Over the past several weeks, the United States evacuated more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan, officially ending its two decades-long military presence there on Aug. 31. Only about half of those airlifted out of the country were Afghans. That means that a “majority” of those Afghans who had worked for the U.S. military and applied for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) were left behind, according to a senior U.S. State Department official quoted by NBC News.

Many of these Afghans served as interpreters for U.S. forces. When I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011, I taught an advanced English class for interpreters. I recorded the interview below with one of them, who has since become a friend. This Afghan man (who prefers not to use his real name, given the danger to his family) worked for the American, Dutch, and Australian militaries during their presence in the country. (The Dutch forces left Afghanistan in 2011, and the last of the Australian troops in 2013.) Fortunately, my friend was able to relocate to Australia after the Taliban seized control. But many of his fellow interpreters remain in Afghanistan and fear reprisals.

In this 2011 interview, my friend talks about the danger and distrust that interpreters regularly experienced on their patrols, and their worries about what would happen to them once foreign troops left. For their troubles, interpreters like him were paid 600 U.S. dollars a month—with the additional expectation that they would be taken care of in the event that the Taliban regained control of the country and sought to punish those who had assisted their adversaries.

This interview, which has been edited for clarity and length, was recorded at the Tarin Kot forward operating base in the Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan.

What’s the longest patrol or mission that you’ve been on?

The longest patrol was in Chorah [a rural district southwest of Kabul]. It was two months. We are staying in tents, near a small FOB [forward operating base], and we had a tent for everybody, for the coalition forces. Also, one tent was for the interpreters. There were three or four interpreters living over there.

You’ve actually had to sleep outside, too?

Yes. When we went sometimes, it was far away from the district, from the FOB. Then we stayed over there for three days, or outside for four days, and just in the desert…. In summer, there’s a lot of snakes and also scorpions.

What’s one of the scariest moments you’ve had during a mission?

In Chorah, down to the Green Zone [fortified area] from the top of the hill. I heard the sound of an insurgent. They were talking with each other, and he said, “They are so close to us, they’re fifteen hundred meters away. A thousand meters. Four hundred meters.” I translated that to the boss. At the time, I was with the Netherlands Army.

And then he [the insurgent] said that we were walking quite near him. He said we were so close—like three hundred meters. I translated that to my boss, a captain, and he gave the order to his own guys to stop. We stopped for a while, for three or four minutes, then we walked back.

We got ambushed out there. At that time, I was hiding myself, lying down in the stream. The weather was also cold, and then I was very scared out there.…

I know this, the local people, they don’t like the interpreters. And they also didn’t like the coalition forces.

In Chorah?

In everywhere. In Afghanistan.

If they have the possibility, I know that they kill the interpreter. [But] I think they’re afraid of the coalition forces. They said that—they’re thinking, “There will be a problem for us.” They will insult the interpreter first.

Some of the interpreters, when they are hired for the first time, they can’t understand the local people, what they are saying. And they are not completely understanding and doing complete interpretation.

One of the funny things which happened in the Chorah district . . . we did talk over there with one person, he was very elderly. He says, “Don’t talk with me, because if you go from here, the people will come, they will insult me. If you don’t talk with me, that will be better for me.”

And the boss said, “No, no, what’s your name? Just tell me.”

He said, “My name is … I forgot right now.”

My boss asked his tribe. He was from the Niazai tribe [a Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan].

At the end, he said, “Can I ask you one question?” I told him, “Yes, okay,” because I did the interpretation. He said, “What is your tribe?” [I told him] I was also from the same tribe that he was, Niazai.

He was very angry at the time. He made me think a lot. He’s also Niazai, but he heard, “coalition forces,” and he hated [me].

How do you deal with that, when you have to tell people things that you know they don’t want to hear?

They just stop talking with us. They say, “Go away from us.” And sometimes, [when] we were going down to the villages, the people did not show themselves. When they saw coalition forces, they just—everybody is going to their own house.

Does that happen a lot?

Yes. They’re afraid of the Taliban. If they talk, the others will tell [the Taliban], “That’s the son of Mahmud. He did talk with them. He did talk before as well.”

Five percent of [the villages], they are willing to talk with the coalition forces … They would say, “We have these kinds of problems.… We don’t have water wells. No electricity.”

They [interpreters] were from Afghanistan, they would be local, and they [the Netherlands Army] didn’t trust them. The cellphone was not allowed. There was no internet. Sometimes, when they had a meeting, they didn’t let [the interpreters] join the meeting, and hear what they were saying. [The interpreters] didn’t have permission to stand over there and hear what their plans were.

With the Australian Army, I was outside for two months [with them]. The rules of the Australians are also very strict. Very difficult, more than the Dutch.

They were having a vehicle checkpoint, and the people who get out from their cars, they were searching. At that time, one of the elders, he said, “Just search me from my front, not from my back … We have emergency work. We are going to Kandahar. We are in a hurry.” He [the Australian soldier] said, “I don’t care. It’s our duty.”

[The elder] was very angry. But they didn’t take care of him. And he said, “If you can bring every soldier into every house, there still will not be security, because the people are angry.”

I have worked one year with [the U.S. Army]. When they’re going outside, they have briefings. They have the interpreter with them, to hear what they are saying. If there is some explosion outside, or casualty, he will understand what’s the plan. I think that’s a good idea.

What are you looking at doing in the long run?

I am worried about my future, what I’m gonna do. If the situation will be critical like now, then I don’t think we can work again. We can’t work like usually we did in Afghanistan.

It will be also very difficult, because in my village everybody knows who I am, and for whom I’m working. They will not leave us alone. And if this government is destroyed, we must go to another country. If we will stay here, life will be bitter for us.

In the future, I want to be a teacher, in the university. Some of my friends, they graduated the same year with me. They got jobs in the university because they are proficient [in English]. I also hope to be, in the future. I didn’t have a good score in the university exam. If a student gets a 75 percent total score, he’s allowed to get a job. But I didn’t get that. I had a 70.

Is it ever intimidating to work with the high-ranking coalition officials?

No, we’re happy to talk, to work with them, because they have a good position. They also have good respect. And they’re also speaking like, literately, not like a farmer.

Is there any advice that you would like to give to coalition forces?

I don’t know. We are just linguists. We don’t have any other advice for coalition forces, because they have a good mind, and a good concept, like what we have. The work that we do, we do it for the coalition forces. They should trust in us as the interpreters.

Also, we hope that when the coalition forces leave Afghanistan, they also take the interpreters to another country, to the United States. Because life will be very bad in the future, when they leave.

Anna Chan Anna Chan is a writer based in Florida.