" Marine Capt. Adrian Kinsella, left, and his roommate, Mohammad, leave the Maritime Museum of San Diego after a Fourth of July fireworks celebration in San Marine Capt. Adrian Kinsella, left, and his roommate, Mohammad, leave the Maritime Museum of San Diego after a Fourth of July fireworks celebration in San Diego Bay, Calif., on Friday, July 4, 2014. Mohammad was Kinsella's Afghan combat interpreter. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group) ( LiPo Ching ) After 3 ½ years of frustrating efforts to get Mohammad a visa, Kinsella finally stood at San Francisco International Airport in January, waiting to embrace a man he calls his brother.
"It was like I was being born again," said Mohammad, whose last name is not being used by this newspaper because his family remains in peril. Today, they are roommates as Kinsella attends the UC Berkeley School of Law. Mohammad works at a high-tech company after a chance meeting with the CEO at a Super Bowl party, drives a used Prius and is making plans to become a U.S. citizen. Advertisement As American forces draw down from Afghanistan, the pair also are focusing attention on the plight of interpreters. They have traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby lawmakers and shine a spotlight on combat translators who haven't received the sanctuary they were promised in return for their service.
They also have sought unsuccessfully, so far a change in the special immigrant visa program that would allow Mohammad's family, still in hiding, to join him in the United States. Marine Capt. Adrian Kinsella, left, fist bumps his roommate, Mohammad, right, after Mohammad finishes skeet shooting for the first time at the Camp Marine Capt. Adrian Kinsella, left, fist bumps his roommate, Mohammad, right, after Mohammad finishes skeet shooting for the first time at the Camp Pendleton Recreational Shooting Range in Camp Pendleton, Calif., on Saturday, July 5, 2014. Mohammad was Kinsella's Afghan combat interpreter. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group) ( LiPo Ching ) Together again in Northern California, they marvel at how their roles are reversed. "Adrian is my interpreter now," Mohammad said. He paused to look at Kinsella, breaking into a sly smile. "But he's still not as good as I was for him."
Sitting at a Berkeley restaurant patio with friends on a recent sun-bleached Saturday, Kinsella and Mohammad couldn't be more different. Kinsella, 28 -- the type of no-nonsense Marine who sees a project through once he sets his mind -- attended Cornell as an undergraduate and will become a Marine judge advocate when he graduates from UC Berkeley next year. Mohammad, 25, was raised in Kandahar and became a translator simply as a way to help support his family. He also radiates a quiet calm. There's a reason why American service members nicknamed him "Yoda" -- much to his chagrin when he later was shown a picture of the "Star Wars" character. They met during Kinsella's seven-month tour in Helmand province. Then a second lieutenant, Kinsella led a 35-man platoon that often patrolled the countryside. Kinsella said his time in Afghanistan largely was peaceful and that they "only" were shot at once. But every time they left the base, they were on edge.
"You just didn't know who the good guys or the bad guys were," Kinsella said. Mohammad did. Kinsella, well aware that the safety of his men and him rested at least partially in the hands of the interpreter, came to trust him completely. "He gave you the context needed in a war zone," Kinsella said. "He would tell you what was really going on when he translated. He would say, 'They're lying, and this is why.' This was a man who really wanted to have a hand in creating a better place." Mohammad paid a terrible price. When they found his father's body in 2009, he had been grotesquely mutilated, including missing fingers and holes in his head. Mohammad's work as a translator had been discovered by the Taliban.
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