“We don’t have Aadhaar cards so we cannot seek employment in India even though we may have work experience and degrees. While Ali has found a way out, he knows he is among the fortunate few. I have two sisters back home and I worry for their safety every day,” he said. “We had hopes that maybe we will return after a few years when the Taliban left. Now 26 years old, he says his hopes of returning home have been dashed. Sikandar fled Afghanistan in 2016 and settled in Delhi. And if we refused, they would dunk us in the cold river water in our village as punishment,” said Sikandar, who works at Hauz Rani’s Green Leaf Restaurant. They would say you only have to wear traditional shalwars, grow your hair and your beard, and go pray in the masjid five times a day. They told us what to wear, how to pray, how to work, everything was on their diktat. We lived there for two years under Taliban rule. “Taliban has come to Kabul now, but my village in Badakhshan was taken in 2014. The Taliban’s takeover has re-opened old wounds for many here. According to UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) figures in 2020, around 16,000 Afghan refugees live in India’s capital, mostly in South Delhi’s Hauz Rani and Lajpat Nagar. Every corner, every bylane, every shop in Hauz Rani has untold stories of horrors witnessed by thousands of Afghans who left their homes in search of a better life. Even with her little means, Tamanna said, “going back home is not an option.” Old Wounds Reopened After seven years in the city, doing odd jobs at different shops, Tamanna now works at one of the chemist shops opposite the three malls and earns a meagre Rs 12,000- which is hardly enough to sustain her family. Tamanna and her five siblings - two sisters and three brothers - along with her mother left their home in Afghanistan’s Mazar-e-Sharif and fled to Kabul and were able to reach Delhi.

That is when she decided that we had no option but to leave,” she said. They threatened my mother saying they would take me and my siblings away with them. They came to our house, hung him on a rope and killed him, then left his body on an open Quran. “Back in 2014, I was only 15 when the Talibs came into our house and killed my father.

While the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last month with the fall of Kabul may have shaken the world, Tamanna is no stranger to the Taliban’s might. Tamanna, 22, is one of the many Afghan refugees who live and work here. Where the row of shops ends, lies a long winding lane that takes you into the narrow bylines of Hauz Rani - one of the biggest Afghan refugee settlements in the national capital. New Delhi: A busy road in South Delhi’s Saket separates three of the city’s biggest malls and a long row of Afghan shops, mostly restaurants and pharmacies.

Tamanna images