Communication Minister Delivers Meals

Photo by Hannibal Hanschke, for Reuters

 For the second time in a week, I’ll mention an early post, “What I Carried In The Original Messenger Bag.” Why?  This post will tell a man’s story that, in at least one way, parallels mine.

Some family members and others who knew me were bewildered or furious (or both) when I started dodging cabs and trucks to deliver papers, pizza and more mysterious packets in Manhattan and, occasionally, beyond.  After all, I had a degree from a respected university, did a couple of things that made use of it and lived abroad.  

But I’d had other, less salubrious, experiences.  And I was bearing what a doctor I saw years later would describe as “persistent’ depression and PTSD—as a result of some of those experiences, including trying to deal, or not deal, with my gender identity.

I don’t know anyoabout Sayed Sadaat’s personal history beyond what I read in an article. It’s not hard to imagine that he has some manifestation of PTSD—after all, he is an Afghani who left his country.

Also, he had lived outside of his native country before his current sojourn as a refugee. In fact, he holds dual Afghan-British citizenship and could have chosen to stay there.  But the 49-year-old moved to Germany late last year, just before Brexit “closed the door.”  He chose Germany, he said, because he expects it to be a leader in the IT and telecom sectors, areas in which he holds university degrees.

Oh, and when he left Afghanistan in 2018, he was the government’s communications minister.

Germany was taking in many Afghan refugees before the current Taliban takeover.  It seems that with his education, skills and experience, he would stand out among his fellow immigrants—and even natives of his current home country.  But there was one problem:  He arrived not knowing a word of German.

He concedes that “the language is the most important part” of making a new life for himself and the family he hopes to bring over. So, every day, he spends four hours at a language school before starting a six- hour shift on his bicycle, delivering meals for Lieferando in the eastern city of Liepzig.

One difference between his story and mine, though, is that he is about twice as old as I was when I was a messenger. Another, more important one is, of course, language.  However, once he gains a functional command of German, he should have other employment options.  I had them, too, but in my emotional state, I couldn’t have done anything else.

That leads me to wonder whether another part of our stories will continue to mirror each other:  I didn’t stop cycling.  Will he?