Getting this Afghan interpreter a home in Sacramento was even harder than helping him escape Kabul. But his story isn't over yet.
This story has a twist you're not going to see coming, and how it ends is up to you.
Welcome to The Experiment, where I’m grateful to all those who reached out last week. Tank’s filled, and motor’s running. Let’s go. My friend Bill McCamley, the former state labor secretary in New Mexico, took a job tending bar in a wealthy Austin suburb and learned the truth behind the worker shortage, and Frank Spring is back with the second chapter of his debut novel, Regulator. And I’ve got another story about an Afghan interpreter also named Lucky, but this isn’t as much a story about getting his family out of Kabul as it is about how hard it is to get him into this country.
Of course, we recommend things to do (have Girl Scout cookies shipped right to your door), read (Paul O’Brien on the similarities between tech and the music industry), watch (Cobra Kai S5), and listen to (Khruangbin and Leon Bridges with “B-Side.”
But first, do you know the trick to sneaking documents past the Taliban checkpoints?
It was about three o’clock in the morning when he got the call. They had just gotten an Afghan who had helped the Marines as an interpreter get safely into the Kabul airport after going basically 24 hours a day for a week. There was a brief celebration, but given the hour and the fact that they were meeting on Zoom, all they wanted was to get some sleep. But the call came nonetheless, and as he promised to do when he raised his right hand and swore an oath, he answered the call.
“We got the next one up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here's the information. I'm gonna send you a Google doc right now with everything I got. We gotta get Lucky out next.”
These are Marines talking here, one of whom is helping on the down low, so I’ll keep the names to myself. What you have to know about these Marines, though, is that they know they owe a debt to the Afghans who helped them in the war. First, they got the interpreters who helped them personally out. Now, they’re getting the rest, working in loose-nit teams, grabbing from the top of the Google doc and working until there’s no one left behind.
And now it was their turn to get Lucky, an interpreter who had been helping the Marines as far back as 2009, and his family out. One Marine on the west coast and another on the east coast connected with Lucky on WhatsApp and coordinated an escape plan based on the intel. It was harrowing for the first couple of days. Lucky waited in line for hours and hours trying to avoid Taliban roving patrols. He had documentation proving he helped the American forces. Those documents could get him into American territory. But if the Taliban discovered those documents, they would kill him. Some documents he destroyed, hiding the essential ones in the only place he could trust the Taliban not to look — his wife’s underwear.
The Marines shared passwords with Lucky and the folks that they believed would be standing at the gate, looking for somebody that matched Lucky and his family's description. One of the attempts was incredibly unsuccessful. The Taliban incited a riot to keep people from getting out, and one of Lucky’s kids was injured.
The Marines from the United States kept coming up with new connections, new lines, new gates, new plans. They had never met Lucky, who never questioned putting his life and his family’s life in the hands of these men. But he had interpreted for other Marines, and he knew they would keep their word. They had promised to get him and his family out of Afghanistan, and eventually, that’s exactly what happened.
This is not a story about how they soon found safe passage out of Kabul five days after the city fell into Taliban hands, or that they only knew their plan had worked when he texted them a picture of his family on the plane to Abu Dhabi, where he and his ten family members now share two rooms in Dubai International Humanitarian City, the largest humanitarian hub in the world.
This is a story about how it was harder to buy a house for Lucky in California than it was to get him out of Afghanistan and about the team that is still working to get him stateside.
It was harder to buy a house for Lucky in California than it was to get him out of Afghanistan.
By now Team Lucky, as they call themselves, includes the active duty officer who needs to stay behind the scenes as well as the veterans, including one who is a veteran. A corporate lawyer who mentored him offered to help as well, but not just because she knew and believed in the Marine. She believed in the mission. You see she, as well as a colleague she recruited to Team Lucky, work for Airbnb.
