Khalid Payenda waits for his subsequent Uber rider in Washington D.C. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Put up)
WOODBRIDGE, Va. – Till final summer season, Khalid Payenda was Afghanistan’s finance minister, overseeing a $6 billion funds – the lifeblood of a authorities preventing for its survival in a conflict that had lengthy been on the middle of U.S. international coverage.
Now, seven months after Kabul had fallen to the Taliban, he was on the wheel of his Honda Accord, headed north on I-95 from his dwelling in Woodbridge, Va., towards Washington, D.C. Payenda swiped at his cellphone and opened the Uber app, which provided his “quest” for the weekend. For now his success was measured in tons of of {dollars} fairly than billions.
“If I full 50 journeys within the subsequent two days, I obtain a $95 bonus,” he mentioned as he navigated the sunshine Friday-night site visitors.
The job was his approach of supporting his spouse and 4 kids after he burned by means of his household’s financial savings from Afghanistan. “I really feel extremely grateful for it,” mentioned the 40-year-old. “It means I haven’t got to be determined.” It was additionally a brief reprieve from obsessing over the continued tragedy in his nation, which was struggling by means of a catastrophic drought, a pandemic, worldwide sanctions, a collapsed financial system, a famine and the resurgence of Taliban rule.
Senior U.S. officers have largely moved on from the Afghanistan conflict, which started 20 years earlier with high-minded guarantees of democracy, human rights and girls’s rights and ended with an American president blaming Afghans, comparable to a Payenda, for the mess left behind.
“So what’s occurred? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the nation,” President Joe Biden mentioned as determined Afghans rushed to the airport the day after Kabul fell, including: “We gave them each instrument they may want. . . . We gave them each probability to find out their very own future. What we couldn’t present them was the desire to combat for that future.”
Khalid Payenda seems at his Uber app as he begins his shift. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Put up)
Khalid Payenda steps into his Honda outdoors his dwelling in Woodbridge, Va. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Put up)
The query of what occurred and who was at fault haunted Payenda. He blamed his fellow Afghans. “We did not have the collective will to reform, to be critical,” he mentioned. He blamed the Individuals for handing the nation to the Taliban and betraying the enduring values that supposedly had animated their combat. He blamed himself.
“It eats at you inside,” he mentioned. He felt trapped between his outdated life and desires for Afghanistan and a brand new life in the US that he had by no means actually wished. “Proper now, I haven’t got anywhere,” he mentioned. “I do not belong right here, and I do not belong there. It is a very empty feeling.”
He crossed the Potomac River into D.C. On his proper, monuments to America’s democracy and its Founding Fathers shone in opposition to the evening sky. His Honda rolled to a cease in entrance of the Kennedy Heart, the place two George Washington College college students have been ready for him.
They settled into the again seat of his sedan and commenced speaking about their day – the sudden drop in temperature, their plans for dinner, a mishap earlier that morning on the Metro practice. “I dropped my cellphone and it slid down your complete automotive,” one of many ladies was saying. “It was the worst second of my whole life.”
After a couple of minutes’ drive, Payenda dropped the ladies at their condo and rapidly checked his cellphone.
“4-dollar tip,” he mentioned.