The interpreter slogged through knee-deep human sewage up to his knees, two trips back and forth through steaming sludge, each time carrying two of his children on his shoulders.  At the walled gate separating fear from freedom, he heaved them into the arms of his anxious wife. It was August 22. The next day, Ahmad and Horia Siddiqi and their four children aged 9, 8, 3 and 1, would leave for Colorado via Qatar, Italy, Philadelphia and New Jersey.

The weeks leading up to their escape reads like an international thriller. As Kabul disintegrated, Ahmad Siddiqi sped his family across the crumbling city to reach the airport where Marines promised safe passage out of the country. The once-proud Siddiqis were now homeless, bumping along in the family sedan armed only with a backpack carrying the baby’s milk, a diaper and a couple of shirts.

For weeks, Siddiqi, 35, hid in the shadows of Kabul, a moving target to keep the Taliban guessing his whereabouts. He knew that the rebels were cruising for traitors, riding the streets in U.S. Army vehicles with big guns. They had a list with his name on it, peaking in windows, even asking children if they’d seen him. For a time, he left his family to protect them, a marked man.

“All you have to do is Google my name and you’ll see photos of me with ambassadors and U.S. soldiers,” said Saddiqi. The Taliban knew that the interpreter had also translated for the Americans during intense interrogations and considered him a spy.

As he cased the airport looking for an escape plan, Siddiqi stepped over the body of a man killed the day before. As thousands of Afghans ran by oblivious, Siddiqi drug the corpse to a nearby field and buried it. It was then that he started to lose hope. “I couldn’t take it any more,” says Siddiqi. He called a friend with the State Department and plead with him, “Sir, I think I’m in trouble. Please help us.” 

A life of foreign service

Saddiqi’s relationship with the United States government started when, as a teenager, he got a good job as an interpreter on a NATO Provential Reconstruction Team. His first assignment? Convincing hearts and minds in the dreaded Zabul Province, a Taliban stronghold in the scrub-brush dotted high desert surrounded by mountains on the Pakistan border. “I was like ‘Let’s do it!’ But it was hell,” said Siddiqi.

He was considered a traitor by his own people, leading camouflaged U.S. soldiers door to door in a campaign to convince villagers who were mostly aligned with the Taliban to embrace the idea of democracy.

“There were no police buildings, no courts for the judges, no salaries, no banks; but you have to establish things. We built bridges, canals and schools. We left behind an Afghan army that was so strong! And now people are selling their homes to buy bread,” he said. A twenty year career as the conduit connecting American soldiers with statesmen, and tribal leaders, Siddiqi resume included work with the State Department, the UN, the Department of Defense and NATO.

Despite leaving their families and a lifetime of possessions behind, the loss that breaks Saddiqi as he recounts his evacuation is less tangible. “I left a life of service for a country that we built from scratch and overnight they destroyed everything. Down to ashes,” he told The Gazette via a phone call over WhatsAp. “I knew that if we stayed, my three daughters would not be able to go to school.”

He speaking with The Gazette from a tent-city at Fort Dix in New Jersey where 3,500 other refugees await relocation. In the background, one can hear the squeals of his children, playing with new friends in a strange land. Siddiqi recently revealed his mysterious job to them, a secret he’d kept for fear their friends would find out and tell their parents. “I had to tell them they were in danger because their dad worked for the U.S. government,” says Siddiqi, “I don’t care about my car, my house. At least we are safe. But what about the thirty million who are still over there?”

Call me ‘Kevin’

The dangers of winning hearts and minds in rural villages were all-too real. Siddiqi changed his Afghan name to “Kevin,” initially so that the Americans could pronounce it and, secondly, to keep his identity a secret from suspicious rebels who would kill him for turning his back on his kind.

“We were in the middle of nowhere and we were attacked many times,” said Siddiqi. Once when their GPS lost signal, a villager gave the five-person PRT team the wrong directions into a remote area, directly into an ambush. A bullet whizzed above Siddiqi’s head lodging in a wall behind him, covering him with dust and debris. Minutes before, his supervisor, a young Army Captain from Broomfield, Colo., had asked him why he didn’t get out of Afghanistan.

That question from Scott Henkel, of America’s 82^nd Airborne Division, would be answered 400 missions and 15 years later.

