In Search of Safety Read online

  “Fred was so intelligent that I never needed to say, ‘Damn, we should have asked him this’ or ‘We should have asked him that.’ Everybody trusted Fred. He was highly sought-after not just because of his honesty but because of his ability to determine if the person he was talking to was telling the truth.” The friendship between the two men would eventually lead to a series of momentous events.

  The biggest attack was in 2008. Most of the translators had special radios to listen to the enemy’s conversation. The radio scanned the area, looking for enemy conversations. At this time, I heard that the Taliban were going to attack our outpost. It was called [Command Outpost] Najil, a very small military base. There were only thirty U.S. soldiers and twenty-five men from the Afghan National Army. The Taliban had more than three hundred people.

  I informed the company commander of the Pennsylvania National Guard. “The enemy is going to attack us. Make sure to get ready.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I know this from their conversation.” They were speaking Pashai, a different language that they speak in the valley. It’s a completely different language than Pashto, like the difference between English and Spanish. About thirty-five Pashai worked on the base as cleaners. I picked up a word every day.

  It was twelve o’clock at night. They shot a few RPGs at the base. Then they shot at us with the PKM, AK-47s. But we were ready for them.

  The Pennsylvania National Guard was in position. I was inside a room with my scanner, listening, translating, and passing the information to the commander. I thought, why should I do this in a room? Let me go outside and see what the soldiers are doing. As soon as I went outside, I heard a round coming close to me. I thought I was going to die in a second. Rounds were coming close, really close, practically touching my feet. They were shooting at me, but I wasn’t scared. The soldiers were lined up all around the base, shooting back at the enemy. I heard on my radio where their location was. I heard when they were ordered to change directions.

  I ran to the commander. “They’re going to fire from such-and-such location.” Everybody moved to the new location before they started shooting. Then I heard, “Change location. Shoot from south.” I informed the commander, “They’re going to shoot from south.” Everybody charged to the south of the base.

  In battle, all you smell is burning. All you see is smoke. You’re not able to see maybe five feet from yourself because of the smoke. You cannot smell cigarettes, you cannot smell fresh fruit, you cannot smell trees. You only smell bullets and death. War smells like weapons.

  At the end of the battle, thirteen Taliban were killed, and six were injured and captured alive. No casualties for Afghan National Army or the U.S. troops. Everybody was safe. That was the biggest attack I had ever been in.

  Two years after our engagement, Homa and I married. It was a big wedding; 650 people participated in our wedding. My immediate family were ten. Then I have five uncles from my father’s side. Each of them has five kids, so everybody’s coming. Then they have their families; then we have family members from my mom’s side. Then there’s Homa’s family. Family members came from different parts of the country. So many people come to weddings in Afghanistan. It was a lot of fun.

  One morning, maybe twenty days after we were married, Homa was home in Kabul, and I was back in Laghman Province, working as a linguist for the army and for the MEP [Mission Essential Personnel].

  While cleaning our yard, Homa found a piece of paper at the bottom of the door. It said, “We know your son is working for the Americans. He’s an infidel. We will capture him, and he will die. No one would be dead like him. He would be an example to others who are working for Americans.” This was what I wanted to protect my wife from knowing. Homa gave the paper to my dad.

  My dad immediately called me. “Do not come home, because someone is trying to kill you. Move to a new location.” Homa was safe. They wouldn’t hurt my family. I talked to my MEP site manager. “Sir, please transfer me to another part of the country.” He agreed.

  The next morning, when I went to his office, he said, “We don’t have a job for you right now. Go home, and we will call you soon.” I was happy that I could go home and spend time with my family. The first thing I did was move us to a new location.

  Fraidoon waited and waited. No one called. This wait would have consequences, dangerous consequences, ones he never dreamed could happen.

  I waited for the call for two and a half months. I was kind of upset, thinking, “Why aren’t they calling me back? I didn’t do anything wrong. I just asked for a transfer.”

  After two years, translators have the choice to select work at a safe place inside the base or on the front line. I worked for six years on the front line of the war and never asked to be inside the base. Why didn’t they call me?

  Finally Carlo, a very big guy from New York who worked with a private security company, called me. “I have been in Ghazni with the military, in different parts of the country with the military, and heard you’re a linguist,” he said. “Would you like to work for a private security company?”

  “Yeah, sure. What is the main duty?”

  “You’ll be responsible for the security of American bases.” I joined the private security company to become a supervisor. I would be responsible for three hundred armed Afghani security guards on six military bases. For the first half of the month, the Americans trained me. I took classes in such subjects as the rule of law, rules of engagement, and what to do during natural disasters, like floods or snow. I learned what to do if there was at attack at the front gate.

  My main job was to make sure security measures for the American forces were properly carried out by my Afghani guards.

  Fraidoon’s new job was more dangerous than his work as a translator. He drove from one base to another with little protection, in a plain pickup truck or car, providing Afghani security support to American military bases in three provinces and to various embassies in Kabul. He was in charge of two hundred sixty armed guards.

