The Afghan organic chemist who can’t return home

Imagine fleeing Afghanistan with your family at age six, growing up in Iran as a poor refugee and, against all the odds, winning national science competitions and becoming one of the first Afghans to study chemistry at an Iranian university. Now imagine that you return to your homeland and use your expertise to better the country for most of a decade, only to find yourself back in Iran working on a doctorate and then stuck there in a drawn-out PhD, unable to support yourself or your family.

That’s the reality for organic chemist Abdul*, who has extended his postdoctoral post at the university in Iran as long as possible and is afraid that any day he and his family will be forced to return to Afghanistan where they won’t be safe. Abdul has not been paid for a year and has nowhere else to go.