Professor Zohra Saed’s Quest to Rescue Her ‘Literary Family’ from the Taliban

In the aftermath of this summer’s U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban, thousands of Afghan families are still trying to evacuate  their country and come to the United States. Zohra Saed (left), a poet, editor and distinguished professor at Macaulay Honors College who was born in Afghanistan, has rallied her literary peers and friends in New York’s community of Central Asian immigrants to rescue one such imperiled family — a writer, his sister and father and nine other relatives, including children — who are all now in hiding. Saed enlisted one of her former students, Mayha Ghouri, a CUNY Law School graduate who is now an immigration attorney, to file applications for emergency visas that would allow them to evacuate and enter the United States. Saed and Ghouri join the CUNYcast to tell their dramatic story.