The Times - UK (2022-06-13)

the times | Monday June 13 2022 3

times2

COVER AND BELOW: MICHAEL LECKIE FOR THE TIMES

Are you still working from home?

Of course. I’ll take working from bed

in my comfiest pyjamas over a

sweaty commute any day. I haven’t

been in the office since Covid.

Well, you might want to dig out

your work pass and get back pretty

sharpish.

Why would I do that? Has my boss

called you to complain? You’re

making me nervous.

No. Haven’t you heard? The drab

corporate office has become the

darling of the fashion world.

Surely not. It’s grubby, badly lit and

covered in tea stains. It can’t be cool.

If you don’t believe me, you only

need to look at the wave of designer

fashion adverts starring A-listers

who are posing in corporate HQs.

The office cubicle has also popped

up in Apple TV’s thriller Severance.

I can’t imagine staplers, photocopiers

and hole-punchs being fashionable

or glam in the slightest.

If you want glam, just look at the

Versace ad starring Chloe Cherry,

the breakout star from HBO’s

Euphoria. She’s rocking a power

suit in the middle of a grey bank of

office desks. Meanwhile, Chanel’s

campaign captures a midday

rooftop coffee break.

I don’t know if I’m sold on the office’s

sex appeal yet.

Then check out the shirtless male

model Jordan Barrett seductively

cradling three ring binders full of

documents in the campaign from

the fashion brand Sir the Label.

If only I looked that good at work.

I look more like Ricky Gervais in

The Office.

Funny you should mention him

because the US version of The

Office was the most-streamed TV

show of 2020. That proves how

much people missed offices when

they were shut.

Well, I’ll only come back to the office

on one condition, and that’s if one of

those models you mentioned is there.

Dream on.

But I

promise I

will make

you a cup

of tea and

leave that

on your

desk

instead.

Georgina

Roberts

The lowdown

Office chic

Chloe Cherry

in the Versace

advert

childhood spent sheltering from
bombs and tanks in Kabul and at
refugee camps in Pakistan.
He had a few words of English and
the name of a family friend in London.
He worked as many jobs as he could
find, funded himself through
education and eventually won a place
at Cambridge to read medicine,
followed by Harvard and Imperial
College London. He now works for the
NHS as an A&E doctor and lives with
his British wife and their two young
children. Integrating and giving back
to the country he now calls home was
always his dream.
“All refugees like myself want is
safety and a fair chance to restart their
life, for their claims to be assessed and
for them to be able to contribute. I
used my determination and resilience,
but also the compassion of British
people and the government. I might
not agree with people who say Britain
has no more room for refugees but
when I meet them in A&E, for
example, and talk to them they are
kind. If we allow natural interaction,
integration will take its course.”
His paediatrician brother is now
embarking on a new life in America.
After three months in a refugee camp
he is living in Virginia with his wife
and baby. He works as a lab
technician, because the US authorities
do not recognise his qualifications.
He’ll have to start again from
scratch, Arian says, but he is safe.
Another brother, who worked for an
NGO, escaped to the US just before the
Taliban took over and is working for
the NGO again as an interpreter for
refugees. Six of his sisters are in Kabul
with their father, reliant on Arian for
moral and financial support. The
pressure on him is, he says, immense.
“My father has always been an
optimist, but the past few months,

every time we speak, after about ten

minutes, he starts crying. He has lost

his wife, he has lost his sons and he’s

left on his own in his mid-seventies,

grieving, and I can’t get him out.

“There are no visas and no safe

route. Of course we can’t get

40 million people out, but we have to

share responsibility globally. For more

than four decades we interfered in

Afghanistan. We didn’t go in there

with aid at first, we went in with

bombs, and it’s always the people who

bear the brunt.”

The pressure on him is compounded

by seeing and hearing footage of the

war in Ukraine, which is triggering for

his post-traumatic stress: the Russian

rockets raining down on Donbas

sound the same as the Soviet ones

from which he cowered in cellars

as a child.

Most of the family are now

scattered. One sister, Gululai, is

married to a man who worked in

Kabul for a Swedish NGO. Until last

August they lived in a nice house with

a car and the children were going to

school. True, the security situation was

deteriorating: kidnappings were

common and corruption was rife, but

it was home. With the return of the

Taliban, her husband’s job put a target

on their backs. They ran.

The Swedish government arranged

visas and travel and they were flown

to Sweden via Pakistan. The sister

took pots, pans and spices. She told

Arian that when they got to wherever

they were going she wanted to be able

to cook for her children.

“And they are some of the lucky

ones,” he points out. “But the life they

built, the family, the relatives, it has all

gone, disappeared overnight. Now

they are refugees, starting a new life.”

His sister told him that when they

arrived in Sweden this year, for the

first two months she cried constantly.

She missed the sisters to whom she

spoke all the time, popping in and out

of each other’s houses, cooking meals

together. Now she is learning Swedish,

the children are in school and already

fluent, and her husband is working

once again for the NGO. The children

miss their cousins in Kabul, but they

are safe and there is food on the table.

“There was no future for them in

Afghanistan. Where would they get

educated? What could they do with

their lives? They are intelligent and

ambitious; one of them wants to be a

doctor, the other a dentist, but they

had no way of fulfilling their

ambitions. It was the same for me: I

had no hope of doing anything with

my life,” Arian says.

Today he tries to help Afghanistan

and other places, including Syria and

Ukraine, with a charity called Arian

Teleheal. It’s a network of 150 doctors,

in the UK and elsewhere, who use

their smartphones to offer free

medical advice and support to other

A&E doctors in hospitals and the most

remote regions. As long as they have

internet connection they can get help.

He’s also setting up Arian Wellbeing,

a venture that he hopes will become

an online hub to help specialists assess

and treat mental illness quickly,

comprehensively and effectively, at a

time when NHS waiting times for

mental health services, as well as

those for physical illness, are

soaring, and with many private

services not addressing mental

health appropriately.

Last week he took a rare holiday to

visit his sister in Sweden. It was the

first time he has seen her since a

family reunion in Kabul in 2017 to

celebrate his son’s first birthday. His

mother had still been alive then, and

there was a party, cake and a huge

feast, and everyone danced and was

happy. He pauses to compose himself

and then continues. “Suddenly the

next time I see her she’s in Sweden.”

His wife, Davina, and sister don’t

speak the same language, but they

communicate through food. Davina

went home with spices of her own and

now, in her kitchen in Chester, she

tries to recreate the food cooked

thousands of miles away by the

Afghan grandmother her children

barely knew. The couple met when she

was working in hospitality at a hotel in

Knightsbridge and he happened to

meet a friend there for a cup of tea.

They married in 2014. Their daughter,

Alana, is one and their son, Zane, is six.

Arian has no idea when, or if, the

whole family will be reunited. Britain

is home, he says, but he was once a

refugee, like so many of his family now.

“I’m very thankful to the people here

and for their compassion. We all have

it in us, and if we all come together we

can do a lot of good in the world.”

Dr Waheed Arian

and his wife, Davina,

visiting family in

Sweden. Below: as a

child, with his parents

in Afghanistan

In the Wars: From

Afghanistan to the

UK and Beyond,

A Refugee’s Story of

Survival and Saving

Lives by Dr Waheed

Arian is published

by Bantam Press at

£20. The paperback is

published by Penguin

on June 23 at £10.99