  Meanwhile the MEP were reorganizing their books and came upon Fred’s name. An unthinkable mistake occurred: someone checked a box on his file that said “Refusal to go on a mission.” This was not true. The MEP had not called Fred back. This clerical error could have cost him his life.

  In 2010, our son, Fardin, was born. I was away, working with security guards at a command outpost called Baraki Barak, in Logar Province. My mom, dad, sister, Homa’s mom, dad, and older sister took my wife to the hospital. I was told I had a son the next morning. Now that I was a father, I worried about the well-being of my family. I was always thinking about keeping my family safe. I never thought about me dying or being killed by insurgents. The birth of my son did not stop me from my work. My fight was still against terrorism.

  I was driving three Afghan security guards from one outpost or FOB [forward operating base] to another. We were ten minutes away from Baraki Barak when my car was hit by an IED [improvised explosive device]. The car was destroyed. We were all alive but very, very dizzy.

  I was a little injured, because we don’t care about seat belts in my country. My nose and head were bleeding. There was dust all around me. I was still pushing the gas pedal on what was left of the car. I looked at my military boots. They had been blown off my feet. I was barefoot. I always tied my boots very carefully, but because the explosion was so heavy, they were ripped right off me. My cell phone was gone. People were coming toward us, trying to capture us. I started running, completely out of my mind. I found my cell phone and a gun and threw myself in a ditch.

  I shot toward the people while calling the base. “Sir, I blew up with an IED,” I told them. The first sergeant from Tenth Mountain Division, New York, immediately announced what happened over the loudspeaker: “Fred was just blown up by an IED!”

  I heard them call for a helicopter. I said, “Hey, I’m okay. Just the car blew up. I’m alive, just a little bleeding. My guys are okay. We don’t need a helicop
ter.”

  “No, we would like to find who did this to you.” The troops were on the way.

  It was easy to find out who tried to blow us up. I had seen the guy on the road earlier. I remembered a man with a long beard, man jammies, and a white hat, sitting in a tree, just like a chicken. I even said hi to the guy, trying to be respectful. He didn’t say hi back; he just sat there, waiting for us to drive by. Then he blew up the IED. I was so upset. I chased the guy while shooting five magazines from my AK-47, a hundred and fifty rounds. But he ran away.

  I called my dad. “My vehicle was just blown up by an IED. I’m safe, my friends are safe, the Americans are safe, everyone is safe.” Five minutes later, the whole company of soldiers, including four medics, surrounded us. The helicopter arrived and took us to the base.

  At the time, I didn’t say anything to my mom or Homa. When I went home on vacation, I sat close to them, face-to-face, and told them what had happened. “My car was blown up by an IED, but I’m safe right now. I’m home.”

  Homa started crying. My mom started crying. My sister started crying. The rest of the family heard about it and came to my house. Homa’s sisters were crying. Everyone was crying, especially the females. This is why I did not tell the women about the first fatwa. I knew they would all be crying. I said, “I’m okay. I’m here. Look, nothing happened to me. It’s too late to cry. A week ago, maybe cry, but not now.”

  Homa said, “I made a mistake in my life.”

  “What’s your mistake, Homa?”

  “Because I married you.”

  I said, “Homa, why did you make a mistake to marry me?”

  “Because one day you’re going to die. You are in the first line of the war and you’re going to die. Me and my son will be at home with nobody, with no dad, with no husband. What should we do in the future?

  “Take me somewhere with you, anywhere you choose,” she said. “Let’s go to the mountains — no one will be there, no enemy will be there. We will have a safe place, not a good building, not a good house, just a tent. I will live with you in a tent, but I don’t want you to be in a dangerous area like you are now.”

  Homa continued, “We have everything in Kabul, a house, a car, everything. I don’t need these things. I just need security.”

  “Homa, just wait. Someday, some things will change.” She cried so much. The whole night, she was crying. The next day, she was crying. She didn’t stop. “Don’t cry,” I said. “It’s over. This is not the first time I was blown up by an IED. In 2004, I was blown up too. I’ve been in more than a hundred firefights. It’s okay.”

  Homa didn’t say anything; she was only crying.

  That was it. Even though I wanted to defend my country, I knew I had to make a big change.

  Back in 2009, the U.S. military forces encouraged me to take my family to live in a peaceful country, to live in the United States. The soldiers who were already home wrote to me on Facebook: “By 2014, the President of the United States is going to move all the soldiers in Afghanistan back to United States. It’s going to get worse for you. Apply today.”

  I applied to relocate to the U.S. My reason for leaving Afghanistan was security for my family and me. Because of my work for the U.S. military, the Taliban were trying to kill or capture me.

  At that time, the policy was to get a background check from the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, send the results to the U.S. Embassy, and wait for the call to come for an interview. I did this. There was no call for an interview. For some reason, the envelope was lost in the middle of somewhere.

  The next year, I applied for an SIV, Special Immigrant Visa. For some reason, I was denied. I didn’t know why.

