Six minutes and one second. That was all it took for the 66 years of Khizr Khan’s life to become an American moment.

It was not something that he could have anticipated. For years, he and his wife, Ghazala, had lived a rather quiet existence of common obscurity in Charlottesville, Va. He was known in circles that dealt with electronic discovery in legal proceedings. Another overlapping sphere was the rotating cast of cadets that passed through the Army R.O.T.C. program at the University of Virginia. His wife was a welcoming face to the customers of a local fabric store.

And the last dozen years for the Khans were darkened by their heartbreakover the death of a military son, Humayun, whose body lies in Arlington National Cemetery, his tombstone adorned with an Islamic crescent. Their grief brought them closer to a university and to a young woman in Germany whom their son loved. It also gave them a conviction and expanded the borders of their lives.The University of Punjab’s old campus in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2011. Ghazala and Khizr Khan met at a book 

Some of their neighbors knew Mr. Khan liked to carry a $1 pocket Constitution around with him. In the Khan home, a stack of them always lay at the ready. Guests showed up and they were handed one, in the way other hosts might distribute a party favor. Mr. Khan wanted it to stimulate a conversation about liberty, a cherished topic of his. He liked to point out that he lives nearly in the shadow of Monticello, home of one of his heroes, Thomas Jefferson. Mrs. Khan liked to say, “We need Thomas Jefferson.”

And then the Khans stepped into a sports arena in Philadelphia and left as household names. In a passionate speech at the Democratic National Convention, the bespectacled Mr. Khan stingingly criticized Donald J. Trump and his stance on Muslim immigration, scolding him, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” Quickly enough, both Khans felt the verbal lashings of Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.

And just like that, they found themselves a pivot point in the twisting drama that is American politics.

Goals Set ForthAt the funeral for Capt. Humayun Khan, Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Peterson presented the Purple Heart to his father, Khizr Khan, on June 16, 2004. CreditPeter Cihelka/Potomac News, via Associated Press

This is another moment in the lives of Khizr and Ghazala Khan. In 1972, he was studying law at the University of the Punjab in Lahore, the largest public university in his native Pakistan. He was intrigued by Persian literature. Learning of a Persian book reading, he went. Ghazala was the host.

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The University of Punjab’s old campus in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2011. Ghazala and Khizr Khan met at a book reading she hosted when he was studying law at the university. CreditWarrick Page for The New York Times

He was raised in Gujranwala in Punjab Province, the oldest of 10 children. His parents had a poultry farm. “My life was very ordinary,” he said in an interview this week. “There was nothing special. I grew up as every other Pakistani. No extra earth-shattering events took place during my lifetime, and we were modest people.” But, he said, he had the ambition “to keep moving forward.”

The university reading was one thing, but what enchanted him was the host. She was from Faisalabad and was studying the Persian language. He engaged in some decorous maneuvering and decided that she was the woman he wanted to marry. He enlisted the help of his parents, who reached out to her parents. Then the real courtship began.

In 1973, he graduated from law school and he was licensed with the Punjab bar in 1974. Already, his goal was to move to the United States. “Everybody’s dreams come true if you are able to study and complete higher education abroad,” he said. “That’s the plan we grew up with: that it makes your future better if you have a postgraduate degree from overseas, England or United States.”

But he did not have enough money. And so after the Khans were married, they moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. For three years, Mr. Khan worked for an American oil field company as the lawyer who handled the affairs of the expatriate workers. Their first two sons were born, Shaharyar and Humayun.

In 1980, the Khans came to the United States. First, they went to Houston to save up more money. The four of them squeezed into a $200-a-month one-bedroom apartment.

Once he had the savings, he enrolled at Harvard Law School. He graduated in 1986 with a master of laws degree and became a citizen, as did his wife.

They moved to Silver Spring, Md., and he found work reviewing mortgage documents. It was not his dream job, but a third son, Omer, had been born. Mouths had to be fed.

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At the funeral for Capt. Humayun Khan, Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Peterson presented the Purple Heart to his father, Khizr Khan, on June 16, 2004. CreditPeter Cihelka/Potomac News, via Associated Press

In time, he moved on to several large law firms, where he specialized in the emerging area of electronic discovery. It involved finding information that was stored electronically to answer discovery requests from opposing sides in lawsuits.

Robert Eisenberg, a consultant who is a pioneer of the field, came to know Mr. Khan well and found him highly proficient at his work and immensely likable. “There is an old-world gentility about him,” he said. “He has this veneer of formality. But under it is kindness.”

And so the Khans settled in, and they became an American life.

