Hair raising flight: (Shabibi Shah's recounts her flight from Afghanistan in 1982).

In 1999, seven million people--about the population of Switzerland--were forced out of their countries by war or persecution. Shabibi Shah understands their experience all too well. Next March will be 20 years since she left her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, to seek refuge from an increasingly oppressive regime.

`I don't know how people manage who do not believe in God,' she says, as she recalls her hair-raising journey to freedom with three young children, and the struggles she has been through since then. Eight years after she arrived in Britain, her nephew was killed in a racially-motivated attack outside his family's flat.

Shabibi Shah met her husband, Zafar Shadji, at Kabul University in the 1960s, where they studied journalism. She went on to teach at a women's college in Kabul, while he became a journalist. He was forced to flee the country in March 1982, when his outspoken views fell foul of the Soviet-backed Communist government. Shabibi followed two weeks later, with Yama (14), Parissa (10) and Sulaiman (four months).

In her new book, Where do I belong?(*), Shabibi describes their escape, disguised as nomads, to Jalalabad and then over precipitous mountain paths and roads into Pakistan. They started out `on an ancient lorry, whose wheels were inches away from a drop of several thousand feet' and then, when the road gave out, walked for two days, hiding behind rocks and bushes to avoid being spotted by helicopters. Finally they boarded a truck with no sides, where they were roped together with 20 other passengers.

Before they left Jalalabad, she tried to spare Parissa these hardships by sending her ahead on an easier route with young relations who could pass as locals. As soon as they left, Shabibi panicked. To her relief--and horror--Parissa and her companions returned, having been given away at a military checkpoint by their expensive shoes. Fortunately the army officer who caught them had been so amused that he had simply sent them home.

Once in Pakistan it took two years of struggle and sickness--and in Zafar's case, prison--before they were able to get visas for Britain, where they were later granted asylum. Zafar died in London in 1993, at the age of 52.

Shabibi Shah has recently published a book of poems in her mother-tongue, Farsi. For her, as for many refugees, gratitude to her new country cannot wipe out the pain of exile. `In the space of 18 years, so many things have changed in my life,' she says. `But a big part of me is in a beautiful landscape which I can never forget. I feel without ground.'

That doesn't stop her devoting her time to helping other refugees, in numerous ways. In 1999 she won an award from the National Organisation for Adult Learning for her voluntary work, advising refugees on their day to day problems. She now devotes much of her time to fundraising for Khorasan, a charity which runs a home for orphans from the notorious Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.

(*) Available from 43a Haling Rd, South Croydon, Surrey, CR2 6HS, price [pounds sterling] 7.00 including postage and packing.