Tuesday, a United flight carrying Siddiqi, 35, his wife Horia and their four children will circle over snowy mountain peaks that look strikingly like the ones back home. Their promised land is Colorado, where a house in a field, a horse named Merlin, and an old Army buddy await .

Siddiqi and Capt. Henkel were a team from January 2006 until April of 2007, with Siddiqi handling translations and Henkel in charge of field strategy.  Their small team made daily runs from meetings at their forward operating base to 12-hour off-road missions to remote mountain villages.

“It builds a strong bond,” explained Siddiqi.

Turns out, it was a bond for life.

A farmhouse with a purple door.

“When Scott came home from his tour in the Spring of 2007, he and Kevin always talked about seeing each other again.” Scott Henkel’s wife, Heidi, told The Gazette.  The Henkel’s and Siddiqis will be neighbors, as she’s found a house on an acreage just blocks away with reduced monthly rent. “Who knew this would happen?”

As Heidi and her volunteers unpack boxes of donated goods, the modest farmhouse with a purple door looks like one big indoor garage sale.

Heidi narrowly tips a mountain of boxes and opens a narrow closet door revealing an ironing board and iron, a vacuum cleaner, and hangers. Behind the front door, three brand new backpacks hang above a rack of tiny shoes including a pair of flip flops, all donations from Colorado residents responding to a plea Heidi put out on Next Door. A GoFundMe has brought in $22,000. A free and clear Black Toyota Sequoia sits in the driveway, children’s bicycles wait for riders in the garage and a cedar wood playground in the back field sits empty, for now.

“We’re trying not to forget the everyday things most people take for granted, like car seats,” says Heidi. The fire department will install those for her. Siddiqi will need a driver’s license. “I think he can drive,” laughs Heidi. “He drove the family from their home to the airport as their city fell!”

She shrugs, “Those queen-sized sheets don’t fit the mattress.” Jane Cole, a fellow volunteer, is holding a tape measure to make sure the baby’s crib fits just so by the window.  “For Heidi and Scott to pull this off is just amazing … to save a family’s life,” says Cole. “I’m here because I admit I’ve gotten caught up in it!”

Outfitting the house has been a culture immersion.  The donated vanilla in the kitchen cabinet had alcohol in it which, as an intoxicant, is prohibited for the halal diet, as defined by the Koran. Even a well-meaning donated treat like Gummi Bears, which are made with pork, are forbidden. 

Saving Ahmad

“When Kabul fell, Scott’s face went from happy-go-lucky to depressed to stark and distant. He knew that Kevin would be a target,” Heidi said.

The plan to save Ahmed/Kevin was launched with midnight conversations, endless texts and reams of paperwork. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” Heidi says as her phone rings for the umpteenth time. “This is a bad time if this is a long chat,” she tells a representative from U.S. Rep. Jason Crow’s office.

Crow and Rep. Joe Neguse’s offices have both helped the Henkels as well as Reps. Ken Buck and Ed Perlmutter and Sen. John Hickenlooper.

In an interview with The Gazette from Washington D.C., Rep. Crow says that in the first two weeks after the fall of Kabul, his office sent 3,500 visa requests to the State Department. “This is one that was successful,” said Crow, who survived two combat tours as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. “We made a promise if they served and fought we would stand by them.”

Crow has been on the political front lines in the effort to protect Afghan refugees who served the United States during the Afghanistan mission. When President Biden announced plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Crow helped found the Honoring Our Promises Working Group and started pushing for an earlier evacuation, which did not happen. One of his bills, The Allies Act, passed this summer, expedited the visa process to get more Afghan translators and other partners out of harm’s way.

Unfortunately, that law did not help Siddiqi, whose request for a Special Immigrant Visa bounced around in the system for six years and never approved, he says, because of a blip on his polygraph regarding a question about alcohol. With the help of the Henkel’s and a literal army, he and his family entered the U.S. legally under humanitarian parole status.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, humanitarian parole is a measure which enables immigrants to stay in America for a period of time without a visa because of “urgent humanitarian reasons.”

Like all of the Afghan refugees, Siddiqi and his family will receive a one-time stipend of $1,200 apiece from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants which must be used within 90 days. That’s $7,200. But he has already gotten three job offers.

