One of the proudest moments of Mohammad Gulab’s life occurred this past December on a trip to New York City, at a screening of the Hollywood blockbuster Lone Survivor. That’s where he met the actor Mark Wahlberg. The Afghan villager was no film buff. In fact, Lone Survivor was the first motion picture he had ever seen on the big screen. But speaking with Wahlberg is what Gulab remembers most fondly. The movie’s screenplay was based on the saga of Marcus Luttrell, the retired U.S. Navy SEAL Gulab saved from a Taliban ambush in 2005. Wahlberg starred as Luttrell in the fictionalized version of the story, and he was visibly impressed to meet the SEAL’s real-life savior. “You were the true hero,” the actor said in English. When his interpreter explained what Wahlberg had said, nothing was lost on Gulab. He smiled. More than six months have passed since that day. Lone Survivor has taken in $125 million at the box office, and Wahlberg’s hero is back in Afghanistan. Only now he isn’t smiling; he’s afraid. Gulab’s just 40, but his beard is streaked with white. The Taliban are actively hunting for him and his family, he says, and he may spend the rest of his life paying for his decision to protect Luttrell. Gulab has never second-guessed his choice. But in recent months, something seems to have been lost in translation between the two unlikely friends. While visiting the U.S. for a few months last year to help promote the film, Gulab says Luttrell promised to help him move to the United States. But in the end, the Afghan says he spent most of his final month in America alone in a bedroom in California, and was unable to meet with Luttrell before abruptly being sent back to Afghanistan. The retired Navy SEAL repeatedly declined to be interviewed for this story, but a family representative offered a different version of events that suggests a tragic misunderstanding. Nevertheless, Gulab feels betrayed by Luttrell, who he says hasn’t returned his calls in months. He still wants to move to America, but worries he’s running out of time. “My life,” he says, “is in worse danger than ever.” The events that brought these two men together occurred nearly a decade ago. In June 2005, Gulab stumbled upon a stranger at a waterfall near his home in the mountains of Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan. The man—Luttrell—was the only survivor of a four-man recon team that Taliban fighters had ambushed. He’d been shot twice and was bleeding profusely, his back was broken and he had shrapnel wounds in both of his legs. Gulab immediately knew that the man was American—and that the Taliban were after him. Nevertheless, he took Luttrell into his home and protected him. He considered it his sacred duty under the tribal code of honor known as Pashtunwali, which mandates Pashtuns should protect anyone in need. When the insurgents came to demand that he hand over Luttrell, Gulab refused. The Taliban persisted, alternating between promises of money and threats to murder him and the rest of the village. None of it changed Gulab’s mind. He and his neighbors remained steadfast. Without phones or radios, the villagers sent a man on foot across the mountains to carry a message to the nearest American base. Several days passed before the helicopters appeared. And as the Americans airlifted Luttrell out of the village, Gulab left, too. Fearing a Taliban reprisal, he and his family relocated to a house in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province. To support his family, Gulab took a job doing odd tasks at the nearby U.S. military base. And then, crazy as it sounds, the Americans detained the man who risked his life to save Luttrell. The reason: misplaced suspicions that he had collaborated with the enemy. U.S. officials soon realized their mistake and set him free. He was still barred from the base, but the paychecks continued. “There’s no use complaining,” Gulab says. “The Army mindset is the Army mindset.” The paychecks eventually stopped, but the Taliban’s threats didn’t. Five years ago, an unidentified gunman shot Gulab just outside his house. He suffered only a flesh wound on his leg, but the shooting was a painful reminder that he was a marked man. “I put my life, my family’s life and the lives of my tribesmen at risk,” he says. Gulab was hoping to stay in America and acquire a green card; he says Granger and Luttrell tried to help him do so, and that the retired SEAL later advised him to seek asylum. But the Afghan decided against it. Gulab was under the impression that if U.S. officials granted his request, he could never return home. He remained hopeful that his friend, Luttrell, could come through. “I was 100 percent sure the U.S. government would give me a green card,” he says. “I sacrificed a lot.” Unfortunately, Gulab was misinformed. Members of Congress “can only make fluffy letters,” says Michael Wildes, a prominent immigration lawyer who helped Kwame James—the man who subdued the shoe bomber—acquire citizenship. Wildes says Gulab could have ultimately gotten the green card he so badly wanted. Without relatives in the U.S., he wouldn’t have been immediately eligible, but because of his valiant act and the Taliban’s threats, Gulab and his family would likely have received asylum, and then after about a year, could have applied for a green card. Gulab, admits he didn’t understand the process, and if Luttrell tried to correctly explain it, something was lost between the two men. Even before Gulab’s flight touched down in Kabul, a pirated copy of the movie had already reached the Taliban in Kunar province. And as soon as he was on the ground, the death threats began. Gulab says he has changed phones and SIM cards dozens of times. Somehow the callers always manage to discover his new number. “Soon we will blow you to hell,” they warned. The callers, Gulab says, told him that the Taliban’s district commander, Mullah Nasrullah, is furious that his fighters have failed to kill him. Weeks ago, Nasrullah reportedly issued a harsh reprimand to his chief of operations in Asadabad, demanding to know why Luttrell’s savior was still alive. “Just send a suicide bomber and hit him,” Nasrullah ordered, the callers told Gulab. The district commander even phoned once to berate him personally, Gulab says. “The man you protected was an American soldier, not a Muslim,” Nasrullah complained. “There was nothing honorable about what you did.” Gulab disagrees: “I told the commander the man I saved was a human being. The question of honor has nothing to do with his religion. It’s about humanity and self-respect.” These days, Gulab can spend only a few hours at a time with his family. When darkness falls, he leaves for a secret hideout nearby. If he’s not at home, he thinks, the Taliban’s soldiers are less likely to target his house. He wouldn’t dare own a car even if he could afford one. Taliban bombers could kill him with a remotely triggered improvised explosive device. The attempts on his life continue despite his caution. On April 5, someone detonated an IED only a few steps away from the path where he was walking. An even more harrowing incident came days later. At midnight on April 14, a group of men arrived at the house and banged on the front door. Gulab wasn’t there. “Open the door!” the strangers shouted. “We are your neighbors!” The family left it locked. “The noise woke everyone in the house,” says Gulab’s eldest son, 17-year-old Gul Mohammad. “Then the men threw a small bomb at the house.” Although the blast mildly injured one of Gulab’s daughters, the family was too frightened to go outside until daybreak, when they finally took her to the hospital. The silence, he says, saddens him and makes him angry. But he still doesn’t regret saving Marcus Luttrell. He put himself, his family, his tribe In danger for a life. He could've left him there to die but didn't. Please help him.