Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: An Afghan climber in limbo

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

Mina Bakhshi learned to climb mountains when she was 17 years old, in her home country of Afghanistan. But when the Taliban captured Kabul, she couldn't see a future for herself anymore. When Mina landed in the U.S., she learned she only had two years of guaranteed stay. She is one of more than 77,000 Afghans who are currently in the U.S. on a status called humanitarian parole. In this episode of The Sunday Story, journalist Lauren DeLaunay Miller digs into the history of humanitarian parole. And we follow Mina's journey over the last two years, as she's built a new life on unstable ground.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is The Sunday Story. It's been nearly two years since the U.S. withdrew all troops from Afghanistan on August 30th, 2021. The final days of evacuation at the Kabul airport were chaotic and heartbreaking. Deadly scenes of panic at the airport. Thousands of Afghans now scrambling to get out. When those last U.S. military planes departed, thousands of vulnerable people were left behind. But in the weeks that followed August 30th, the evacuation

efforts continued. These were efforts arranged by private individuals and non-government groups. Often they involved overland routes past Taliban checkpoints to an airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Evacuees boarded chartered planes and arrived in the U.S. via military bases in the Middle East. Now, over 97,000 Afghans have been brought to the U.S. through a variety of government programs. But a majority of Afghan refugees admitted to the U.S. came on a program called humanitarian parole. These were Afghans who believed they would be targets of the new Taliban government. Activists who had worked on behalf of women's rights or human rights, journalists, artists, and university students, and also young women who feared their lives would change

dramatically under Taliban rule. Unlike those with refugee status, parolees stay in the U.S. is temporary. And there is no guaranteed pathway to lawful permanent residency in the U.S. They live with the risk of becoming undocumented or deported when their status expires. Today, about 77,000 Afghan parolees live in the U.S. in a state of limbo. In this episode of The Sunday Story, we follow the journey of one parolee, a young Afghan woman named Mina Bakshi. Mina was 19 years old and living with her family in Kabul when the city fell to the Taliban. She's now spent nearly two years in the U.S. on humanitarian parole. Independent journalist Lauren Delaney Miller has been following Mina's case for over a year.

Let me hand it over to Lauren to tell Mina's story. Mina's long journey to the U.S. includes a bus ride in the middle of the night, two flights, and 16 weeks spent in three different refugee staging areas. But I want you to know more about who Mina was before her escape. So I'm going to start her story in her hometown of Kabul, back in 2019, before the Taliban took over, and she was still a high school student. I remember like one day I was playing soccer in our school yard and, you know, some of the parents, they saw me practicing and then they went to our school office and they reported me playing soccer as a very soccer as not appropriate.

Mina was an ambitious student at her all-girls school in Kabul, and she really wanted to go to university. And I was thinking, you know, like, what's inappropriate about playing soccer? What's inappropriate about doing this sport? I'm not breaking any rules. One day, Mina walked into her classroom early, and there was a group of girls she'd never seen before. And they just started talking about climbing and showed me

pictures. Beautiful photos of mountains and lakes. They told her they were climbers, part of an American organization called Ascend. And Ascend's mission was to empower young women by teaching them how to climb mountains. I asked them a lot of questions, if it's safe or not. It was a new idea. It was a totally new idea. Afghanistan is a mountainous country, but climbing as a sport is pretty rare among Afghans, and especially among Afghan women. There are barriers to entry, like transportation to faraway places, tons of specialized gear, and a lot of

necessary training. But that night when she got home, Mina couldn't stop thinking about those pictures and those other girls. I just gave it a shot. Like, I decided to go for a day and see if I like it. And I did not tell my family about it. And then when I participated the first day, I just, I loved it. So in the winter of 2019, Mina started attending practices at the Ascend office in Kabul. She started learning about climbing techniques and equipment. And before long, she was traveling to rural parts of Afghanistan with a group of other girls. They went far away from Kabul, camping in the mountains at night and then climbing those mountains in the morning when the sun rose.