Ready-set-go

“Ahmad is on humanitarian parole, so he should be able to work and get state benefits,” Heidi explained to a person on the other line of another phone call.  She still needs to sign up the three oldest kids for school and she also must create a schedule for people who want to drop off meals in the big blue cooler which sits in front of the house.

She lifts the door of a stand-alone freezer full of Halal chicken, meat which conforms to Islamic Law through a particular slaughter practice. She says they’ve been overwhelmed with donations of middle-eastern spices and children’s underwear, which she will donate to a local mosque.

It’s an embarrassment of riches for Siddiqi, whose family was packed into a C-17 with 380 people when they took off from Kabul International Airport headed for Cutter  just over a month ago. “I was smelling so horrible from the sewage canal,” he laughs. He carried that stench for two days before he found a shower and a clean shirt.

There’s been soul-crushing personal news. Friends have messaged Siddiqi that the Taliban bombed his house, which is in the Panjshir area. His parents, brothers and sisters are still living nearby and “… my heart is beating to see them.”

A stamp in Siddiqi’s passport says “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,” a country that officially collapsed on August 15, 2021.

“So, technically, I’m from nowhere,” he says. But then he thinks for a bit and changes his mind.

“This is honest. I’m very thankful for how Scott and Heidi accepted us. They made a home for somebody who lost a home and now Colorado will be our home forever.”

How to help

Up to 2000 Afghan refugees fleeing their homeland during the Taliban takeover may eventually end up in Colorado and most of them are not as fortunate as the Siddiqis. Here’s how you can help:

Afghan Evacuee Support Fund

https://rcfdenver.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create?funit_id=2749

African Community Center

https://www.acc-den.org/

International Rescue Committee

https://www.rescue.org/united-states/denver-co#how-can-i-help-refugees-in-denver

Lutheran Family Services of the Rocky Mountains

https://www.lfsrm.org/

Afghans4Tomorrow

https://www.afghans4tomorrow.org/

Project Worthmore

https://projectworthmore.org

As the Taliban moved into Western Afghanistan to take over Herat Province, Fahemeh Amini started getting scared. For two weeks, the Afghan Army fought to keep the rebels out, but on August 12^th the city fell.

That day, Amini left work at Herat University as armed rebels on motorcycles sped by. She lives with her father and stepmother and has not left the house without a man since that day. “No woman can live alone now. We do not have the courage to go out. The Taliban are so dangerous,” Amini texted The Gazette from WhatsAp, a cellphone application which Afghans are using because it’s said to be more secure than email or regular phone texting. Amini says she cried for the first two days and couldn’t eat.

She is one of several Afghans who are awaiting a Special Immigrant Visa to leave the country. To do that, she needs an American sponsor to support the effort. Wahid Omar, an Afghan-American who fled Afghanistan during the Russian invasion settling first in Omaha and then Colorado, is trying to help get Amini to Denver.

“The rest of the world doesn’t understand the urgency of the humanitarian crisis developing in Afghanistan. There’s no education system, no health care, no economic system, ISIS is moving in and the winter months will be difficult,” says Omar, whose phone is constantly pinging with messages from stranded Afghans hoping for a lifeline. “People are desperate.”

Wahid has already sponsored three Afghans. Watching Afghanistan fall for the second time after twenty years of developing a democracy there is heartbreaking for him. “I see no light at the end of the tunnel for Afghanistan,” said Omar, who beside working on his own with the State Department, volunteers for a national organization called Afghans4Tomorrow.

Amini never married because she felt that education was more important. Her career was on the upswing, working as the general officer of Cultural Relations, Cooperation and Scientific Contracts at Herat University.

She says that since the fall of Herat, the Taliban has removed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, fired everyone at the university and replaced the high level PHD’s with religious figures who have no experience in education. “The Taliban doesn’t need government rules. They decide using their own judgment,” writes Amini, who Omar says may have a chance to leave for Pakistan soon if they can get her a sponsor.

An open letter Amini wrote to Vice President Kamala Harris asking for help has had no response. “At this time I must get out of the country,” Amini wrote. “ There is no way to live like a human here. I can’t breathe.”