Mohammad Sabour Khalil sat on a small, gray donated futon in his family’s new Northeast Philadelphia home, watching a concert and soccer match on TOLO, an Afghan television station. His wife, Bibi Samira, sat on the floor with their 1-year-old, Mujtaba, while his two other children, Bibi Hawa, 6, and Mustafa, 4, milled about.

“Now all this is finished,” Khalil, 28, said, gesturing to the TV. “Because the Taliban is there.”

He was referring to the music, and the buoyant scenes of the capacity crowd in a soccer stadium in Afghanistan, singing, dancing, and seemingly oblivious to the fate of his country, which fell shortly after to the Taliban as U.S. troops began to withdraw after 20 years. In Kabul, Khalil worked for a car maintenance company contracted by the U.S. government. He knew it was time for his family to leave when the Taliban sent messages to the company and those who worked there, threatening to kill them. He said six of his coworkers were murdered.

Taking no chances, Khalil began the process of applying for a green card. His family arrived in the United States on Aug. 12, eventually settling in Philadelphia. Kabul fell under Taliban control three days later.

Khalil’s family is one family of the thousands of Afghan evacuees who found shelter in the United States since August. The Biden administration has committed to resettling 70,000 evacuees, with a goal of finishing the process by mid-February. Pennsylvania will have more than 1,500 of those evacuees, with Philadelphia resettling upwards of 700 people.

“All my friends told me, you are a lucky guy,” Khalil said.

» If you value this kind of journalism, please subscribe today.

He is lucky to not only have safely arrived in the United States with his family, but also to be ahead of the mounting wave of Afghans still living in the military facilities or in hotels, waiting to move into homes and kick-start their new lives. In Philadelphia, there are many families living in the Residence Inn by Marriott Philadelphia Center City. Finding housing to accommodate evacuees has been the biggest challenge.

“We’re in the midst of an affordable housing crisis in general in the U.S., so that really impacts resettlement, because these folks are in need of affordable housing as well,” said Gretchen Shanfeld, senior director of program operations and strategic improvement for the Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia.

Overall, the influx of Afghans has presented a unique challenge. Resettlement agencies are their primary source of support for the first four months. The goal is to get families situated and self-sufficient as early as possible through permanent housing, enroll the kids at school, provide medical screenings and job opportunities.

“That’s a very quick process for people,” Shanfeld said. “It’s been a little bit delayed with the volume of people going in. We’ve been awaiting people getting Social Security cards, other things they would need to go to work.”

The families work through bureaucratic challenges while shouldering a heavy emotional burden.

“There’s a lot of ambiguous loss in resettlement, especially in situations like the Afghan crisis, where it happened so swiftly,” said Shanfeld. “Although people have often relayed to us that they’re so grateful to be here and have their lives and their health, they’ve lost a lot. They lost their possessions, the previous status they had.”

Shanfeld said many also miss their families back home. She said as an agency they’ve found much resilience in the refugee communities they serve, in spite of the heartache and loss.

“There’s a lot of emotional processing,” Shanfeld concluded. “Those two processes often happen simultaneously, where people are processing what has happened and all they lost, while really restarting a new life.”

For much of the last four months, Khalil searched for jobs and studied for his driver’s license. He spent his downtime playing volleyball with the 16-year-old neighbor across the street, or soccer in the park with other new Afghans, slowly building their new community as they play the game they loved back home. He also renovated another home in the Northeast, which was gifted to the Muniri family the week of Thanksgiving.

Khalil received gifts of his own the week leading up to that holiday, having finally passed his driver’s test, and then receiving a job offer. Now, he drops his daughter, Hawa, off at Ziegler Elementary before driving over the Tacony Bridge to New Jersey, where he was hired as an auto mechanic.

Mohammad Sadiq Sadeed, who works for HIAS Pennsylvania and has been living in the United States since 2019, has helped Khalil and his family get on their feet here, taking them for trips to the grocery store and the halal butcher. Sadeed and his family are strong believers in Mehmani, which translates from Dari to gathering, and helping out the new Afghans. Sadeed said he is excited that more families are settling in Philly, some of whom he knew from working with them at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.

“It gives me hope that I’m not here alone,” Sadeed said.

Sadeed is encouraging Khalil to work toward getting his mechanic license so he can open his own shop one day. Sadeed is in the process of establishing a home renovation business, so he can help employ more Afghans.

“The U.S. is the land of opportunity,” Sadeed said, stressing the importance of having a skill and understanding the market for it. “If you have an opportunity, why not take it?”

Khalil is now working toward that goal. In his free time he’s been helping the families staying in the Marriott and has hosted meals for them in his home.

On a recent Sunday in December, Sadeed helped a group of Afghan men fill out the paperwork for their green cards. Sadeed and Khalil spoke swiftly in Dari over the phone before Khalil joined them.

“Don’t forget the tea,” Sadeed reminded him.

And so Khalil juggled a tray of nuts and chocolate in one hand, with glass cups and a pitcher of hot green tea in the other before slipping on his open-toe sandals and stepping out into the crisp winter air.

“He’s paying back for the community,” Sadeed said. “He’s a good hand.”