the University of British Columbia, and his son, Tarek, 26, are the inventors of Cyber Patient – computer software that allows physicians and students to perform MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging), cat scans and x-rays on virtual patients. Qayumi has agreements with 20 medical schools around the world to do research on Cyber Patient to see if the software could be a more effective tool for teaching medicine than textbooks.

But even though Qayumi found acceptance and success in Canada, he never forgot his promise to Afghanistan and the war that has torn his homeland apart.

"Midwives in the villages are now dead or gone and there is no one to replace them," Qayumi says. "Seventeen-thousand women per 100,000 in Afghanistan die during childbirth because there is no one there to stop the bleeding."

In October, 2001, when U.S. forces began Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Qayumi was riveted to his television. On Dec. 3, 2001, the day Kabul was liberated from the Taliban regime, Qayumi knew he had to return.

Last May Qayumi stepped off a plane in Kabul into a sea of friends and officials. But before greeting them there was something he had to do. Bending down, he touched the ground.

"I’m back!" he said.



Comments