The girls went on a trip to Bamiyan province, about 200 kilometers outside of Kabul. And Mina's parents were from that province. You know, there is a very famous lake in Bamiyan province. It's called Bandamir. And I had been to that place like a thousand times before. And, you know, all I did was, you know, like taking pictures in front of waterfall and, you know, that's all I did. But that one time that I traveled with the sand was very different

because I got to see Bamiyan from a different aspect. I was watching those waterfalls and just, you know, like thinking how to climb. And it was amazing. To get to Bamiyan, the team had to drive through contested areas. And the Taliban wielded a lot of power in these rural places. So, trip leaders looked at intelligence reports and consulted security experts and local contacts to ensure that the girls were safe. My family thought that it's dangerous for us as a group of girls to travel alone. Just, you know, like the society being

very conservative, they think, you know, like some people would, they could get out and do something that really hurt you. But I thought, I can protect myself. We are like 20, 30 girls. We're a lot. No one can, you know, hurt us. Yeah. Something was changing inside of Mina. And it helped her see her country and and her place in it, in a new way.

Climbing, it just, it gave me an opportunity to get away from that society, from all those rules and regulations in Afghanistan, which was really suffocating and exhausting sometimes. You know, to go away from everything, from the city, from the crowd, people's judgments of girls, and how they should behave. I would say even, you know, going to the very faraway villages and, you know, to the most conservative societies in Afghanistan, I felt like, I always say that I felt the potential in Afghanistan to grow. We begin with Afghanistan and the dramatic fall of the capital.

Kabul was the final destination in the Taliban's lightning-fast offensive. The Taliban is now effectively in control, including in the capital Kabul. On August 15th, 2021, the Taliban captured Kabul. Afghan women fear for their livelihoods and in some instances their lives. Everything was happening so quickly. We were turning on the TV and there were no female presenters. All of them have disappeared from the screen. And then on the street, you couldn't see any females. There was no, like, female presenters. All of them have disappeared from the screen.

And then, like, on the street, you couldn't see any females. Mina's parents wouldn't let her leave the house. And they'd heard rumors that the Taliban were searching homes and offices for evidence of people involved with American NGOs. That's when we got terrified. Mina had never known life under the Taliban. She was born in 2002, and she'd grown up in a time of relative freedom and stability for Afghan women. But her family is Hazara, which is an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. And in the past, the Taliban had targeted the Hazara community.

So at home, Mina's family talked every night about the worst-case scenarios. What would happen if they found Mina's brother's police uniform? And could Mina be in danger if they discovered she was part of an American organization? And Mina couldn't see her future anymore. If she'd be able to keep climbing? If she'd be able to keep climbing, if she'd be able to attend university. Like those two weeks, like that desperation and feeling of hopelessness, I could imagine a life like that, like the past two weeks that I spent.

And I didn't want to spend my whole life like that. Those feelings were so powerful in me that I couldn't think of not leaving the country. Mina started emailing her contacts at Ascend, who were based in the U.S. And they really wanted to help, but they also couldn't promise her anything. I wanted to go to an airport. I knew that there were explosions happening there. And there are Taliban's with guns. But maybe I was thinking there is a possibility that I could get past by the airport gate. And there is a chance for me to get evacuated. And I was pushing. I was trying to secretly get out of the house and go to the Kabul airport. It didn't work. Like my parents, they so scared, and they were not letting me go.

The last U.S. military plane left the airport. The city was calm after the rush, and I had no hope. And I thought, I'm not, I can't, there's no way I could get out of the country. But then, on August 31st, her phone rang. It was like 10.30, 11 at night. But I just saw this number calling me, and under that it was from Texas. And I was, okay, this is weird, because I don't get calls from Texas usually. On the other end of the line was an Afghan man.

And this is this person telling me, OK, are you Mina? And I said, yes, I am. He didn't say his name, but he got straight to the point. He gave her the plate number of a bus and the location across town that she needed to get to right away. She only had 30 minutes. And I was like, who are you? With lots of questions. Who are you?

Where is this place I'm going? Where this bus will take me and he told me that I cannot answer to any of your questions but if you want to get evacuated you should trust me but I don't know that, it was just out of the hopelessness that I had gone through the past days. I just thought the best decision is just to take this risk and just to, you know, turn my head to all my family members. They were like in tears and trying to keep me with them, but I had no other way. I just told them that I should go. I must go. I cannot. There's no second chance for me if I stay. Mina said her goodbyes, quickly.

