The Bakhshi family celebrated their redemption as Afghani refugees in Dublin last week as the latest horror stories were relayed on news bulletins from Kabul to the television in their living room. The man of the house, Dr Zekria Bakhshi, asked if he could hug me when I arrived at the front door in the leafy suburb of Coolmine on Wednesday night. The rest of his family clearly enjoyed the doctor-on-journalist action flinging our arms around each other before an unforgettable evening celebrating world-famous Afghan hospitality.

It was an emotional reunion: The only time we had met before, on September 15, 1999, their three excited young children ran through the open doors of the arrivals hall at Dublin airport followed by Dr Zekria and his pregnant wife, Dr Najia. The family fled Kabul to hide in Peshawar, on the Pakistani border after death threats from the murderous Taliban regime ruling Afghanistan. But then Taliban agents tracked him down and Dr Zekria could not leave his safehouse, day or night, in arguably the world’s most dangerous city.

As a gynaecologist he had been forbidden to practise by the Taliban who saw his profession as a form of adultery and therefore punishable by death – three other gynaecologists from Afghanistan had been killed in Peshawar in the two years Dr Zekria was in hiding there. He was working for the International Red Cross (IRC) but the Taliban had also taken exception to him earning a living as an interpreter – he speaks five languages fluently – for the BBC World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, in Afghanistan. The Taliban came looking for Dr Zekria after BBC filmed Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Herat. It was only after the mujaheddin-led government fell, and the Taliban rook control of Kabul, that Dr Zekria realised the danger he was in. The IRC agreed to move the family secretly to a safe house in Peshawar, a city teeming with Taliban.

Understanding the imminent danger to the family, John Simpson wrote to the then British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, about seeking political asylum for the Bakhshis in the United Kingdom. Simpson was crestfallen when Straw, whom he knew and liked, turned down the application – and Dr Zekria was also very worried about the extended family back in Afghanistan supporting them in Peshawar and was painfully aware that their money was running out.

John Simpson had moved to live in Dalkey, near Dublin, and had regularly appeared on a Sunday morning current affairs programme I presented on Today FM radio. In the pub after appearing on radio with me, he explained that he was sick with worry that Dr Zekria’s family would be killed by the Taliban in Peshawar and explained the circumstances to me. I had an idea and met the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, and repeated the stark life-or-death story of Dr Zekria and his family.

Andrews was appalled and arranged a meeting in his office with Simpson, me and the department’s top trouble-shooter. Later, Simpson said that the biggest problem was that the British Home Office had rejected the application. The Department of Foreign Affairs is shrewd as well as sophisticated and came up with a plan to accommodate the Bakhshis in Ireland and the BBC made the necessarily complicated travel arrangements for family to fly to Dublin via Amsterdam with one of their top trouble-shooters, Peter Jouvenal who was the cameraman working with Simpson in Afghanistan.

A year later, John Simpson said the older children already had Irish accents , and wrote in his book A Mad World, My Masters: “It still seems shameful to me that the country which took them (the Bakhshis) in wasn’t Britain. One can only hope that those who rejected the appeal of a man whose life was in the greatest danger will never know what it is like to be driven from their country by fanatics, to stay hidden night and day for fear of the gunman and the lynch mob, and to be spurned by the callousness of uncaring officialdom.”

We all had coffee at the airport after the Bakhshis arrived on that afternoon in September 1999 and last Wednesday Dr Zekria explained that they had not had an opportunity to tell John Simpson that his wife, Dr Najia, was pregnant with their fourth child before their arrival in Dublin that day. “We wondered what we would tell John about the pregnancy,” said Najia. “And Zekria thought we should say there was nothing else to do when we were locked up in that safe-house!”

One hotelier in Dublin offered free accommodation for the family but the BBC had agreed to pay for the city centre hotel where they stayed. When the family settled in the hotel that first night, Dr Zekria went out to dinner with Simpson and Jouvenal. He was deeply moved by how many people were smiling on the streets, how clean everything was compared to Peshawar and Kabul, and Dr Zekria marvelled at how disciplined motorists were at traffic lights. The next day Simpson thought the family was going to weep surveying the enormous range of food, the politeness of the staff, and “the sheer availability of everything in the First World of which they would soon be citizens. They moved to a house owned by an Iranian woman who rented it to them cheaply while they wheeled their three children around in a double buggy and waited for permission to remain in Ireland. The application for political asylum was approved in March 2000, soon after the birth in Dublin of their fourth child, a daughter Negah.

