Pushed out of Pakistan, an Afghan boy clung to a parrot

Bilal, 6, with his parrot, named Toti, were among nearly 100,000 undocumented Afghans pushed out of Pakistan last year

The truck wound its way through mountain passes in the pre-dawn darkness, stacked high with the trappings of a refugee life pieced together over 30 years.

The Shah family had been forced out of the haven in Pakistan that their patriarch had found for them during the last war, against the Soviets. Now they were returning to Afghanistan, a place in the grip of a newer and longer war that has sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing, The New York Times reported.

They clung to everything they could: tins of clothes, bundles of blankets, pots and pans, 11 beds, 40 chickens, two pigeons, a goat and more. The women and children, nearly two dozen all together, either rode atop the truck or stuffed themselves among the belongings in the back.

Wildly decorated 'jingle trucks' are ubiquitous in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Shah family moved their whole lives to Afghanistan in one like this last year. PHOTO COURTESY: NYT

Among them was a 6-year-old boy named Bilal, who held tightly to a small cage. In it was his parrot, Toti, his only friend in a country he had never been to, and his escape from the lonely days in the desolate gorge where they would start their new lives.

The large family built by Dawran Shah, Bilal’s grandfather, was among nearly 100,000 undocumented Afghans pushed out of Pakistan last year. Many of them were forcibly repatriated, but others, like the Shahs, were fed up with being the targets of 'police abuse'.

In Nangarhar province, the rocky region in eastern Afghanistan where they settled, one in every three people is either internally displaced by fighting or is a returned refugee, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Dawran Shah and some of the family’s children in front of their home in Nangarhar. PHOTO COURTESY: NYT

The family’s new neighbourhood is desolate, just a few houses in a mountain gorge. When they unloaded, the women and children cried at the sight of their new home, Dawran Shah said. (Many of the homes had been built with the help of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Bilal was first brought to the Times’s attention by a photographer who had taken pictures of the boy on behalf of the aid group.)

“Our house there had a balcony, three rooms, and there was also a guest room,” Bilal said of their home in Pakistan. “Here we have two rooms, and they don’t have doors. And we have two tents.”

Bilal was only 4 when he found Toti, in a different country, a greener one, where life seemed abundant.

Dawran Shah had settled in the Hashtnaghar area in northwestern Pakistan, fleeing his home in Kunar Province not long after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He farmed tomatoes and zucchini, and over 30 years, raised a large family.

The family home in a narrow gorge in the Behsud district of Nangarhar. PHOTO COURTESY: NYT

Bilal had accompanied his father, Jamshed, into the fields the day they saw the parrot, perched on a branch of an aspen tree.

“My father shook the branch. Toti fell, and I threw my scarf on it,” Bilal recalled.

How big was Toti?

“It was a baby — this big,” said Bilal, bringing his small fingers together.

Bilal and Toti were inseparable: together at home, together in the fields, together when Bilal was out playing with other children.

“I had 10 friends — Noor Agha, Khan, Mano,” Bilal said. “We would make houses.”

The only times Bilal would put Toti down from his shoulder was to feed the parrot grain and peanuts, or to slide the bird’s cage under his bed at night.

Each night, Bilal would put Toti in his cage and tuck it under his bed. PHOTO COURTESY: NYT

Then came the move. For some refugees, even 30 years in one place is not enough to put down roots.

For nearly two weeks after they settled in Nangarhar, Jamshed would try to find work. But each day he would return with nothing except new debt.

One day, Jamshed broke down.

“All these debts — they need repaying. And when I see you worried like that, I don’t like it,” Shah recalled Jamshed telling him. “Father, will you give me permission?”



Like that, Jamshed joined the army and was sent to the restive south. A war that takes about 50 lives from all sides every day requires new blood.

For Bilal, the new life wasn’t easy. His grandmother died of diabetes. He didn’t have many friends to play with. One of his three young sisters, Lalmina, is disabled by what the family said could be polio.

“I was scared here. My friends were not here. They were left there,” Bilal said. “I got sick; my eyes hurt and I had fever. The doctor gave me pills.”

But Bilal had Toti. The bird would be on his shoulder as they climbed the mountain behind their new home and remain there for hours.

“Toti, Toti,” Bilal would call to the bird.

Bilal and Yasir, his relative, on the way to their teacher’s house. PHOTO COURTESY: NYT

“Toti!” the bird would respond. One night about two months ago, Bilal put Toti in the cage and, as he had done every other night, slid it under the bed. When he woke in the morning, Toti was on the cage floor, unmoving.

“I sent the picture to my father on the net. I said, ‘Toti is dead,’” Bilal said. “He said, ‘When I come home, I will buy you another one.’”

It’s difficult to know what may have happened to Toti. Bilal’s grandfather said it was the change of climate in Afghanistan — the same reason given for the deaths of the two pigeons and the 40 chickens.

“The cages are empty,” Dawran Shah said.

Toti’s death devastated Bilal. He had lost the friend who helped make his days bearable. But some solace was waiting around the corner.



About a 20-minute walk from Bilal’s house, Asadullah Safi was holding classes at his house, where an aid group was funding a makeshift school.

Bilal started attending towards the end of the programme, tagging along with Yasir, a relative he liked. He had no official paperwork, so he couldn’t be registered as a regular student.

Unlike the rest of the 30 children, he had no books and no backpack. But when one of the children dropped out, the family returned the backpack and the books and Safi gave them to Bilal. Registered under someone else’s name, he began to study.

The programme has wrapped up, but the children still come for a couple of hours a day, the house a day care of sorts. They repeat after Safi as he reads out loud from the board. Once a month, they get a biscuit and juice.

And then Safi takes them to the yard, where there is a cow and a goat and tiny chicks. The boys chase after a plastic ball from one end of the yard to the other in a game of soccer.

Bilal is no longer alone. He runs and plays.

In a crack in the wall outside his room, Bilal keeps a handful of Toti’s feathers, a shrine to a little friend.

The article originally appeared in The New York Times