Obaidullah Amin made his way last week to the Kabul airport with his wife, Maryam, and their two children, joining thousands of other Afghans desperate to board a plane to safety.
Unlike many others teeming outside the terminal, Mr. Amin had a golden ticket—a letter from a member of Congress attesting to his work as a translator for the U.S. military and urging his evacuation.
“Introduce yourself to Marines, show the letter, stand strong,” Andrew Darlington, a former Marine Captain who worked with Mr. Amin on a deployment to Afghanistan, texted him from his home in Florida. “You have served with them, introduce yourself. You’re one of us.”
Mr. Amin would still need to get through the crowds and past the security checkpoint at Abbey Gate. Mr. Darlington also gave him a plan for that: Carry a sign with the numbers “1,2,3,4” on it. That was a code for Marines at the gate to expedite his path.
The Amins almost made it. But as they neared the checkpoint last Thursday, a suicide bomber detonated 25 pounds of explosives, killing Mr. Amin, his wife and more than 200 others, including 13 Americans, most of them Marines.
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