FAYETTEVILLE -- Hillary and Chelsea Clinton stopped in Fayetteville when they were seeking brave women for their television documentary series "Gutsy" to meet women who flew halfway around the world to get to America.
The dangerous escape of Aqela Faizy and her sister-in-law, Basira Faizy, from Kabul, Afghanistan, began with their family members shutting themselves inside a relative's home and not going outside even for groceries for more than a week.
"My husband called at 9:30 in the morning and said everybody needed to come home," Aqela Faizy said. "We thought it would take months for the Taliban to reach the capital, but it happened so quickly."
Her husband, Mahdi, worked for the swiftly collapsing regime, making him and all of his family targets.
The U.S.-supported government did not last past the withdrawal of U.S. troops, who first arrived to drive out the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and in Washington, D.C.
Even if the family had not been considered enemies of the incoming Taliban, life in Afghanistan would be intolerable, Aqela and Basira Faizy said. Basira Faizy was in her last year studying for a medical degree, she said. She was also taking classes to learn how to drive. The driving instructor told her he could no longer teach her with the Taliban arriving, she said. And she knew she would not be able to complete her medical degree.
"Here, I have to start all over again, but at least I'll be able to finish," Basira Faizy said.
"Gutsy" premieres today on the Apple TV+ streaming service. All eight episodes are available to subscribers. The Faizy family now lives in Bentonville and is featured in one of the episodes. Producers of the show reached them through Canopy NWA, a nonprofit group recognized by the U.S. State Department as a refugee resettlement agency. The group formed in 2016 during the refugee crisis caused by the Syrian civil war and, in the past year alone, helped more than 200 people resettle in the region from all over the world, according to Canopy spokeswoman Hannah Lee.
"What is gutsier than moving to a new place and creating a new life?" Lee said.
Canopy staff only found out later the Clintons hosted the show, Lee said. They came to Canopy's headquarters in Fayetteville to record the segment in November.
"We couldn't tell anybody," at the producers' insistence, Lee said.
Canopy was vital to the family when they arrived in Northwest Arkansas, Aqela Faizy said.
"Canopy helped us with everything: school enrollment, finding jobs and housing, everything." And the region as a whole welcomed them warmly, she said.
All manner of community groups and households reached out to Canopy during the Afghan refugee crisis after the Taliban took over, Lee said. Among those who offered to help were former members of the U.S. armed services who spent past deployments in Afghanistan.
"We have a lot of veterans who called us and said they had dear friends in Afghanistan and asked us what they could do to help," Lee said.
Another factor easing the transition was that Mahdi Faizy earned his master's degree in public administration from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He studied there for two years under the Fulbright Scholarship program, Aqela Faizy said.
Life here is incomparably better than it would be in Afghanistan even if the family had somehow survived, both Aqela and Basira Faizy said.
"Women are prisoners, prisoners in their homes," Aqela Faizy said of life under Taliban rule. They are not allowed to leave home without their husbands or other male family members, even to shop for groceries. She knows women who stayed who were abused by Taliban members, forced to marry them and now live like slaves.
The Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021. The Faizy family -- 15 of them ranging in age from 3 years old to grandparents -- left the house they were staying in after midnight Aug. 24, moving forward at a creeping pace in a packed crowd at the airport, hoping no bombs would go off. Terrorists attempted to stop evacuations. One suicide bomb on Aug. 26, for instance, killed an estimated 170 people and wounded another 150, according to news reports.
The whole family crowded into a packed transport plane -- after the three among them who had visas spent hours refusing to go unless they all went, negotiating with soldiers at the gate.
"We didn't know where we were going, but it was a choice between a free life or dying," Aqela Faizy said.