Paige Whiting and “Amina” embrace on the porch of Whiting’s home on the 5300 block of Pine St. (Photo by West Philly Local).

Editor’s note: The woman who is the subject of this story asked that we not use her name or show her face in a photo. We honored that request and so we have used the pseudonym “Amina” throughout the story.

Paige Whiting was at Malcolm X. Park a couple of blocks from her home on the 5300 block of Pine Street last fall when she first met Amina, who was at the park with her three children. Their friendship grew to include meetings at one of the many mom groups in the neighborhood. Amina made friends quickly and worked on her English. A refugee from Afghanistan, she and her family had only been in the United States since September.

“I’m so lucky to find these friends,” Amina said, sitting on a couch on the second floor of Paige’s home. 

Their friendship would prove invaluable when Amina and her husband ran into financial trouble in January. Neither could find work and the three months rent they received as part of the refugee settlement program had been used up. Amina turned to Paige for help. Paige turned to the “Tot Lot” listserv. Within 10 days, they raised nearly $5,000 to keep Amina and her family in their home.

Amina and her family’s journey began in their home town in the Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. Her husband worked for the government and was a target.

“The Taliban always wanted to kill him,”she said.

Packing only what they could carry, they left their home and cars and relatives and journeyed 3,600 miles to Indonesia, where they would live for four years before finding a new home. Their plan was to slip in Australia illegally and hope for asylum. Along the way, they nearly lost one son as they crouched in the dark along a beach in Malaysia waiting for a boat smuggle them into Indonesia. Her oldest son had disappeared into the nearby jungle.

“It is a very, very bad memory,” she said.

The man smuggling them and others on the boat would not allow her to call for the child for fear of being detected.

“For three hours I cried. Where is my son, where is my son?” said Amina.

She and her husband waited and worried. About three hours later, the boy came back. Soon after they boarded a boat and made it to Indonesia.

Bad weather foiled two attempts to get to Australia and then in 2013 the country introduced Operation Sovereign Borders, a military response to the refugee crisis that would prevent people from entering the country illegally by boat. Desperate, they turned to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and began what would be a years-long process of getting refugee status and then another year of vetting by the U.S. government before coming to Philadelphia.

During their wait, Amina and her family shared a refugee camp living area with Somali, Syrian and Iranian families. Some 30 people shared a single kitchen. An Indonesia school teacher came twice a week to teach the children. Amina studied English purposefully.

Her third child was born in the camp and suffered from jaundice as an infant.

On September 14, 2016 they arrived in Philadelphia and soon after had that fateful meeting in Malcolm X. Park with Paige.

“Unfortunately my husband and I couldn’t find work,” she said. They owed nearly $2,000 in rent. “I told Paige that I don’t have this money.” As Amina and her family faced eviction, Paige enlisted the help of friends to raise the money.

“People in this community are so loving and so supportive, especially with what’s going on now,” Paige said. “We were able to raise almost $5,000 in 10 days. People just gave.”

Amina, 30, has since found a job about an hour from her home, and she is continuing her English studies. She wants to be a doctor. Her oldest son is in fifth grade.

“We just want to live a peaceful life,” Amina said. “We want our kids to go to school.”

– Mike Lyons