Spanish club welcome Afghan wheelchair player who fled home

Bilbao - Bidaideak Bilbao is also trying to help other wheelchair players who were left behind in Afghanistan

The captain of Afghanistan’s wheelchair basketball team has found a new home — and a new club — in Spain’s Basque Country.

Nilofar Bayat, who fled Afghanistan with the help of the Spanish government after the Taliban took over this month, will be living and playing in the city of Bilbao.

The Bidaideak Bilbao club said on Thursday that Bayat and her husband, Ramish Naik Zai, who is also a player, are expected to start practising with the rest of the squad next month. The club, the current Spanish champions, are waiting for their paperwork to be taken care of so they can register them with the local federation.

Bidaideak Bilbao is also trying to help other wheelchair players who were left behind in Afghanistan, including Latifa Sakhizadeh, who contacted the club after hearing the news that they had welcomed Bayat.

Sakhizadeh is still trying to get to the airport in Kabul to leave Afghanistan, the club said.

Bayat was a young girl when her family’s home in Kabul was hit by a rocket during the Taliban regime, injuring her spinal cords and killing her brother. Bayat started playing wheelchair basketball and eventually made it to the national team.

Since, she had been active advocating for women’s rights and the rights of women with disabilities, which increased her fears of retaliation by the Taliban back home.

“The Taliban destroyed all the things that I worked hard (for) in these last years,” she said in a news conference after arriving in Spain last week. “They destroyed just in one day all of my achievement, all of my hard work.”