Four days after Lucky and his family flew to Abu Dhabi, Airbnb pledged to provide temporary housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees worldwide. (I know I haven’t always written positive things about Airbnb, but people, you’ll never hear a bad word about that company from me ever again.) But temporary housing in Abu Dhabi was not a long-term solution. Lucky wanted to settle in Sacramento where one of the Marines lived, so Airbnb lawyer Alexa Summer and her husband David Ragone, who had been helping Lucky and his family get into Humanitarian City, had an idea. And that’s when the Marine got another call, this time from Alexa.
“Hey, you’re going to think this is crazy, but we want to do more,” said Alexa. “We want to buy a house in Sacramento and let them live there rent free until they get their feet on the ground and they all have jobs and they're settled.”
“Yes,” said the Marine. “It's crazy.”
Buying houses anywhere is hard these days, but nowhere more so than in Sacramento. This fall, when Alexa and David decided to engage in residential lunacy, average home prices in Sacramento went up 15.9% to $510,000 while sales actually declined because they’re running out of supply. In 2021, Sacramento had the nation's hottest housing market. Alexa and David had their work cut out for them.
They packed their two small children into the car, drove up to Sacramento the next weekend and stayed with the Marine and his wife, also a combat veteran. “They looked at like 13 houses in one day,” said the Marine. “I think their realtor said it was the most ever seen. But that's how Alexa and Dave do it.”
“I think their realtor said it was the most ever seen. But that's how Alexa and Dave do it.”
After one deal fell through on inspection, Alexa and David returned to Sacramento in the winter. The Marine’s wife pulls up a couple houses on Trulia. They jump in the car and the first house is perfect. Great location. Close to them. Good schools. They love it. The next day, Alexa and David put in an offer, it was accepted, and they closed around Christmastime, which is where the story takes an unexpected turn.
The previous owner of the house had died on December 16 after a long life. A Sacramento native, he was named Taketora but went by Jim. After Pearl Harbor, he and his family were first sent to the Tule Lake Relocation Center located in Modoc County, California, and then to the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. When he got out of the internment camp, he enlisted in the Army with the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team. After World War II, he joined Nisei VFW Post 8985 and was the Commander in 1983-1984. “For many years,” reads his obit, “Jim participated in educational programs teaching youth about Japanese Americans' life in the internment camps and the military during WWII.”
“Needless to say, we sent them back a very strongly worded letter that was like, are you joking?”
That’s right. A Japanese-American man was interred by the United States only to turn around and serve that country in battle and then spend the rest of his life teaching kids what happened. And that house would become a home for an Afghan man who tried to save his country by helping the Marines.
Meanwhile, the other Airbnb lawyer on Team Lucky, Allie Hastings, has been doing pro bono legal battle with the United States government to get Lucky and his family into the country he once served in battle. Because he left with minimal documentation, it’s been two steps forward, one step back in getting him, his wife, and his children the Special Immigration Visas that Afghans who helped our troops were promised. That is pending, as are humanitarian parole applications for his siblings who aren’t entitled to SIVs.
So far, it’s been nonstop roadblocks.
“In a truly amazing set of letters from the government, they essentially rejected our humanitarian parole applications, saying that we didn't have sufficient proof that they had a financial hardship,” said Allie. “Needless to say, we sent them back a very strongly worded letter that was like, are you joking?”
The end of this story is stubbornly unwritten, but this is where you jump in. Call your member of congress and senator and ask them to put pressure on the State Department to get this unstuck, because there are thousands more like Lucky over there.
And if you can, donate to one of the organizations that the #AfghanEvac coalition has vetted, because there are thousands more like Lucky and his family out there trying to get here. Just because the exodus from Afghanistan isn’t on the front pages doesn’t mean the story is over.
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
Más
How we’re getting through this
Not using Latinx
Re-evaluating panic
Eschewing dunkaccinos
Slow-cooking dakdori tang
Ordering Girl Scout cookies
Not wanting to go to the moon
Learning about the Business Plot
Wanting Elmo to have the cookie, FFS
Celebrating the inevitable demise of Uber
Making slow-cooker turkey white bean chili
Making spaghetti and chicken meatball soup
Comparing the Coen brothers to Shakespeare
Learning to pronounce “omicron,” Star Trek-style
Learning why most NFT owners are insufferable on social media
What I’m reading
Mike Allen: “Jobs need workers” - How can we have record unemployment but scant job growth? This explains it.
