Mulakhil rushed out the back door of his house in Afghanistan on Aug. 14, 2021, as his country was on the brink of collapse. He heard his wife sobbing. His two-year-old son called out, “Papa, papa.”

“I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to my son,” Mulakhil said. “It’s a day I will never forget.”

One day later, the Taliban captured the capital city of Kabul, marking the fall of Afghanistan to Taliban rule.

Mulakhil said his life was at risk, so his supervisor from the Afghan Army helped him get into the Kabul airport to escape on one of the planes as thousands of people crowded the gates. He wishes he didn’t have to leave his family behind, but he expected to be able to reunite with them soon.

But more than four years later, Mulakhil is living alone in California, still without his

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