by Dayna Curry
Finally, I knew that if the Taliban harmed us they would be involving three countries—the United States, Germany, and Australia. International opinion appeared to matter to the Taliban. The press, we later learned, had spotlighted our case. The boss seemed overly concerned about our condition. Frequently, he came into the courtyard smiling and asking about our health: Were we eating? Were we happy? Diana fasted from food quite a lot in order to draw closer to God, and this practice made the boss nervous. He did not want to appear to be mistreating his prisoners in the eyes of the world.
I gained a great deal of strength from the other Shelter Germany women—they believed we were going to get out of prison alive, which helped sustain my hope. From the minute they walked through the courtyard gate, our friends began encouraging us with scriptures. Diana believed Heather specifically would benefit by reflecting on Psalms 91 and 27. These psalms gave me confidence too. I read them aloud, and verse 14 of Psalm 91 specifically touched my heart: “ ‘Because he loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him’ ” (Psalm 91:14 NIV). That is, God would save us and get us out of prison simply because we loved him.
Later, Diana encouraged us with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Book of Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar tried to burn these three young men in a furnace, but God rescued them, and they came out unharmed without even the smell of smoke in their clothing. We believed God likewise would rescue us and that our prison experience would not leave us damaged in any way.
Several weeks into our imprisonment, Georg was able to sneak notes to us through Karim. The notes would include scriptures like Psalm 118:17: “I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.” Georg sent the verse for Heather, but we all clung to its promise.
He also sent Psalm 55:18: “He ransoms me unharmed from the battle waged against me, even though many oppose me.” Kati later used this verse to write a worship song that we sang often in our second prison.
Once our Shelter Germany friends were allowed to stay with us in the courtyard, we began to hold regular worship meetings in the mornings and evenings. Without these times of worship, I likely would have fallen into despair. Yet as our time of captivity dragged on, I was able to maintain my equilibrium as I continued to worship with the others. I do not recall one meeting in which I did not experience the presence of God in a real way.
Our morning meeting started at ten o’clock, since everyone needed time for bathing and washing clothes while the Afghan women were in class. We would begin at ten by sharing scriptures that had encouraged each of us in our private times with God. Then we would sing and pray for about an hour. Afterward, we would pray for a while in a focused way. We usually ended at noon for lunch. Our evening meeting began at seven and usually followed the morning meeting’s format.
During our meetings, we prayed a great deal for the nation of Afghanistan—that it would recover from drought, famine, and war. Once all foreigners evacuated the country following the September 11 attacks on America, we began to believe that God had left us in Afghanistan to pray for the healing of the land from inside the country. One of our great joys was that our imprisonment prompted people around the world to pray for the nation, too. We would get letters through various channels from friends saying they were praying for the Afghans even as they prayed for us.
We prayed often for the families of the victims of September 11. We prayed that the other humanitarian aid workers affected by our arrest would be able to return to the country soon and resume their projects. We prayed for our own protection and release. If one of us was sick, we would pray together for that person’s healing.
Early on, Diana shared her belief that our imprisonment would somehow result in the saving of many lives. We did not know what this meant, but we did feel called more than ever to pray for the plight of Afghan women. We prayed especially for a change in government that would allow women to return to school and work and experience freedom.
Since we were being held with Afghan women, our compassion for them only expanded. We found it ironic that after going to such great lengths to separate Afghan women from foreign influence, the Taliban would imprison us with the women and allow us to share in their lives. Though the boss certainly tried to restrict our interactions with the women, we recognized our imprisonment with them as a rare opportunity to live up close with Afghans.
We often prayed for the specific needs of the women in our courtyard. We prayed for their healing and peace. We sang songs over the women from our room. If things in the courtyard were chaotic, we often sang a song with the chorus “Come, Lord Jesus,” or another one that began, “There is a light that shines in the darkness, and his name is Jesus.” One of our favorites started, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” The chorus picked up, “Freedom reigns in this place, showers of mercy and grace, falling on every face. There is freedom.” Sometimes we would break into spontaneous singing. Our hearts were full of love.
One particular morning, I told the others I thought we needed to dance in our room while singing a song with these lyrics: “You have turned my mourning into dancing, You have turned my sorrow into joy.” I believed we were supposed to dance as an act of faith, believing that one day the Afghan women would see their hope restored and their mourning turned to dancing. I felt a bit embarrassed suggesting the idea, but the other foreign women were up for it, and the dancing refreshed us. Some of the Afghan women looked on through the window and laughed, but our passionate antics lightened the atmosphere in the yard.
At one evening meeting, Heather suggested we all do an encouragement exercise she used to do with her small groups of college students at Baylor. We spent the time going around the room and sharing about the good qualities we saw in one another. The exercise left all of us feeling loved, strengthened, and appreciated.
On another occasion, Heather asked me to introduce a song we had sung one day at Leena’s mud house on the outskirts of Kabul: “Holy Spirit, come. We have need of thee. For you are the one who sets the thirsty free. We are dry, but you are our supply. Oh, come and fill us now.”
On many evenings we sang about the cross of Jesus: “Nail-pierced hands, a wounded side, this is love, this is love.” As we sang to God, we would bow down in our little room. Remembering what Jesus endured helped us not to lose heart.