She covered her face, and her brother drove her to the bus station. Then she got on the bus. Twelve hours later, she arrived in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif at a temporary staging area for refugees. It was a wedding hall. It was supposed to be for wedding. There was no beds to sleep on. We were supposed to sleep on the floor with no mattresses or on chairs. Where there once would have been glittering lights and party guests dressed in their finest,

there were now hundreds of people gathered together, all uncertain about what would happen next. When I got to the wedding hall, I saw these girls. And I was like, OK, I know some people here. It was her teammates from Ascend. That was a good relief for me. Mina never found out who the man from Texas was. But she did learn that Ascend was behind her and her teammates' evacuation. And together, they waited at that wedding hall for 21 days, but she did learn that Ascend was behind her and her teammates' evacuation.

And together, they waited at that wedding hall for 21 days, waiting for someone to call their names. And then one day, finally, they read my name from the list. She wasn't told much, except that she was going to board another bus and that this one would take her to the airport. And it was all these Taliban checkpoints. It was scary to look and to just stand in front of them and to look at them and to talk to them. And then somehow she was on a plane. I had no feelings, like no feelings of excitement. But I remember like the last minute when I thought, okay, what if this works? I just

called my mom. I said, I think I am getting out of the country. I'm on a plane. Up until this point, everything had happened so fast. And then sitting there on the plane, Mina started looking around to all the other passengers. Most of them were with family and they were crying. And Mina began to wonder if she had made a mistake. But even though her mom had been so worried about her leaving, now she was on the phone reassuring Mina about her decision to leave. And she said that, I know that you made the right decision. You have always been the rebellious one in the family and now just go and see the future and the future for you will be

so different than mine and you will go to a country where there are a lot of opportunities for you to grow and you can go to college and you can become the person that you've always dreamed about. But Mina's journey was far from over. We'll be right back. We're back with a Sunday story with journalist Lauren Delaney Miller. Mina's flight from Afghanistan landed at a U.S. military base in Qatar, where she had a blur of interviews. Then she was on a plane again to a refugee center at a military base in New Jersey. In New Jersey, an immigration official asked Mina a question

that she hadn't been asked before in Afghanistan and Qatar. What is your case number? And I said, I literally don't know what you're talking about and I don't think I have any case number. And that's when they told me that I'm a parolee. Mina and the other climbers, they were all parolees. But what did that even mean? We had lots of questions in our mind. Like, okay, when will we get our green card? How long will it take for us? Are we able to go to university? Or what are the benefits we'll get?

And we were using the term, like, refugee for ourselves. But they were like, OK, it's parole. You should not expect to get your green card soon. They told her that under parole, she had a two-year temporary stay in the U.S. She would have to apply for a permanent status. In her two years, it started now. It was late October 2021. What does it mean that we are here temporarily?

That means they can get us out of this country and send us back to Afghanistan. And they say, well, it is possible. I have to say, when I first met Mina on a climbing trip last year and I learned about her evacuation, I assumed she was a refugee. I'd never heard of parole. And it turns out that a lot of people haven't. The Afghans that fled the Taliban in 2021 are often referred to as refugees. And that makes a lot of sense. Mina left her country with no sense of when she'll

ever safely return. She's starting her life from scratch, and she identifies as a refugee. So when I learned that parole was the status granted to 77,000 Afghans coming to the U.S., it made me wonder, what was the purpose of parole? And where did it come from? I reached out to a historian to try to understand. Carl Bontempo, Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany, SUNY. Carl has written extensively about the history of American immigration policy and how it's relevant today. Especially when it comes to responding to emergencies with speed and urgency, like when thousands of Afghans fled overnight. And so here you're stuck in that situation if you're a member

of the administration saying, OK, we want to help these people, but how do we do it quickly so that we can actually deliver help in a timely fashion? Before Biden asked this question, another president in another time had exactly the same question. Over 60 years ago, during the Cold War. The Iron Curtain slammed down to block off all communication with the West. Hungary pays a shocking price for a brief moment of liberty and hope. During the Hungarian refugee crisis of 1956, 200,000 people left Hungary. It was the biggest refugee emergency in Europe since World War II. President Eisenhower's administration was eager to support refugees, but he was limited by America's own strict immigration quotas. Carl von Tempo again. The national origins quota immigration

system said that you could only grant about 800 visas per year to people from Hungary. 800 visas would do nothing to help tens of thousands of Hungarians. It's a literal drop in the bucket. What can the U.S. government do? The Eisenhower administration is searching around for a legal vehicle to bring the Hungarians to the United States. The vehicle they hit upon is the parole power. Buried in the 120-page immigration bill of 1952 was one provision. And this would change the American immigration system forever. The attorney general can admit individuals to the United States on an emergent basis, meaning that those individuals could bypass basically all of the immigration controls that were in place.

