Inside Heldman, Fozia Karzai offers a taste of Afghanistan to the Cambridge restaurant’s loyal customers.

Fozia Karzai strides forcefully into the spacious main dining room of Helmand, the restaurant she and her family founded after fleeing Afghanistan nearly two decades ago.

The dark dining room is elegant—the walls are a pale yellow with dark blue trim and Persian carpets line the floor.

Karzai’s cuisine at Helmand has long been well-regarded.

But her personal relationship to Afghanistan’s ongoing struggle for democracy—her brother, Hamid Karzai, was named head of the Afghan interim government in December—has added new mystique to the five year-old Cambridge restaurant.

The Political Dimension

Sitting in a couch at the front of the dining room, Karzai describes her childhood in a family of dedicated Afghan politicians. She speaks frankly in her heavily-accented English.

Karzai’s father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was the speaker of the Afghan parliament when she was growing up in Kabul.

According to Fozia, her father held enormous power as the leader of the Populzai clan until three years ago—when he was assassinated by the Taliban in Pakistan.

After her father’s death, Karzai’s brother became the leader of the Populzai clan.

She tells stories of her brother’s near encounters with death as a rebel leader fighting the Taliban.

At one point, Karzai says, Hamid was surrounded by Taliban and al Qaeda forces who were about to execute him. He only escaped, she says, because a bomb happened to go off nearby, scattering the soldiers. Although he was injured by the bomb, Karzai says, he was able to escape.

“His heart was with his people,” she says. “He had a very strong feeling for how much his people were suffering.”

Since December, Hamid has served as the interim leader of Afghanistan. Karzai says she continues to speak with her brother on the phone regularly and trusts his ability to bring peace to Afghanistan.

“I have confidence in him, because I know he’s working from his heart, even if it’s a hard job,” she says.

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