As Faheem Asfe answered the door to his family's temporary home in the Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood near noon on Wednesday, they were all still waking up.
The family of seven — Faheem, 39, his wife, Zohal, 27, and their five young children, ages 9 to 5 — traveled over 5,000 miles and through multiple time zones to reach Rochester in the first hours of Wednesday morning.
But this journey really took 10 years.
That's how long Faheem Asfe waited for a Special Immigrant Visa, sometimes granted to Afghans and Iraqis who risked their lives by helping U.S. troops stationed in their countries with the language, culture, and geography.
Asfe worked as a translator with a military contractor from 2004 to 2018, but his visa application was initially denied because he didn't have the necessary documents.
Since 2020, Ellen Smith has fought to clear that red tape. She’s executive director of the local nonprofit Keeping Our Promise, which works to resettle Afghan, Iraqi and Kurdish interpreters and support personnel in the United States.
"If anyone deserved to come to the U.S.," she said, "it was Faheem, for his years of service with our government."
Finally, about three weeks ago, the long wait was over. Asfe got his visa.
"Oh my God, I was so happy," he said.
As his family gathered Wednesday around a table in the small kitchen of their temporary home, Asfe explained that there were times when a life in America seemed out of reach.
His work with the U.S. military came to a halt in 2018 when he was attacked by the Taliban at a road check in Bagram, Afghanistan. Asfe pointed to scars from knife wounds to his chest, back and shoulder. He said he was taken to a hospital to recover.
In 2019, the Asfes fled to Turkey. But they felt unwelcome there.
“Turkish people didn't accept us," Asfe said. "They say, ‘What are you doing in our city? What are you doing in our country?’”
He said his children told him they were beaten in school. The family was placed in a remote region away from city centers where jobs might have been easier to find. Asfe said he eventually found work as a tailor.
Then, in February 2023, they were forced to run into the street when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook their home.
Smith told Faheem and Zohal that these traumas will come back to haunt them from time to time: "There are going to be sleepless nights when even though you know you're safe and you know you're here, and you're never going back to Afghanistan or Turkey, those are memories that … they don't go away."
And there will be challenges, she said, as the family builds their new life.
Faheem will need to find work. In addition to his experience as a tailor, he said he has painted houses and can speak four languages. But first, he needs a driver's license and a car, and the rest of the family needs to learn English.
They will enroll the children in the Rochester International Academy, a school for newly arrived English language learners.
When asked if his wife will work or be a stay-at-home mother, Faheem grinned and threw his arms wide open.
"Whatever she wants," he said, laughing. "This is America. When she wants to work, go to work. When she wants to stay home, stay at home."
The family's triumph is bittersweet, though, as they remember the extended family members and friends they left behind in Afghanistan.
"Believe me, there are many, many Afghans that work four years, five years, help the American people … they're all left," Asfe said. "Nobody helps them right now."
Smith said she keeps on her office wall photos of SIV applicants who were killed by the Taliban before they could escape Afghanistan.
One big barrier that Afghan people face, she said, is the harsh reality that they are often not accepted by other countries, unlike Ukrainian war refugees.
"I would say we had over 800 humanitarian parole applications put in during the withdrawal of (U.S. troops from) Afghanistan," said Smith. "Not one was accepted that I know of."
Even those who make it through the visa process must find a way to finance their journey. A listener to WXXI's “Connections with Evan Dawson” who heard about Faheem Asfe's struggle, donated to Keeping Our Promise the funds to cover the family's airfare from Turkey to Rochester.
Without that donation, Smith said they would have waited far longer for help from the International Organization of Migration.
In addition to collecting monetary donations, Keeping Our Promise recruits volunteers to help families like the Asfes. Smith's goal is to surround each family with a "circle of support" to help them start their new lives — people who take them to the grocery store, medical appointments, and show them around the community.
The nonprofit is hosting a fundraising gala from 6 to 9 p.m. April 26 at the Memorial Art Gallery. Faheem Asfe will be there, along with some other SIV families who now live in Rochester.
Since 2014, Keeping Our Promise has settled about 270 families and over 800 individuals in the area.
"Rochester's so beautiful," Asfe said as he looked at his family on their first morning in America.
"Life will get very better right now."
