I remember it was August 15, 2021. I was sleeping. It was seven in the morning. My mentor Don Gangel called me and said, “Hey, buddy, you have to come to the airport because the situation is completely different.” I said, “What? really?” “Yes,” he said, “the Taliban captured the whole country. You don’t know about that?” I said, “No. I was sleeping.” He said, “Wake up. C’mon. You have to come to the airport.” I said, “You’re joking.” He said, “No, I’m not joking. Come on, you have to come to the airport. I will talk to the marines, and this is your exit code.” The gate pass code. “When you come to the gate, show the code for the guards and they will let you go inside.”

When I arrived, there were twenty thousand people crowded around. Lots of people. I was telling people to let me go inside and they said, “We have the documentation, so we have to go. You don’t have to go.” I said, “I do have documentation. I am an SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] person. I have everything with me.” They said, “We have it, too.” I said okay. And they said, “You cannot go. We are the priority.” I told myself: You cannot negotiate with these people — with twenty thousand people at the same time — when your wife is eight months pregnant. You have to think about her.

Then I decided to go back home. When I got there, I called my mentor again. I said, “Hey, Don, I cannot come right now.” He told me to send some pictures. When he saw the pictures, he said, “Send me your location.” I said, “Okay, this is my location.” When I sent him my location, he told me, “Okay. This is another way you can come in, and you have to try again right now.” It was ten o’clock at night. I said, “Okay, I will go right now. I will go.” My wife, she was completely tired, eight months pregnant. It was complicated. It was difficult for her and for me. I told my mentor, “Hey, Don, you know my wife’s eight months pregnant? And I have to think about her and think about my baby.” He told me, “I know. I’m fighting for you guys because if you stay, I’m pretty sure you will not have a life, because they will search for you and they will find you.” I said, “Okay.” I started moving. When I got there, there was another gate. There were fifty thousand more people. I thought, “Oh, this is complicated for me.” My brother was with me. He told me, “Hey, brother, I’m sorry. I feel so bad for you, but you cannot go inside. We have to go back.”

Then I called my mentor again and I said, “Hey, Don, I’m sorry. I cannot go.” He said to me “Okay, wait over there. I will talk to the marines and they will come outside.” I said okay. So there was another place. I get there and tell my wife, “You have to wait here, and I’ll be back.” She was concerned. She needed water. She was very hungry. I got her some water and then we waited four hours over there. Don said, “The person was there, he was looking for you.” I said “Come on, Don. There’s lots of people. I respect you. But, to be honest, I cannot stay here because my wife, she’s pregnant.” And he said, “Okay, go home and I’ll call you back.” I went back home. My father told me, “You have to stay here because your wife is sick right now.”

I was home for two days until Don called me and said there was a secret gate. He sent me the location. “You have to take a cab right now. You have to go to that gate. Right now.” It was nine in the morning. When I went there, it was ten. I waited for two hours. And Don was concerned; he said I had to stay. I said, “No, I want to go home.” He said, “You have to stay, I’m telling you.” I told him, “No, because my wife is completely done right now. I have to go home.” I took another taxi. After twenty minutes, I was near home when a sergeant major in the special forces called me and said, “Hey, Ahmad. You are Ahmad?” “Yes, I’m Ahmad.” “We are waiting in that place for you. Are you available?” I said, “Really, you are waiting for me?” And he told me, “Yeah, we are waiting for you. This is the gate.” And I had been there actually — twenty minutes before, I was there. He told me, “You have to be there in one hour. We will give you an hour, after that, we will have to go back inside.” I told my brother, “You need to talk to the taxi and we have to go back to that same place.” So the taxi driver said, “Okay. No problem.” I told the taxi driver, “You have to go faster. You have to go faster because right now the situation is urgent.” My mentor was calling me saying that I had to go. “Where are you? This is the location. This is the code. You have to go. You have to talk to them.”

When I got there, there were a lot of NDS guys, from the National Directorate of Security of Afghanistan. They were protecting the area. They were shooting. When I got there, I told them that these marines were waiting for me. And one said, “Oh they’re waiting for you? Go back. If you don’t, I will shoot you.” I said, “Okay, don’t … don’t worry.” So I made a call. “There’s a person who’s telling me if I don’t go back, he’ll shoot me.” The sergeant major on the phone tells me, “You have to take a scarf, like a flag, like a white flag. Put it up and we will come.” I said okay. So I saw that they were actually coming. And they told me, “Hey, come on, come on. We are waiting for you.” That guy from before, he told me, “Oh, I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry.” We got inside.

But the biggest problem was inside. When we went into the airport, my wife passed out for two hours. Because she hadn’t been drinking or eating for two or three days. She passed out. There were some soldiers. I told them I needed some food, some water. They brought me some. When she ate that stuff, when she drank some water, she was good for a couple of minutes. After that I passed out.

It was completely complicated for me because I had everything ready in my head. I was a person who was eligible for that program, the evacuation program. But I told myself, “If you stay in Afghanistan right now, the situation is completely down. I’m pretty sure you will be a person that the Taliban searches for.” Then I passed out. And then, my brother, he was there. I drank some water — I started to feel a little better. After that, I was asleep for three days inside. After three days, they took us to the airplane. We took off for Kuwait.

In Kuwait, I slept for two or three hours. I was more relaxed because my wife — she had rest on the plane. When we got inside the airplane, I talked to the marines and told them my wife is pregnant and needs a chair. And there was a chair in the aircraft. They told me that after we took off she could sit in that chair. She had lots of pain. She was getting hungry. She was getting thirsty, and she was concerned: “I need water. I need water.” And I was completely worried. This was a bad situation for me.

When we landed in Kuwait, it was too hot. She was concerned: “I need water, I need water. I have a lot of pain. I have a lot of pain.” I called the doctor over there. The doctor says that she’s dehydrated, that she has to drink lots of water. So then they took us to the camp for two or three days. In those two or three days, she had lots of pain — a lot of problems. And I thought to myself: You have to save your wife and your child. This is the most important thing. And my brother, he was supporting me a lot. And he was concerned. I said, “I’m not worrying, but I’m seeing the situation — my wife, she’s in a lot of pain, and she’s eight months pregnant. What about my baby? I have to worry about these two girls.” He told me, “You’re right actually.”  

I went to the clinic over there in Kuwait. There was a captain. A lady. She was very kind. She asked me what happened. I said, “My wife is pregnant, and she is in pain right now — a lot of pain. So if you guys don’t want to take me to the U.S., take us back to Afghanistan because I don’t want to lose my baby, and then my wife. This is the most important thing.” Then she told me, “Okay, what’s your name? What’s your wife’s name?” I told her my wife’s name, my name. Then she told me, “At one o’clock in the morning there’s a flight to the U.S. I will schedule you for that.” At twelve o’clock at night, they came and took us to the aircraft.

After that, we came to Washington, D.C., We were there for one night. Then we came to Wisconsin to the Fort McCoy camp. The people over there were nice people. The military guys helped us a lot. The police helped us a lot. The Afghans over there — the interpreters, the translators, they helped us a lot. I really appreciated that. We were there for three months. Almost four months. But then, after one month, my baby was born in the camp. Not in the camp, in the hospital. It was the 21st of October at four o’clock, 4 p.m. — 4:30 p.m. actually, I remember that time. My baby was born, and she was very happy, and I was very happy. This happened five, six days after we came to the camp. We spent two months there. After that, we came to Florida and here we have a lot of problems right now, but I’m trying to solve them.