There was just one very odd moment

Bennett added: "There was just one very odd moment when an officer I had deployed with called me to his office and said: 'This will never work out, what do you think you are doing.' All I could think of to say to him was 'I love him, we love each other.'"Karim was approved for a visa online on 1 April this year. "I was crying, I couldn't breathe, when I heard," Bennett said. But when Karim went to pick it up at the US embassy in Kabul, he was told there had been a mistake with the online status for a batch of visas, and that his was still being processed.Karin and Bennett both admit to feeling nervous about meeting again after so long, but both are convinced that a relationship kept alive by phones and internet can last in real life too.

"Everything changes in three years, but when you come to love, it doesn't change," Karim said. "I knew the visa would take a long time and tried to tell her, but because it was her first experience of this she thought it wouldn't be more than six months."Bennett and Rollins share the stress of waiting for any updates on the immigration process on Facebook pages dotted with photographs and links to news stories about other interpreters hoping for a visa, a forum for applicants in limbo, and articles about the perilous situation of some who have been refused.The US has promised a special visa programme for Afghan interpreters who took on jobs for its military that exposed them to bombings and battles at work and retaliation at home if what they did for a living was revealed.

But hundreds of applicants have been waiting for years, and a growing number say they have been turned down because the US state department believes there is no serious threat against their lives.One picture from this autumn shows a young Afghan, smiling with other interpreters in US military uniform. News had just filtered through that he had been killed while off-duty.Karim and Zia's cases are unusual because they are applying for fiance or spouse visas. But both have the same years of service and testimonials to their bravery and loyalty as the other applicants – and the same agonising wait."There must be some reason why we have to be apart for so long," Rollins said. "Everything else has been so perfect, and then the visa is just not happening. I just have to remember that it is going to work out in the end."