“It’s like a dream coming true,” Noor said.
The game came as a stark change since the last time the two met — especially for Noor, who, within the past year and a half, went from being a Taliban target trying to get his family out of Afghanistan to watching Brady and the Bucs rout the Eagles in a 31-15 playoff game. The reunion was as joyous as the path to get there was arduous.
Noor began his term as an American ally when, in 2007, he began interpreting for US service members in his home country of Afghanistan.
Noor was honorably discharged in 2020 as a sergeant and settled in Houston. That year, as US plans to withdraw from his home country materialized, he made numerous attempts from the States to evacuate his family from Afghanistan, and even returned to Kabul for two weeks to try to get them out in person. Ultimately, he could not, and he had to return to Houston without his family.
Code word: ‘Tom Brady’
In an internal memo shared with CNN by Moulton’s office, Neesha Suarez, the congressman’s director of constituent services, detailed the escape efforts. They centered on getting Noor’s family through a separate gate into Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
The Marine captain messaged Suarez to say, “I’m at the gate. I’m gonna send a guy by the name of ‘Omar.’ He’s gonna ask who knows ‘Tom Brady.’ Have Seth’s priority group respond with ‘I do.’ Relay these instructions and I’ll give you a time…when my guy is heading over.”
Noor was still in Houston when Suarez delivered good news: that hope and potential had turned into action. His most vulnerable family members — including his mother, pregnant sister and 2-year-old niece — plus many other Afghans Moulton’s team had worked with made it safely into the airport and onto a flight out of Afghanistan.
A firefight, missed connections and a reunion
After Noor’s family was evacuated, they joined him in Houston, and word got back to Brady about the role he unknowingly played in getting the family out.
“Tom came across Said’s story earlier this season and personally wanted to invite him to a game,” Brady’s PR office told CNN. Brady’s reps alerted the Buccaneers organization, a team spokesperson said, and they all started working to bring Noor to a game.
When Noor found out, he was excited. “I felt the kindness, you know? The care in my heart of somebody like him. I mean, he doesn’t even know me. … For someone just to go out of their way, who doesn’t know nothing about you and just wants you there.”
Noor told CNN he wanted to bring his sister, who was evacuated during the Moulton-orchestrated escape, but she was sick — so he instead reached out to Morse, an Army friend he hadn’t seen in 10 years.
“I worked with Steve as his interpreter in Afghanistan,” Noor said, “We got into (a) firefight there together. I was like his right-hand man for the platoon.”
Morse concurred, confirming that the last time the two had seen each other was after combat in Afghanistan.
‘We were both kids,” he recalled. “I was 21. I think he was 20. And we’re still good buddies.”
Morse said that in 2011 his platoon, a unit within the Massachusetts National Guard’s 181st Infantry Regiment, took enemy fire in Khost Province — and Noor was instrumental as an interpreter during and after the firefight.
“You could tell that he believed in the mission,” he added. “It wasn’t just a job for him.”
Morse served for four years as an infantryman and was the lead driver for his platoon, also spending time with his units’ mortar section. A few weeks after the firefight, Noor was reassigned, and the two men split ways.
“We all loved him,” he said. “It sucked.”
So when Noor asked whether he wanted to go to the playoff game, Morse — a Massachusetts native and longtime Brady fan already — said he was thrilled. “Oh my God, I was so excited.”
Morse’s mother, Cindy, a first-grade special education teacher in Massachusetts, had organized clothes, bedding and other necessities for Noor’s family once they settled in Houston. She had invited Noor for Christmas, Morse said, hoping to offer him some semblance of family as he tried to evacuate his own, but he couldn’t make the connection given the circumstances.
But now, with his family’s resettlement in Houston, those missed connections made the pair’s reunion that much more of a celebration.
When Noor and Morse finally met in Tampa ahead of last Sunday’s game, Morse said, “It was like seeing a family member. I hadn’t seen him in over 10 years and he picked me up from the airport and it was like we didn’t miss a beat. It was just like 10 years ago.”
Tom Brady, captain
“Veterans don’t need a reminder that this is important,” he said. “They keep working every single day to get out those that we left behind. But it’s a great sign that icons like Tom Brady recognize how important this commitment is as well.”
Over Christmas, one of Noor’s friends gave him a shirt that reads “Tom Freakin’ Brady.” That’s what he wore to the game. He didn’t get to meet the star quarterback, but said, “I would like to thank him from the bottom of my heart for the warm invitation and welcome.”
Before his family used Brady’s name as a code word for their escape, Noor said, he wasn’t sure who the NFL quarterback was. But as he started sharing his story, it didn’t take him long to find out.
“I started Googling him and looked him up and was, like, ‘Wow, he’s a big deal.'”
Moulton recalled that when the evacuees met the Marine captain after getting through the airport gate, they even said, “Tom Brady! Tom Brady!” thinking that was the captain’s name.
“The thing is that his family never knew who Tom Brady was, and of course now they’ll never forget,” Moulton said.
CNN’s Drew Lawrence previously profiled the Noor family for Task & Purpose.