For five years, Humaira Mughalzai has lived in the United States, and still there’s no answer to the question she’s posed to politicians, volunteers, lawyers, psychiatrists, co-workers, friends, the Department of Homeland Security: Why isn’t my husband here?

BY MATTHEW HANSEN | Lincoln Journal Star

Humaira Mughalzai waits, but not patiently. Not any longer.

She forces her way to the front of the crowded waiting room at the Omaha immigration office.

She pesters staffers at the local office of a U.S. senator.

She haunts the buildings that house the many nonprofits trying to help the area’s refugees.

These waiting rooms have changed and blurred. They have become a single place whose sole purpose is to deny Humaira the thing she wants most.

Some people have listened. Some have tried. The best have given a chunk of themselves to her cause, willingly entered her bureaucratic nightmare.

Five years she’s lived in the United States, and still there’s no answer to the question she’s posed to politicians, volunteers, lawyers, psychiatrists, co-workers, friends, the Department of Homeland Security:

Why isn’t my husband here?

“The senators tell me it’s because of a security clearance,” she says. “Pakistan is telling me it’s because of a medical clearance.

“Immigration says it’s the new government regulations.

“Who should I believe? Which one is true?”

So Humaira writes, but not so nicely, not anymore.

The 27-year-old Afghan gets off work at National LTC Pharmacy, where she’s a technician. She drives across town to one of the two homes on 21st Street she shares with her parents, brother and four sisters.

She logs onto the Internet and begins to type yet another e-mail to yet another agency.

She isn’t the only one trying to cut through an immigration process not even immigration attorneys fully understand. Every refugee has an immigration horror story, she says.

But hers is different. Hers is worse.

In some of the e-mails, which she saves in a bulging folder, she tries to explain in broken English:

The Soviet rocket that slammed into the family home in Jahalabad.

The 40 young girls her age who held hands and jumped into the river, drowning themselves so they couldn’t be taken as teen brides or raped by the mujahideen.

Her father nearly beaten to death by the Taliban because he’d worked with foreigners.

The Talibs beating her with sticks because she refused to be quiet.

Then Humaira tries to explain how everything changed after her family fled to Pakistan and she met another young pharmacy rep named Ishaq Mohammad.

Humaira’s father knew Ishaq’s father, so the families spent time together, allowing the two young adults to speak more than is usually permitted by Afghan custom.

People listened when Ishaq talked. They crowded around when he entered a room. She noticed.

Ishaq’s family visited more and more. They eventually started the negotiating process required before an arranged marriage.

The small wedding took place June 30, 2001, Humaira says. After that day, the couple ate lunch together, traveled to each others’ offices, talked deep into the night.

One day when Humaira’s boss saw her alone, he joked she didn’t look right. She was missing half her body, he said. Ishaq wasn’t there.

But the couple’s joy was tempered because Humaira had learned her family’s visa application had been approved.

In August 2001, she left for the United States. Ishaq couldn’t come because his name wasn’t on the application.

Everyone assured her things would be fine — Ishaq would surely be able to follow soon.

His exit from Pakistan proceeded according to plan, for a time, even after Osama bin Laden ordered the destruction of the World Trade Center from Afghanistan.

Things would work, she told herself, even as, more and more, her chest tightened and she strained to breathe.

Anxiety attacks, doctors said. They called it post-traumatic stress disorder triggered by her violent past. They hospitalized her twice.

Still, it was OK — Ishaq’s application was approved by U.S. immigration officials in May 2002, and the family readied for his arrival.

He didn’t show. There’d been an unexplained paperwork delay.

Humaira tried to get an explanation, increasingly frantic as weeks turned into months, then months to years.

She went to the governor’s office. His staff told her it was a federal problem.

She went to Sen. Chuck Hagel’s office. His staff tried to help, contacting immigration officials, the State Department and the American consulate in Pakistan.

Hagel’s office told Humaira her husband’s case was held up because of additional security checks in Pakistan and because the name Mohammad made the background checks more difficult.

This made Humaira angry — every other Afghan man has Mohammad somewhere in his name, she says. It’s like putting a Mr. in front of an American name.

So Humaira attacked the source herself, shooting e-mails into the cavernous bureaucracies of immigration and homeland security.

She eventually received this response from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service: Your husband’s case was approved in May 2002. Why isn’t he here?

“A good question,” Humaira says.

Along the way, Humaira enlisted the help of some of the city’s refugee-oriented charities.

Virgil Carner runs an assisted-living center in Lincoln and volunteers at the Good Neighbor Community Center.

He met Humaira’s family through the center’s project to aid Central Asian and North African refugees.

He has written letters to U.S. and Pakistani authorities pleading Ishaq’s case. He’s offered to sponsor his visa application.

“They’ll answer a few questions but when it comes right down to it nothing gets done,” he says.

“It feels like you’re between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

Dr. Maria Prendes-Lintel, a psychiatrist with the First Project in Lincoln, also sent letters on Humaira’s behalf.

Allison Brown, an immigration lawyer who works for Justice for Our Neighbors, a Methodist nonprofit that aids refugees, sees plenty of confusing delays in the immigration process.

But Humaira’s case, which she briefly researched last year, is taking longer than any other husband-wife case she’s seen.

“I don’t think he or she has done anything wrong, which is what makes this so hard,” Brown says.

“It’s hard to fix it when you can’t even figure out what the problem is.”

Humaira, convinced Pakistani authorities were the problem, traveled there last summer to see her husband and attempt to unknot his immigration dilemma.

The trip began joyously: Humaira, forgetting her luggage as she ran through the airport to jump into Ishaq’s arms.

It ended joylessly: Back on the plane, again waving goodbye after six weeks and no progress on his case.

In the past few months, she’s received letters from federal agencies saying Ishaq could leave Pakistan in November, then February. Now they predict mid-April.

Humaira doesn’t believe them.

She’s grown resigned to the fact she’ll live half of her life in Lincoln, providing for her elderly parents and her five younger siblings, four of whom are in high school or community college.

She’ll live the other half sitting in waiting rooms, peppering government officials with e-mails and dialing Ishaq late at night in Pakistan.

She glances at the TV that plays Indian music videos. She does not look at the wedding photo atop the TV.

“I cannot decide my life,” she says. “I am in the middle. I cannot go back. I cannot go forward.

“I am stuck.”

Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.