The reasons for becoming a refugee are always complicated, sometimes tracing back through centuries of a region’s embattled history. In the end, though, they are simple: if you leave, you may live; if you stay, you will die.
Tariq and Amna are not their real names, and I can’t tell you where they’re from. Just call it Dangerland, or Home. They had grown up in that harshly beautiful desert—or maybe it was rolling green hills—as generations of their families had before them, and they stayed until they had no other choice.
No, that’s not quite true: there was one alternative, one that would have let them stay near their beloved families and live in relative comfort. But Tariq’s character and conscience would not allow him to accept that devil’s bargain. In the last days, his tormentors would call him “traitor,” but ironically, that was the one thing he could never be.
“I take my work very seriously. I don't like it when people under my protection get hurt.”
His work for the U.S. was the culmination of all his hard-won education and training. Some of the qualities that drew Amna to him—his attentiveness, his ability to listen and focus deeply as if she were the only person in the world—also made him exceptionally good at his job: he was deeply loyal, and he kept people safe through vigilant attention. Added to his personal traits and prior law enforcement experience, his fluency in English made him a natural choice to lead a team protecting foreign nationals in his native land.
He had lived in the city all his life, and he loved it despite its troubles. It was an ancient one with a long, complex history; at the same time, it was a modern center of international business and political intrigue. As in other cities throughout the region, medieval mosques stood alongside sleek skyscrapers and five-star hotels. For a while, bombs failed to stop the battle-scarred city from carrying on its business or foreign governments from maintaining their presence. The U.S. had its own large, gated, and heavily guarded compound. However, the need for protection didn’t stop at its fortified gates. Local security officers like Tariq were essential for safety outside the compound.
As Shift Leader, Tariq led a team of armed bodyguards to escort Americans when they traveled. Western foreign nationals were walking targets, and even a trip to the grocery store or fish market could be life threatening. They were strangers in Dangerland, but he was at home: he knew the terrain, the people, and the language. In crucial moments, it was sometimes his words that saved lives rather than firepower—reasoning, placating, and finally threatening words instead of a barrage of bullets.
Along with coordinating the team, Tariq took care of countless logistical details that helped his protectees get safely from point A to point B and back. Over the years he won many awards for exceptional performance, including Best Employee of the Year and, in a time of crisis, a special award for “extreme work efforts.” Individual protectees were generally appreciative of his efforts, too. One older VIP, for example, would give her heavily armed bodyguards a motherly pat on the shoulder as she thanked them for keeping her safe.
Sometimes, Tariq and his team had the awkward task of performing emergency cultural interventions. For example, there was the visiting American who tried to indulge his sudden urge to skinny-dip during a trip to the seaside. Tariq’s team had to act quickly when the man flung off his clothes and stood there in his birthday suit. If they hadn’t covered him up, he would have been arrested on the spot. (The fact that he would have been hauled off from most public beaches in the U.S., too, makes the behavior even more baffling.)
Other challenges were far more serious. Eventually, the American compound was in the middle of a battle zone in which rival factions fought for supremacy. For their safety, most of the Americans had to be evacuated not only from the besieged spot but out of the country. Tariq was one of only two local men on hand at that time to help when the missiles started falling from all directions. He and the other local security officer helped U.S. soldiers escort the remaining staff to the airport in a series of convoys.
On the last of these airport runs, a group of armed men stood in the road with their vehicles parked across it to block the way. They pointed their guns toward the convoy and showed no signs of moving.
“I knew we were in trouble when I saw the American soldiers chalking Xs on the roofs of our vehicles. They were marking our group in case they had to call in a drone strike.”
Tariq was the only one who thought to get out of the car and talk to the fighters. He walked slowly toward them, keeping his body language non-threatening, as one of the men pointed a submachine gun at his head. Tariq explained they were escorting U.S. official staff to the airport, and they had to be allowed through, or something very bad was going to happen.
After he spoke, a second fighter forcibly lowered the other’s man’s gun. He said, “Don’t point that at him.” The fighters moved their trucks out of the road, and the convoy made it safely to the airport.
As intense and exhausting as his work could be, until the evacuation it was a steady job with more or less regular hours. Most nights, he made it home for dinner with Amna and their kids. But after the U.S. compound closed down, life became exponentially more dangerous and less predictable. Tariq was still tasked with protecting the few remaining Americans within the country’s borders, but he had to do it in an increasingly chaotic environment with far less logistical support. As hostility toward foreigners grew, he also had to keep as low a profile as possible. Anyone who helped Americans was in danger of being branded the enemy by powerful local extremists.
“About two months before the disaster, I had a dream that I still remember clearly. I was taking a nap, and I dreamed I was with a group of my colleagues at the airport. I knew somehow that something bad was about to happen. One of my colleagues put his hand on my arm and said, ‘Don’t worry, Tariq. You will get through this.’”
The coming crisis would be a final trip to the airport to escort Americans to safety. Many factors converged to make it different from the earlier evacuation; but the fateful moment was, on orders, a seemingly trivial action. That one action would set in motion a chain of events that destroyed their lives as they knew them.