  In April 2014, our daughter, Leema, was born. I was home on vacation, so I was able to take Homa to the hospital. My mom and my older sister came with us. Homa had the baby, and the next morning, we were home. I can’t explain the feeling of having a daughter. I love her more than myself.

  Homa asked Fraidoon to translate her feelings at this time. “When the first time I had a son, I was so happy because I was a complete mom, not only a wife, not only a bride, but I was a mom too. I was so excited. When I had Leema, I was even more happy, because I was a mom to two kids — a boy and a girl. My happiness becoming a mom never changed.”

  By this time, Dave had finished his tour and was back home in Nebraska. He looked for organizations that would help me. After a while, he found the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).

  Dave says that the IRAP was a very small organization, only six full-time paid employees, but they had about four hundred lawyers in their network doing pro bono legal work.

  IRAP vetted me, took my case, and provided me with a lawyer, Sari Long. Sari is the best lawyer. She put in a new SIV application for me.

  Sari says, “I’ve cried only once in my professional life, and it was about this case.”

  On June 9, 2014, Fraidoon and Sari had their first Skype conference call. Sari says, “I was nervous about talking to him because some of these folks have been terribly traumatized. They’ve seen things that we can’t imagine.

  “Fred didn’t open with the fact that he had been blown up by IEDs. He didn’t say that he had a letter from the Taliban saying he was going to be killed. He just said how he loved working with the U.S. military. He answered every question I had. He said, ‘Whatever you do, I’m so grateful. I’ve tried doing this on my own and haven’t gotten very far. I don’t know what the problem is. How can I help?’”

  Two paralegals were also working with Sari and Fraidoon during the first Skype call. They started with the basics: “What are you doing now? What have you done?”

  Sari says, “Fred smiled a lot on Skype, which was disarming because the previous clients I had worked with were too traumatized to smile. He was so American. He punctuated every other word with fuck because that’s how he had learned to talk from enlisted guys. He was, like, ‘I fucking did this, and I fucking did that.’ I tried hard not to laugh. I tried to be a professional attorney, but he was such a disarmingly charming person. We talked about his family. He talked a lot about Dave because Dave was his champion, his advocate. During our initial call, we tried to nail down the details about moving forward on the SIV process. First we gathered all of Fred’s documentation. Then we needed letters of recommendation from former supervisors to prove that Fred had served faithfully and loyally to the U.S. military and affiliates.

  “Dave put out a call on Facebook. In one day, he got sixty-five responses, which was unbelievable. Usually the hardest part of the application for interpreters is to get letters of support. If I wasn’t already convinced that Fred was unique, that confirmed it.

  “I touched base with the National Visa Center (NVC) here in the U.S. to determine the status of Fred’s case and to inform them that I was his legal representative.”

  The National Visa Center did not reply. Sari contacted Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. In seeking a congressional contact, she chose Pocan because Fraidoon served with members of the Wisconsin National Guard, who could say to their representative, “We really, really care about this man. Do what you can.” The congressman came on board. So many people were involved in bringing Fred to the States. Sari says, “I wondered about all those poor people who need this program but don’t have the support that Fred had earned.

  “The National Visa Center’s response to me was to ask for more information. Fred immediately submitted additional information. In July, the NVC said that they had everything they needed. We were feeling good at this point.” Two weeks later, Fred’s application was denied.

  Here is the reason provided for the denial: “Given that your employment was terminated for cause, you do not meet the requirement of faithful and valuable service to the U.S. Government.”

  Sari explains: “One of the requirements for an SIV is proof that you have had twelve months of ‘faithful and valuable service.’ If any negative comments are on record, such as you we
re fired or you had a disciplinary action against you, you will be denied at the very first step of your SIV process. Fred’s former employer, Mission Essential Personnel (MEP), did not keep good records. Their records stated that Fred refused to go on a mission.

  “‘Hey, it says right here that you refused a mission,’ I said to Fred. ‘Did you refuse a mission? Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  “Fred got so fired up. I’d never seen him so worked up. ‘I HAVE NEVER REFUSED A MISSION,’ he shouted. ‘I took on more missions than anyone else. I can’t believe that’s on file. I didn’t even notice this.’

  “Ultimately, we found out that when Fred requested the transfer because of the threats against his life, they replied, ‘We’re going to transfer you to Kabul. Wait for our call. We’ll find work for you at the airport. Just hang out for a while.’

  “Fred waited a long time, but they never called. It turned out that the records were not up-to-date, and they were calling the wrong telephone number. When Fred didn’t answer, they just wrote it up as a refused mission.

  “I was on the phone with the lead officer manager in Kabul, who acknowledged that their records were bad. Nevertheless, he refused to do anything about it. He said, ‘You’re never going to get a new letter.’ That’s what he told me.”

  When the office manager told Sari that they didn’t have time to deal with Fred, Sari was furious. ‘Well,” she said, “I have all the time in the world, and I will call you every day until you fix this record.” And she did.

  “I went to my office at seven in the morning so that I could call MEP in Kabul in the middle of their day. ‘Hey, guys, where are you at with this?’