Parole power was designed to provide wiggle room for emergencies. Lawmakers were aware that sometimes people would have to come to the U.S. quickly. Speed the entry of folks who might need, like, emergency medical care or something like that. And it was definitely seen as something that would be used on a case-by-case basis. But the Eisenhower administration interpreted that line as a way to grant emergency entry for tens of thousands of refugees. Within two years, it became clear that Hungarian refugees weren't returning to communist-controlled Hungary. In 1958, President Eisenhower asked Congress to pass the Hungarian Adjustment Act.

I request the Congress promptly to enact legislation to regularize the status in the United States of Hungarian refugees brought here as parolees. It would allow every Hungarian paroled into the U.S. a pathway to permanent residency and eventually citizenship. And that's how humanitarian parole got started. Because President Eisenhower's team reinterpreted a line in an immigration bill to save Hungarians. And this happens a few more times. This was the scene of turmoil in the capital, Havana. Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, about a million Cubans came to the U.S., and most of them were on parole.

Those South Vietnamese not lucky enough to have been chosen for evacuation defied the curfew and stood outside the embassy gate, begging for a seat on the helicopters. And again, in 1975, after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops during the fall of Saigon, about 170,000 Vietnamese entered the U.S. as parolees. And so this is the pattern then that is set. You parole the newcomers in, and then a few years after that, you pass an adjustment act

that provides a pathway to permanent residence. But this ad hoc system for admitting refugees was disorganized, and legislators on both sides of the aisle wanted to formalize the process. So, in 1980, Congress passed the Refugee Act to create a whole new refugee admission system, separate from the immigration system. And with this new system in place, parole more or less went back to its original and limited usage. For a few decades, it seemed like parole's big moment was mostly over. Until 2021. Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The problem you run into in the 21st century is speed and the process by which one obtains a Refugee Act visa is anything but quick.

It goes without saying that a slow process isn't an option for refugees whose lives have changed overnight. But it can take years to get through the refugee system. And so Biden, like Eisenhower, sought a way to get around our backlogged refugee admission system. And parole seems to be a very good option. But here is where the Afghan situation breaks from history. It's been two years, and to this day, the Afghan Adjustment Act still hasn't passed. The Afghan Adjustment Act would provide a path to permanent status for parolees. It was first introduced last year by Senator Amy Klobuchar. It is our responsibility to provide these Afghan refugees with the assurance that they can stay here and rebuild their lives. But it was stalled

in Congress, and then she reintroduced it this spring. And the bill? It's facing a steep, uphill battle in Congress. But you also brought in tens of thousands of Afghans who had wholly inadequate vetting. We have to understand there is a danger to this country. The idea of vetting keeps coming up as the main objection to the bill. There are bipartisan proponents of the bill who point to the extensive background checks that are already required. And they've responded by adding increased security measures. But even the revised bill hasn't gained enough Republican support, which means 77,000 Afghan parolees like Mina

still have no guaranteed legal path to permanent residency in America. It's hard to live a life temporarily, and now I have no control over my life. It's other people in high positions deciding for my life. When we come back, I'll pick up Mina's story in North Carolina, where she's been navigating her uncertain future. You're listening to The Sunday Story. Stay with us. The moment Mina stepped off the plane and onto U.S. soil, the clock started ticking on her parole status. Mina urgently needed to figure out where she was going to live. And Ascend, the U.S. climbing nonprofit that had been behind her evacuation,

