(JTA) — The social networking app Clubhouse advertises its “unlikely collisions of people” — but Nat Rosenzweig, a 34-year-old Jewish musician, hardly expected it to bring him together with two Afghans hiding from the Taliban.
Yet that’s what happened after Rosenzweig signed up for the audio chat room app in early 2021. Then a year old, Clubhouse was buzzing as a tool to enable people to socialize safely during the pandemic. Rosenzweig, who grew up in a pluralistic Jewish community in Atlanta, was drawn to rooms discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where he was exposed to perspectives that were different from those in his progressive Jewish community. He made new friends there and continued the conversations into the summer.
Then, one day near the end of August, a newcomer entered a chat room where Rosenzweig was chatting with some of his new friends. He said he was calling from Kabul and the room went silent.
“Suddenly, we’re all asking him questions, asking if he’s safe,” Rosenzweig recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The newcomer, Safi, was in his apartment beside his roommate, Sayed.
The concern was warranted. It was Aug. 30, 2021, the day the last American troops left Afghanistan. Images of Afghans hanging from a U.S. military plane as it took off from the Kabul airport had just gone viral.
Sayed and Safi, who are in their twenties and had been working for the Afghan government before it fell to the Taliban, were in hiding. (Both requested pseudonyms to protect their and their families’ safety.) A friend recommended Clubhouse so they’d have something to do. This chat room, which they’d joined at random, was the first one they’d tried.
Sayed and Safi were at work in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance when they heard of the Taliban’s imminent takeover.
“Our director told me that you all have to go home because the situation is getting critical and it’s not safe to stay in the office, so we left,” Sayed told JTA via Whatsapp. “Then the Taliban came and took over everything. And then everything was different. The next day we could not even go outside.”
Sayed needed to stay off the Taliban’s radar. He had done work affiliated with the U.S. military, and even before that August he’d heard of the Taliban kidnapping people with American ties outside of Kabul, killing them or blackmailing their families. Sayed had also publicly supported causes such as democracy and women’s rights. Days before Kabul fell, he was protesting in the streets against the Taliban.
