AFGHANISTAN. Mazar-E-Sharif. 2008. Fahima, on her wedding night, surrounded by her nieces. She is the bride of Dost Mohammed Khairy. This was Dost’s first time back in Afghanistan since 2001. In 1999 he was working for the United Nations and contracted Guillain-Barré Syndrome by drinking polluted river water. The disease left him in a wheelchair with limited function below his neck. The U.N. abandoned responsibility for him, despite the years he had spent working for them in some of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan. As a local hire without a contract, he had no recognized claim. His family sought treatment for him in Pakistan. Accompanied by his mother, he spent two years at a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan. In 2003 some remaining friends at the U.N. helped him to get refugee status and move to the United States. He settled outside of Phoenix with his mother and was later joined by his younger brother, Farshad. They moved to a cramped housing complex, which housed many other refugee families from former conflict zones. Dost lived in his own room in the apartment while his mother and Farshad shared the second bedroom. The family were surviving on small Social Security payments while Dost learned English at a community college, wrote commentary on the Afghan conflict and chatted on Skype with other Afghan refugees. His mother and brother took care of the daily tasks: she cooked and cleaned, and Farshad bathed Dost in the mornings, brought him food and cigarettes, and lifted him in and out of his wheelchair. It took three years for Fahima to clear immigration proceedings and come to the United States. She and Dost have two children.