Refugees arrive at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. on Aug. 27, 2021 after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

CONCORD, Calif. — When I was in high school, I worked at a pizza parlor, where among making pizzas, mixing sauce and occasionally getting locked in the cooler by my friends, I loved folding boxes, transforming them from a flat precut cardboard sheet to the final version we all know and love as a pizza box. The act of folding the box was an art, and I loved to improve my skills by doing it in as few flicks of the wrists and fingers as possible. My coworkers and I would race each other to see who could fold their boxes in as little time as possible. We’d fill the break room from floor to ceiling (to the dismay of our managers), slicing up our hands along the way.

Those skills haven’t transferred to my journalism career, chasing down sources or sitting front of a computer, but they came back to me in full force last weekend when I got to fold hundreds of donated care package boxes at the Noor Islamic & Cultural Community Center in Concord. At NICCC, I folded while in the next room, dozens of others, including my wife (and RIFF Copy Chief) Jennifer Gokhman and our two kids, filled them with supplies for recently arrived refugees from Afghanistan.

Dozens of Afghan families and single refugees had been taken in by my town. The care packages were being packed for families with infants and toddlers, families with elementary-school-age children, families with older kids, couples without children and singles. You know Afghanistan—the country that the USSR invaded in the ’70s and royally messed up. Then our own country turned around and did the same. We slowed Al-Qaeda but still contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the process, many of whom had nothing to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or ISIS—and many were children. As recently as Aug. 29, while leaving the country, the U.S. sent a drone strike but hit the wrong car, killing 10 people, seven of them children. I was in favor of the war after 9/11. I believed a lot of things back then that I don’t believe in now.

Thanks to news reports by Bay Area journalists (including our own Tony Hicks), I’d found out that the people who went through hell to escape that country after our military’s departure were already being resettled right here. U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, whose office previously hooked me up with a tour of the U.S. Capitol (I got rejected for a White House tour; Trump was in office), was involved in helping. So I called up the NICCC and spoke with Sedique Popal, the imam of the center.

“These people came here with just the clothes they wore. They need our help,” he said.

I spoke with him briefly three times. He never asked for my name, but he made it clear that the center needed help with donations and distributing the care packages. So there we were, listening to Popal debrief a room of volunteers, some of them children—mine weren’t the only kids there—on a detailed packing strategy and what items needed to be in which box.

The only Muslim places of prayer I’d been to previously were as a tourist in Israel or Jordan, as a curious onlooker. In the past, I’ve covered events at mosques as a newspaper journalist. There were multi-religion prayer assemblies in the wake of 9/11, as well as the arrests of people suspected of ties to terror organizations. I remember covering attacks on Muslims and Sikhs for the University of Oregon newspaper, the Daily Emerald. (I was in college on 9/11. I still remember waking up to an alt-rock station with what I thought was the DJs telling a very long, very bad joke about the Twin Towers coming down). I was very clearly an outsider and wasn’t too interested in not being an outsider. I was writing as an impartial observer and storyteller.

Last weekend, I didn’t want to be an impartial observer. I wanted to do my part for people who have led much more difficult lives than I have. My family actually arrived in the U.S. in the late ’80s as refugees, too, but it’s not like we were being beaten, shot at and bombed while trying to force our way into an airport and be herded onto military planes. So, for just three hours or so, I worked harder at folding those boxes than I’d worked on anything as of late, while Jennifer helped people of various religions pack the boxes with toothpaste, clothes, shoes, etc., while my kids (who are 7) wrote messages to other kids and filled backpacks with school supplies. My daughter is pretty astute and has been following some of the news with me. My son has special needs and didn’t understand as much, but he clearly enjoyed doing something that helped other people. It was worthwhile to them.

The Noor center is just 10 minutes away from my house, and I pass by it often. Friday, I saw their parking lot full again. There’s clearly more work to be done, and volunteers are welcome. Donations are still welcome, too. However, I know that chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re not in my town at all. Well, guess what? Planes full of refugees were already landing in Philadelphia and elsewhere while the evacuations were still front-page news weeks ago.

It’s likely that you live close to a city or county taking in these people, and there’s something you can do to help your community—something that will make you feel better than any concert could, which is how I felt for a few hours last week.

There are numerous regional and national organizations helping Afghan refugees, including:

Lutheran Services

International Rescue Committee

Jewish Family and Community Services

Afghan Coalition

City of Fremont

State refugee service programs

Human Rights First

International Refugee Assistance Project

HIAS

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.