Hossain Saeedi fled the conflict in Afghanistan due to his role at the British Embassy – he says his association with a foreign country posed “a risk”.
He explains that “in the Taliban’s view people who work with Westerners should not be tolerated”.
Hossain says he tries not to look back as a coping mechanism, having experienced “the highest degree of trauma”.
Now working for the British Red Cross in its Refugee Services, he helps asylum seekers with “destitution support, finding a legal rep and advocacy around homelessness” in Leeds.
Hossain wants people in Leeds to see Afghan refugees as “humans”.
“We have children, we have dreams, we do school runs. So we make sure that we are raising our children between two cultures,” he says.
Hossain lives in Leeds with his wife Fereshta Hussaini, who was a journalist for a local newspaper.
Fereshta says that, six months before the Taliban took full control, life for female reporters started to change, with warnings of “if we see you to go to a newspaper, we kill you”.
Her employer put in measures such as working from home and practising what to do if the Taliban approached.
Sharing an incident when a co-worker was attacked by the Taliban while reporting just outside of Kabul, Fereshta says her colleague took her brother with her, and he was then killed by the Taliban.
Describing that point in her life as a “nightmare”, she says: “I can’t live somewhere that my children can’t get education and be like a normal person.
“When we came here I didn’t know English at all and I started my college and learned English and I did my GCSE, and I will start a new course in college in creative media.”
Since the Taliban seized power in 2021, girls over the age of 12 have been barred from getting an education, and women from many jobs.
In 2020, only 19% of women were part of the workforce – four times less than men.
That number has dropped even further under Taliban rule.