they were also trying to find a way for the young women to stick together. Anne McLaughlin is a climber and psychology professor in Raleigh, North Carolina. And she saw this effort on social media. So she volunteered to help ascend fundraise and secure host families, and also to be a host herself. So in December of 2021, Mina got on another flight, this time to Raleigh. And that's how she met Anne. And I'm so curious, like, what your impressions were of each other. Oh my goodness, I remember it so well. Recently, I called Mina and Anne to talk about that moment and the eight months that they lived together in 2022. And I

think we were all kind of looking at each other, not knowing anything about each other and thinking, oh my gosh, we're about to live together. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And together with Anne's husband, Tom, they became like a little family. They'd all go to the climbing gym together a few nights a week. They cooked, they listened to music, and they went on weekend trips to the mountains. Meanwhile, Mina's family was calling her almost every day. Her mom was especially concerned. And my mom was like, are you, you know, like, participating in the chores, you know, help them with stuff, don't be impolite, just, you know, be polite and behave appropriately. They were kind of like roommates. But to Mina, Anne was also a mentor. The reason that I feel so close to them is because when I got here, when I felt so helpless and sometimes very embarrassed of not knowing the things that everyone knows here.

From the very smallest thing, from like going to store and buying stuff, the very basic things. It's like starting from scratch, you know, I learned so much from them. With Anne's help, Mina applied for and got a job working as an administrative assistant at North Carolina State. Just by coincidence, we work in the same building. Yeah, she's on the third floor, I'm on the seventh floor. Yeah. It was a nice and stable job. Mina was even able to move to her own apartment. But it was hard to work among college students when what she really wanted was to go to college herself. But Mina tried to push that thought away. It just felt impossible for me. I had enough people around me who were just telling

me about, you know, like the amount of tuition that I had to pay for all these colleges. And I knew that I cannot afford it. For everyone that I mentioned that, you know, I want to get a full scholarship, they said, you know, like full scholarships are for geniuses. And I don't think that I am a genius. So I was thinking like, maybe not for me. But with Anne's support, Mina slowly started to look at applications. I made it so hard on Anne because I procrastinated a lot with writing essays and everything. So it helped me a lot to get back to writing, and I started writing about myself. And it was my story.

You know, the things that I could not say, but I could write about. As Mina worked on her essays, Anne tried to figure out the Common App, the online platform many colleges use to receive applications. But Anne immediately started to run into issues. I had to fake that I was her high school counselor. Because you just can't, it's a roadblock. You can't send it in without passing through these bottlenecks. Right, you can't even click to the next page unless you fill in the...

Yeah, she can't submit it without a high school counselor giving information about her school and all these other things. There was also an issue with schools expecting sealed official transcripts. And this was not something that could be arranged from Mina's all-girls high school in Kabul, which was closed because of the Taliban. It is impossible in so many ways, I can't even describe it. That school does not even have an email address that they can send something from. And then there was the financial aid. Cost was the biggest concern for Mina. And Anne wasn't sure if Mina would qualify for financial aid,

but she went to the website for federal student aid, or FAFSA. Afghan humanitarian parolees are eligible for FAFSA. It says it right there on the website, but it was so hard to actually do. Anne walked me through this. So, for example, there are questions on FAFSA about your parents' finances, but not yours. So Mina is independent. She doesn't get any help from her parents. So they ask questions like, are your parents on Medicaid? Are your parents receiving SNAP benefits? Well, no, the answer to those are all no, but the reason she should get special consideration is because she is all of those things.

Basically, they lead you down a trail of unanswerable questions. Anne made dozens of phone calls, and when she finally got a hold of an admissions officer or administrator, often they had no idea what humanitarian parole was, and she'd have to explain Mina's status. And Anne figured out workarounds for a lot of things. But some things were impenetrable. Like, Anne thought Mina should be eligible for in-state tuition in North Carolina.

