Man tries to make the most of his life in the U.S. while his wife is trapped in Afghanistan

Hasan misses waking up at 5 a.m. each morning for his job as an information technology professor at Herat University in Afghanistan, and his wife waking up with him.

Even though she didn’t need to be awake that early, she would eat breakfast with him, walk him to the front door, say goodbye and then go back to bed each day. Hasan said he cherished that time with her.

He has been separated from his wife for four years.

Hasan, who asked to be identified by his first name only for safety reasons, now lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He evacuated Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 because his work on IT projects for the U.S. Embassy and Afghan government put him in danger of Taliban retaliation. But his wife was not able to escape with him and remains in Afghanistan under