‘After the Taliban Killed My Parents, I Fled Afghanistan When I was Eight Years Old’

Aid to the Church in Need ^ | 9/16/21 | Raquel Martin

[marshmallow]

ALI EHSANI IS A 38 -YEARS-OLD LAWYER BASED IN ITALY. After a very long and difficult journey, he arrived in Italy at age of 13; he was all alone. He had fled Afghanistan after his Christian parents were killed because of their faith. His only brother died along the way. In Afghanistan he had lived his faith in absolute secrecy.

As a child, he considered himself “normal” and no different from the rest of his friends, all of whom were growing up in Muslim families. But this was not the case. Even though he was not aware of it, Ali was a Christian. His parents never spoke openly about their religion because they were afraid that he would inadvertently betray them. He remembers how his mother always set a spare place at the table at home in case someone in need came by asking for something to eat.

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) interviewed this Christian Afghan, whose life has been shaped by the aspiration to follow Christ and being persecuted for it.

How did you discover that your family was Christian?

When I was 8 years old, I went to school and my classmates asked me why my father did not go to the mosque to pray. I went home and asked my father and he said, “Who said that?” My father impressed upon me that I was to tell no one that we were Christians. My father explained that Christians went to church. However, he left it at that because he was afraid that I would go out and talk about our faith and people would find out about us.

What happened then?

People eventually discovered that we were Christians. One day I came home from school to find that the Taliban had destroyed our home and killed my parents. My.......

[Prince of Space]

I would have gone to the mosque and pretended I was one of them, then practiced Christianity in private. You stick out like a sore thumb in the Middle East if you don’t at least make an effort to go to the mosque.