The summer 2014 edition of The Catholic University of America Magazine features a story about Major Joe Evans (pages 26 and 27), a graduate student in the University's politics department. The article focuses on Evans's military career, including combat deployments, and his graduate study. It also mentions Evans's efforts to help an Afghan family come to America. This web extra tells more of their story.
Ahmad Zaki is from Jalalabad in Eastern Afghanistan. In 2004, he began putting his mastery of the English language to work as a paid interpreter for American troops fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. He worked side-by-side with numerous U.S. soldiers, but says Army Major Joe Evans was his favorite.
"I appreciated the way that Joe built relationships," says Zaki. "We would go to the elders' homes, and we were invited to sit with them and eat with them. He gained their trust."
"I knew if we were going to be successful in the Peshawar Valley, we needed to get the Afghans to take part in their government," says Evans.
In 2006 and 2007, they worked together for more than a year in isolated areas of the Nuristan province. "The interpreters were our eyes and ears," says Evans, who as a commander in charge of 200 soldiers tasked with securing a valley, was given six interpreters for his unit. "I chose AZ (Zaki's nickname). He kept me alive literally every day. When you are living among the locals, you need someone you can trust, who knows the culture and the language," says Evans.
The two spent nearly every day together; sometimes they got under each other's skin.
"I had a fishing pole and I kept trying to catch something. AZ taunted me telling me I'll never catch anything. One morning I woke up at 5 to see him standing over me with a fish dangling from his pole. He's lucky I didn't fire him."
Zaki was by Evans's side on patrols and missions, alerting him to danger, helping him build relationships with the locals and village elders. The pay was good for Afghan interpreters, but the job came with risks of retaliation from the Taliban.
Not long after Evans left, Zaki applied for a Special Immigration Visa, a program that allows Afghans who have worked for the United States to take refuge in America if their lives are being threatened. Evans wrote letters of support for Zaki. It took Zaki nearly seven years for approval, but with the help of the State Department and Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services, the family of seven arrived in the United States in February. Evans was waiting for them at the airport. The family has settled in Woodbridge, Va., just a mile from Evans, who has served as their unofficial sponsor.
"Sometimes my kids wait at the window for Major Joe to come. We don't know many people yet, and he makes everybody so happy," says Zaki.
Evans and Zaki share a love of chess. In Afghanistan, Zaki was always the winner. "Joe made excuses. He said he was distracted because he was responsible for 200 soldiers," says Zaki. Now in America, Evans has been the regular winner. "He says it's because he's preoccupied settling his family in a new country," Evans says with a laugh.
Zaki quickly settled four of his children into public school last winter; two in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school. The youngest is still home with Zaki and his wife.
"My biggest achievement is my kids going to school," says Zaki, who tutors them in the English language. "My daughter in first grade is picking it up so fast. She read a book to Joe the other day when he was visiting."
He says he aspires to a job that allows him to use his language skills so he can "give my kids a better life and not be dependent on charity." For now he is simply happy they are all safe, and he is grateful for Evans's friendship in an unfamiliar country.
On a weekday morning last spring Evans sat at Zaki's kitchen table playing computer games with his former interpreter's four-year-old son. Zaki's wife served tea with nuts and dried fruit and the two men reminisced about their days in a dangerous country.
Zaki tells stories of "bullets whizzing over my head." But he would rather tell the stories of fun times with the Americans he served.
"Do you remember the time it was a raining and we ran to the Humvee to take cover and found a nest of bees had settled there? There were bees everywhere," says Zaki to Evans as they both laugh. "Mr. Joe was a good baseball player. He played with the locals. And he was very good at snowball fighting."