Refugees are, but parolees aren't. And then when I was told no, I tried it again. And I was told no, and I tried it a third time. And then I was told, really no. Like, you know, stop lady. But they basically said, if you want this changed, take it to the legislature and make them vote on it. The paperwork was endless that year. Besides college applications, there was another even more complicated application, full of unknowns, and the stakes were higher. That was MENA's asylum application. And without

the Afghan Adjustment Act, MENA's second best option for securing permanent status in the U.S. is applying for asylum. Asylum and refugee status are basically the same. But while refugee applications are filed from outside of the U.S., asylum seekers must be physically present within the U.S. to apply. So all this time, while Mina's writing her college essays, she's also gathering evidence for her ongoing asylum case, trying to piece together a complete account of what her life had been like in Kabul and why she had been forced to leave her country and her family. The night that I left my family, I was not looking in the far future. I was not thinking of not being able

to see them in years. And that was so quick. I just say goodbye and I got on the bus. And now it's been years since that night. Mina's immigration lawyer has told her that it will likely be at least five years after her asylum case is accepted before she can bring her parents to the U.S. Which is very frustrating and disappointing for me. So a reunion is, it's like the sweet dream for all of us. There have been no updates on Mina's asylum application since her interview with an immigration officer in December of 2022 I think the day that I hear back from the government

whether they accept me or they will not that moment will be the time that I think of my long-term future in this country But this spring, Mina did start getting accepted into colleges. Appalachian State, Rhodes College, The New School, North Carolina State, Columbia University in New York. And then one day in March, she got an email from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. And when I got that email, I opened the letter and I looked at it. And I'm always, always very afraid of celebrating it and then finding out that no, there's always something to find out. So I shared it with Anne. And then yeah, and then she said, and then she texted me and said, they gave you a full scholarship. And I was like, what? Really?

And at that point, it was like a relief for me. I was like, finally. It just felt right to me to go to Swarthmore. Every year, August, something good or bad happens. For me, it's the month of big change. And this August, I'm going to school. I don't know what next August is going to be like. This August would have been the two-year mark,

when the parole program for Afghans would have started to expire. But this spring, President Biden extended parole for Afghans. So now, Mina and her teammates have two more years of safety, but also two more years of uncertainty. As Mina's asylum case winds its way through backlogged immigration courts, the fight for the Afghan Adjustment Act is ongoing. But it's gridlocked. At the end of July, the sponsors of the bill, led by Senator Amy Klobuchar, tried to get it included in the National Defense Authorization Act, but it was blocked by Republicans who have introduced a separate Adjustment Act, one that, among other things, would significantly reduce the president's parole powers altogether. And this would have implications for many groups of people, not just

Afghans. Since 2021, President Biden has used his parole power to bring in tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Hondurans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Half a million people are currently on humanitarian parole. Which brings me to something historian Carl Bontempo said to me at the end of our interview. The immigration system is not well-suited for 21st century America. We have a bunch of imperfect answers for a lot of things when it comes to the policies surrounding newcomers. Asylum policy is even more broken than whatever parole policy is.

In other words, instead of thinking through just parole, I think we need to think through the whole thing. Parole is just part of the puzzle. And I would urge a reconceptualization of the puzzle itself. This week, Mina started school in Swarthmore, knowing that her parole status could expire during her sophomore year. I kind of don't want to think ahead of what will happen. I want to enjoy my my college life and I think climbing is the way. She's going to join the Swarthmore climbing team. Because I enjoy climbing a lot so I think that's a good way to make friends and to find you know my community.

And in this month of big changes, she's been thinking of Kabul. And now, you know, one thing that really makes me happy is to imagine the day that Afghanistan is free again. And I go back to Afghanistan and the things that I would do. And I think I cherish it so much now that I am far. Like, I want to go back to Kabul city that's what I really want from the bottom of my heart the alleys the small streets and bazaars in Kabul. It's all the pictures that we have in our head. And those streets are full of people.

And there are food trucks everywhere. And it's so much noise. And just people who are really, you know, happy with very simple and small things. This episode was reported by Lauren Delaney Miller. It was produced by Justine Yan. Our editor is Jenny Schmidt. Additional editing from Liana Simstrom and Irene Noguchi. Our engineer was Josh Newell.

Henry Hottie is our intern. Music from Audio Network, First Comm Music, and Ramteen Abrabloui. Lauren is the author of the book Valley of Giants, stories from women at the heart of Yosemite climbing. This story was first reported at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and edited by Shereen Marisol Maragi, with additional support from Quina Kim and Anna Sussman. Special thanks to Marina Legree, Cole Del Charco, and Yael Shacker. The Sunday Story is made by NPR's Enterprise Storytelling Unit. Liana Simstrom is our supervising producer,

and Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.