A Protector Against BulliesA photo of Captain Khan that is on display in the room bearing his name at the university.CreditChet Strange for The New York Times

There are different vantages from which to understand the Khans’ middle son, Humayun, and one of them is through Amir Ali Guerami. He was born in Iran and he happened to come to the Maryland middle school that Humayun attended. There were few Muslims, and that made Mr. Guerami different. And he was very overweight. He was taunted and beaten up. His middle name was Patrick. As he walked down the school hallways, bullies would bellow, “Fat Rick.”

And Humayun would hear this and step in. He would walk alongside him, a sentry staring the bullies down, deflecting them. And he intervened when Mr. Guerami was being roughed up outside the library. When he was punched in the throat in gym class and could not breathe.

• As a high school student, Humayun swam and played basketball, and he taught swimming to children with disabilities.The Khan Room at the R.O.T.C. center at the University of Virginia serves as a space for meeting and studying. CreditChet Strange for The New York TimesThe memories returned. “He had an impact on my life,” he said. “You read about kids being bullied in school and then their hurting themselves. He owed me nothing, a complete stranger. Yet he stood up for me. He was a savior.”A German woman named Irene Auer sat down in a cafe in the Bavarian town of Amberg, and a man approached her. This was another moment in the life of Humayun Khan.She liked his manner, and she especially liked his English. ”There were many who spoke English very badly, or with a lot of slang, but not him,” she said. “He spoke beautiful English and had a very beautiful voice.”Captain Khan loved to have a good debate with Ms. Auer, her family and her friends. One of his favorite topics was the meaning of life.PhotoOn Feb. 9, 2004, he left for Iraq.A Captain’s KindnessSgt. Crystal Selby, one of the team’s drivers, went to pick him up that morning. June 8, 2004. He said he wanted to check the compound’s gate. On a day off? She told him to stay in his room. He was her boss. She could not order him to, and he got in.He made sandwiches for his soldiers when there was no time to get to lunch. He had such an easy sense of humor. “I read where someone called him a soldier’s officer,” she said. “To me, he was a human’s human.”Sergeant Selby was still in the truck, not even to the office, when she heard the explosion. When she arrived, the news of his death was already on the radio.
• The drive took three or four minutes. She dropped him off outside the gate and headed to the office. An orange-and-white taxi carrying two suicide bombers was creeping toward the gate. Captain Khan shouted for his men to hit the dirt. That may well have saved their lives. He moved toward the taxi, trying to halt it.
• It was funny how she had known Captain Khan only a couple of months and yet it seemed like she had known him so much longer. It was the way he treated her and all of the soldiers. “He didn’t talk to you like he was in charge of you, but like a friend,” she said. “He taught you how to be better. Not better tanker or better fueler. Better human being.”
• It was his day off but he was not much for days off. He was the commander of the Force Protection Team of the 201st Forward Support Battalion, First Infantry Division, at Camp Warhorse in Diyala Province, Iraq.
• They planned to get married the following year and eventually settle in the United States. His intention was to go to law school. In one of the last emails she received from him, he told her to go pick out an engagement ring.
• A photo of Captain Khan that is on display in the room bearing his name at the university.CreditChet Strange for The New York Times
• As it happens, she opposed the war in Iraq. But he accepted his duty and was proud to be a soldier. “Once he even said to me, ‘You know that I am married,’ ” she said. “I asked him, ‘What do you mean you’re married?’ and he told me, ‘Yes, I am married to the U.S. Army.’ ”
• They started dating. In time, she began studying international management but stayed with him in his apartment off base on weekends. His mother went to Germany in 2003, and the two became acquainted. In September 2003, Ms. Auer flew with Captain Khan to the United States to meet his father. This was serious stuff.
• He was stationed in the barracks at nearby Vilseck. This was 2002.
• Love in Germany
• They lost contact after high school. Mr. Guerami now lives in California and owns a mortgage company. He was watching the Democratic convention when the video came on about Captain Khan. And that was when Mr. Guerami learned that he had been an R.O.T.C. cadet at the University of Virginia and had joined the Army and had gone to Iraq and become a hero. That his life was frozen at age 27.
• In his middle son, Mr. Khan saw the traits of his mother — farsighted and “much more balanced in her thinking and gestures.” “I’m a little more emotional and shortsighted,” Mr. Khan said. Mr. Guerami saw this, too. “You always knew he had a plan,” Mr. Guerami said. “He wasn’t just stumbling through life like the rest of us. He was planning college from Day 1.”
• This cemented a friendship that continued throughout high school. Humayun was Mr. Guerami’s defender and his motivator. He urged him to exercise and to diet. And after his sophomore year, Mr. Guerami was 60 pounds lighter.
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