Exiled Afghan Family Take on Their Destiny
Dec. 19 -- More than 20 years after he left Afghanistan, walking for three days and nights across the mountains into Pakistan, Zahir Karzai is preparing to make the return trip to his homeland.
But unlike that fateful journey in June 1980 when the young Karzai fled after hearing about a massacre in his native village of Karz in southern Afghanistan in which more than 30 family members were killed, the journey back is for the right reasons.
A first cousin of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's newly appointed interim leader and a scion of a prominent Afghan family, Karzai, 41, plans to visit his newly liberated but ravaged country in January for a few weeks to "see the situation for myself and just check it out."
In March 1982, when he arrived in the United States as an Afghan refugee from Pakistan, he believed it was a temporary move.
"I thought I would be here two, three months and now it's 20 years," he laughs. A car dealer in Silver Springs, Md., with three children, a car and a comfortable suburban home, Karzai says he simply wants to see his old stomping ground after all these years.
And though he's thrilled, he's also prepared for the worst. "I'm so excited. It's my first time back since I left but I don't know what I feel when I get there. Mostly, I feel sorry for the people there. I have my life here, but they have gone through so much. I just want to help to rebuild our country. We have to serve the people of Afghanistan."
Days in Exile
Service is a word often heard among the Karzais, a prominent Pashtun family that has boasted politicians, advisers and freedom fighters among their ranks for more than a century.
His uncle, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was a senator towards the end of the reign of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) and was a respected figure in the Afghan resistance movement during the Soviet occupation.
Abdul's son, Hamid, took over the leadership of his Populzai tribe when his father was assassinated in the Pakistani border city of Quetta in 1999. The family suspects the assassination was the work of operatives close to the Taliban, but the case remains a mystery.
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