Dr Zekria had practised as a doctor for 15 years before he came to Dublin but the Irish Medical Council wanted him to get a letter of recommendation – an impossibility when then Taliban ruled Afghanistan where he had qualified. They had moved into a house in Castleknock in Dublin and lived on social service payments while he studied at Trinity College. Walking through the shopping centre in Blanchardstown one day, Dr Zekria saw a “Chef wanted” sign in the window of the Don Lorenzo Italian restaurant. He told the owner that he knew how to cook spaghetti and kebabs but the restaurant owner said forget about it, that he would train him – and pay £40 a shift. They got on famously. And later, after the owner read Zekria’s story in the Irish Times, he said to him: “You are a doctor”. “No, I am a student,” he replied. Obviously moved by his circumstances, the owner doubled the pay to £80 a shift. Last week Dr Zekria recalled bringing his family to the Don Lorenzo for a meal while he worked there as a chef. And he heard the children in prayer (speaking Farsi, the language they use at home) asking “God to bring Daddy from the kitchen to the hospital.” Dr Zekria sent the money he earned from every shift in the restaurant back to relatives suffering under the Taliban back in Afghanistan.

Dr Zekria was conferred as a bachelor in medicine and bachelor in surgery by Trinity College Dublin in December 2004 and was registered on January 1, 2006, the year after he took out a mortgage on the family home where he still lives in Coolmine, Dublin. It is a very comfortable family home, with beautiful paintings of Afghanistan and photos of the family around the house and Zekria’s refuge: a back garden full of roses. He is a consummate storyteller and clearly deeply in love with his wife, Najia. His youngest daughter Neghat (17) rolls her eyes when he tells stories about his days as a medical student in Russia. And all of the family know the details when he talks about the first time he met Najia while she waited for a bus in Kabul when they were both studying English. She was worried about a group of militia and he stood with her for 30 minutes. And then she surprised him by paying for his fare when the bus came. And so their adventure began…

Dr Zekria and his daughter Waslat

Dr Najia, who was born in Farsi-speaking Herat, the third largest city in the west of Afghanistan, has lectured on dentistry and maxillofacial surgery. She has given birth to two children since arriving in Dublin and is a very skilled cook and homemaker.  Two other children are also studying medicine and the youngest daughter Neghat (17) is awaiting results from the leaving certificate. Harris (26), the eldest son, is an accountant and has bought a house near to his parents. Before the pandemic they all travelled back to Afghanistan to remind the children where they come from and fasten the bond with their family there. Now the resurrection of the Taliban has put that annual visit on hold. And after a 20-year break from worries about Taliban atrocities, the stress about family back home has returned.

Dr Zekria recalls that the Taliban stopped Waslat when she was six years old from going to kindergarten in Kabul and that she is now studying to be a consultant in emergency medicine in Sligo hospital. That makes him very, very proud. Then he reminds everyone in his living room that Waslat got 100 per cent in Irish in her Leaving Cert exams and that her teacher said: “I wish I had 30 Waslats in my class.”

US President Joe Biden’s remarks saying the Afghan army had taken all the US money and weapons then ran away are shameful, says Dr Zekria, recalling that 75,000 Afghan soldiers and 71,334 civilians had been killed and a total of 2,312 US military. The corruption of the Afghan government that the US supported – and then the US government making secret deals in secret talks directly with the Taliban was a big factor in the collapse of the Afghan regime this week. He doesn’t think the Taliban has changed: “barbarity is in their DNA.”

My reunion with Zekria and Najia this week after our first brief encounter on September 15, 1999 was very moving. And I am reassured that the Bakhshis are very generous people, deeply grateful for refuge this country – and I can never forget that they are witnesses to the monstrous Taliban’s historic excesses. And my fervent  hope is that this latest Taliban regime can be persuaded by the words of Shakespeare: “Mercy is a divine quality that makes its possessor godlike.”