After the upheaval and risk of having to leave their spacious home in Kabul when the Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital, the family say that while they are grateful for everything the UK government has done for them, they yearn to be in a home of their own. part of them. where they can cook their food, work, study and entertain family and friends. They are some of the 9,500 Afghans still living in temporary accommodation in the UK on the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul. Amini’s four daughters are settled in local schools and her eldest daughter hopes to start a university course soon. Amini hopes they can find accommodation not too far from where they are staying in the hotel now so the children can continue to attend the same schools. Their education has been a beacon of stability in a year of tremendous upheaval. But searches for accommodation in the west London area where they live have so far proved fruitless. Affordable rental accommodation in London for a family of six is in short supply. In February this year Amini, 48, and her family were offered a flat in the right area by a woman who had come to the UK decades ago as a refugee and wanted to help others. But bureaucratic roadblocks meant the family could not move. The family were worried when they received letters a few days ago from the Home Office and the Department for Upgrading, Housing and Communities saying: “It is now possible to find your own accommodation”. Amini said that while families were willing to leave hotels because conditions were so difficult, especially for families with young children and for people who are elderly or sick, the logistics were challenging. “We have been staying in this hotel for nine months. We are very grateful for that, but it is difficult to live in a hotel for such a long time,” he said. “Sometimes our feelings are not good. We cry when we remember our families in Afghanistan. Families staying at this hotel invite each other to their rooms. Mothers celebrate their young children’s birthdays in hotel bedrooms. We want to find a home, but we know that finding one will be very difficult.” Hasina Shafi, the deputy minister for women in the Afghan government from May 2020 to August 2021, is staying in a hotel just outside London with her husband, their three children aged 14, 16 and 22 and others close family members. The family have been in the hotel for almost a year after arriving in the UK on August 26 last year. He said the family would like to be in their own home, but the hotel was taking care of their daily needs. “We were in a very critical and dangerous situation in Afghanistan, a matter of life or death. This is no time here in the UK to enjoy life. It’s just a matter of being alive,” he said. “The two younger children have settled into the school and the school administration has been very supportive.” Maryam, 42, is the director of a leading Afghan women’s organization working to empower women in her country. Working online from her hotel room in the UK, she tries to maintain the organization and support women in her home country as much as possible. She and her husband, their three children aged six, four and one, her parents and her sisters first fled Afghanistan to Albania, where they stayed for four and a half months. They have been living in hotel rooms for the past six months. “Of course we are grateful for all the support we have received in the UK, but a hotel is not a home,” he said. “My baby has grown up in hotels. The hotel rooms are very small and the older children remember our home in Afghanistan and ask where it is. They want to go back there.” He said many of the women in the hotel were suffering. “They cry a lot and go to the medical center a lot. They say they were much happier living in Afghanistan before the Taliban took over. These women belong to large families, but now they are just sitting in a hotel room with their children. “Some of the women who have small children are afraid to come out of their rooms because they have heard that parents in the UK who are not looking after their children properly are taking them away. “We are worried about finding a house to live in because we know that the housing market in the UK is very difficult and rents are very high. We are not here by choice.”
