On a rainy morning in Auburn, Azimullah Mohammadi sat on his couch and pulled out his phone to show a video filmed at an air base in Slovakia.
In it, some men in flight suits watch and cheer as a hulking, Russian-built Mi-17 military helicopter barrels toward them, passing low before sweeping back up into a cloudy sky.
Mohammadi was piloting the helicopter in the video. This was his last training flight before returning to Afghanistan for deployment.
Becoming a pilot was the realization of a long held dream, the answer Mohammadi gave when people asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“It was my wish,” he said. “The first option for me, or the first hope for me, it was to be pilot.”
After Slovakia, Mohammadi returned to Kabul in 2020 and joined the Special Mission Wing, an elite airborne unit.
But his dream of serving his country as a helicopter pilot lasted only about a year. In August 2021, as the Taliban broke through the defenses surrounding Kabul, Mohammadi said his commander summoned his unit to the airport, and led them on an aerial evacuation to neighboring Uzbekistan.
Flying over his country one last time, Mohammadi began to cry.
“After one year, I lost everything,” he said. “I lost everything in Afghanistan.”
Omar Zai, an Afghan military veteran who flew a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the Special Mission Wing who now lives across the street from Mohammadi, also was part of that aerial convoy.
Zai’s decision to enlist in the military was personal. When he was a kid, the Taliban killed his older brother, his cousin and their family’s driver in a suicide attack.
But Zai also was motivated to fight for a future without Taliban rule, a future his generation grew up believing in.
“I was excited for, for what was going to happen after war, after me fighting in the war,” he said. “We will have something that we were all, like, expecting and wishing for.”
But being ordered to fly out of the country as the Taliban took Kabul brought a crushing end to those dreams.
“I felt that as much as we tried, we just failed so, so terribly, that we failed the entire … a whole country and generation,” he said.
After landing at an airbase in Uzbekistan, Zai said he and the others were held for about a month before American diplomats arranged their transfer to the United Arab Emirates, and then to an U.S. Army base in Virginia.
In late 2021, Zai and a handful of other Afghan military veterans decided to move to Maine, following a recommendation from a contact in the U.S. military.
Zai has worked a handful of jobs — as a caseworker, at a restaurant and at a Walmart distribution center. He said his asylum case was approved, and he has applied for a Green Card.
But he’s still trying to make sense of his new life.
“I was a pilot, I was in the army,” he said. “But now, nothing. Like a refugee in a different country. With nothing in hand, no clear future.”
Zai said he would like to get certified to fly in the U.S., but that he’s not sure how that process would work or how he would pay for it. In addition to supporting himself, he said he’s also sending money to his parents and siblings who are still in Afghanistan.
Across the street, Mohammadi was boiling water for tea.
His asylum case also was approved, and Mohammadi said he’ll apply for a Green Card next month in the hopes of eventually bringing his family to the U.S. He said they’re currently in hiding, fearing retribution from the Taliban.
It’s been a jarring transition for Mohammadi to the U.S., but he takes comfort in living within walking distance of a handful of other Afghan military veterans. Sometimes they’ll come over to sit, eat and spend time together.
“Sitting in here, just play [a] game. Or watch a movie,” he said. “That’s nice.”
Mohammadi also has looked into going back to flight school, but he thinks it’s probably too expensive. So for now, he said he’s thinking about enrolling in a class to get a commercial driver’s license.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
