Escape From Taliban: A Harrowing Wait At Kabul Airport While Dodging Bullets, And That Long-Haired Angel

In ‘The Fall of Kabul’, Nayanima Basu writes about her escape from Afghanistan amid Taliban takeover — how a stranger became a saviour, and how a mention of Shah Rukh Khan offered a momentary reprieve

File photo of a Taliban member near Hamid Karzai International Airport as thousands of Afghans rushed to flee the Afghan capital of Kabul on August 16, 2021.

Source : Getty (modified)

I then started frantically calling the Indian embassy in Kabul. The person at the other end sounded so calm I wondered if he was in some other Afghanistan that I was not aware of. My journalist colleague also tried to explain the situation to them, but in vain. The embassy people kept saying that the Air India plane would land and we had to somehow make our way to the aircraft. Finding no way out of our situation, we kept sitting with our luggage on the