Employers can't hire people who aren't looking for work, and that's holding back job growth.
Brian Boone: “I like being right. I don’t like how I handle it.” - Cosign
If the United States should fail, I doubt it will be because of some foreign power. America’s destruction will take place inside its own borders because we conflate being wrong with failing or losing. Our destruction will come from those of us who are so damned right all the time. The ones who refuse to listen, who will never even bother to consider other people’s viewpoints and who will protect their worldview with their lives. We must find a better path to safety.
David Leonhardt: “No Way to Grow Up” - Calmate, mis amigos.
Severe versions of Covid, including long Covid, are extremely rare in children. For them, the virus resembles a typical flu. Children face more risk from car rides than Covid.
The widespread availability of vaccines since last spring also raises an ethical question: Should children suffer to protect unvaccinated adults — who are voluntarily accepting Covid risk for themselves and increasing everybody else’s risk, too? Right now, the United States is effectively saying yes.
Paul O’Brien: “Is the Future of Music in First Realizing the Present?” - Incredibly smart observation about the music business and tech.
In Music? From musicians? Build and deliver what people want…
Personal experiences with the artists
Merchandise which people want to wear, show off, and be associated with or collect
Audiences. Yes, musicians produce audiences. Audiences are monetized, by advertisers, sponsors, and business partners
Musicians who embrace this, and the internet, far more easily find success as an artist, than those who hope/expect to get signed by a label (raise capital).
What I’m watching
I agree with S; the only just resolution to Cobra Kai S5 is for all the kids to tell all of the adults (except for Mrs. LaRusso) to buzz off.
Admiral William H. McRaven’s 2014 commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin is worth watching, and rewatching, to learn his 10 lessons of SEAL training
1) If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed when you get up.
2) If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
3) If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.
4) If you want to change the world, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
5) If you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.
6) If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to slide down the obstacles head first.
7) If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.
8) If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moments.
9) If you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.
10) If you want to change the world, don’t ever, ever ring the bell.
Finding out that Maggie Gyllenhaal directed the no-kidding, very-good The Lost Daughter is like realizing that Olivia Wilde directed Booksmart. It’s like when the mousy girl takes off her glasses in an ‘80s movie, except instead of revealing her beauty, it’s her brain.
What I’m listening to
I can’t love Elvis Costello & the Imposter’s new album, The Boy Named If, more. It sounds like a greatest hits album, but of all new material. I’m adding the title track to the playlist.
I love the collab between the Houston-based psych/soul outfit Khruangbin and Ft. Worth’s Leon Bridges and excited about their upcoming EP Texas Moon, due out next month. “B-Side” is going on the playlist.
SASAMI has a new album dropping soon. If “The Greatest” is any indication, it’s gonna be a good one.
Ditto for Mitski and “The Only Heartbreaker.”
Crazy that I wrote off A Tribe Called Quest’s 2016 release, We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service, as a gimmick. It’s remarkably good. Adding “Solid Wall of Sound” to the playlist.
FKA twigs has taken a big step forward with CAPRISONGS. Adding “papi bones (feat. shygirl)” to the playlist.
I think we’re all going to know the name Lingying soon. “Faith” smells like a hit.
I didn’t know I needed a boom-smile-clap song, but here comes The Lumineers with “Brightside,” and here we are.
“Synthetic World” by Swamp Dogg is such a solid, steady groove.
I was today years old when I learned that Mavis Staples’ dad, Pops Staples, was a helluva soul singer in his own right. “Somebody Was Watching” is a good one.
“Color in Your Cheeks” is a head-turning bop from Ibibio Sound Machine.
Thanks to C.C. for turning me onto The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway. This episode is a good place to start.
Last but not least are my friends Walker Lukens and Zac Catanzaro, who are back with a new season of Song Confessional.
Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds and have kept it off for more than a year. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House.