One night more than a month into our imprisonment, we held our evening worship meeting in the dark—for some reason the electricity had gone out in our room. We were all feeling strained due to the events of those days, and during our time of singing, I believed God wanted me to introduce a new song specifically for Heather. In the moonlight I saw her sitting with her head down. The words to the song, a prayer to God, were: “I need you to hold me like my daddy never could, I need you to show me how resting in your arms can be so good.”
The song touched all of us, particularly Heather, and I was so thankful for the opportunity to help my friend in a small way. We had experienced some tension between us. At times I felt hurt and rejected, as did she. After many of my attempts to comfort her had failed, to be able to give her even the small gift of a soothing song meant a great deal to me.
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LOVE AND WAR IN REFORM SCHOOL
Great qualities of Aghan people: hospitable, resourceful, extremely strong in the face of great suffering, [able to] find joy in the midst of great pain.
—JOURNAL ENTRY, REFORM SCHOOL PRISON
Heather: No matter how tough prison life became, I reminded myself that God was fulfilling my heart’s desire to live with the Afghan people. Among the women in our courtyard, we witnessed love and cruelty, both in great measure. The Afghan women looked after one another, and they brutally cut one another down. They tended to one another’s wounds after beatings, and they inflicted wounds. Mariam embodied the contradiction.
Mariam was a complicated, passionate character. It was almost as if she had two personalities. A teacher in the days prior to Taliban rule, Mariam was moth
erly toward us all. The Afghan girls loved her. Often they would lie giggling in her lap and play with her hair. In true Afghan form, Mariam would serve us black tea several times each day. As foreign women, we were her guests, and she hated for us to be upset. The same rule of hospitality, however, did not apply to her own people. Mariam routinely walked around the courtyard with a short, hard rubber hose and beat the Afghan girls who misbehaved or fought with one another. At times she even tied the girls to the tree in the courtyard as discipline for unruly behavior.
Shortly after the boss concluded our interrogations, he forbade us to associate with the Afghan women in our courtyard. We also were instructed not to share our possessions with them, including food and toiletries. Despite the warning, we did both, but with extreme caution. I made it a point to talk with the women only in Mariam’s presence. Occasionally, Mariam invited me to join her and a group of girls for tea. I figured as long my interactions with the Afghan women were out in the open, I would be safe. And so would the women.
One day, I turned out to be horribly mistaken. That afternoon our prison’s stout stand-up comedienne, Aida, brought me a clean facecloth she thought belonged to one of us foreign women. A girl in her late teens, Aida had the soft, Asian features of a Hazara and long, silky, black hair. One of her legs was shorter than the other, and she walked with a limp. An aid agency had flown her to Germany to receive reconstructive surgery when she was a child.
After Aida delivered the facecloth, I checked with my foreign friends and found it did not belong to any of us after all. I promptly returned the cloth to Aida, who was sitting with another prisoner, Samira, in the Afghan women’s room making tea. They invited me to join them. As was proper Afghan etiquette, I graciously refused the initial offer.
“No, thank you,” I politely replied. I was concerned that sitting down for tea with Aida and Samira without Mariam present might cause trouble, but the two women pressed the issue. “Please come have tea with us,” they urged.
I decided to ask Mariam for permission to sit for tea. Surely, if Mariam approved our interaction, I would bring no misfortune to my Afghan friends. Permission was granted. Without hesitation Mariam exclaimed, “Bishee, bishee!” Sit, sit!
I returned to Aida and Samira and for twenty minutes drank tea, chatted about nothing of significance, and played with Samira’s two-year-old daughter. As soon as I left, Mariam picked up the rubber hose, went straight into the room, and mercilessly beat the women. We heard bloodcurdling screams coming from inside.
“What is she doing?” I said aloud, and stormed back over to the women’s doorway.
“Mariam,” I exclaimed, “if someone has committed an offense, it is my fault. I have sinned. You should hit me. Do not hit them!” Mariam let out a patronizing laugh and pinched my cheek. “No, no. You did nothing wrong,” she cooed. “They are just being punished for fighting.”
This lie infuriated me. My heart broke over the injustice. The more I tried to plead on behalf of Aida and Samira, the worse their circumstances became. Mariam returned to the room, shut the door, stuffed the windows with pillows and blankets, and continued to beat my friends. The screams were almost unbearable. Samira’s little girl witnessed the entire episode.
We shared lighter moments in the courtyard. Mariam sometimes would tell wildly humorous lies to make sure that we foreign women did not become upset.
At dusk one evening, I was lying down on a toshak near our room praying when I noticed a creeping shadow moving along the wall. “What is that?” I said aloud. Then I recognized the shadow and jumped to my feet. When I looked down, I saw a scorpion crawling near the toshak. I jumped up and ran to our room.
Mariam saw me, hastened to the toshak, and killed the scorpion on the spot.
“Don’t worry,” she said, flashing an unctuous smile. “It was only a worm.”
“That was not a worm!” I insisted. “I saw it!”
She patted my cheek. “Oh, you saw it.”
Afterward one of the Afghan girls ran toward me with a bowl of water and splashed the water on my face.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. The girl said she was trying to protect me from being cursed by the scorpion I had seen.
One afternoon we foreign women wrote a prison song. Since Mariam and the boss were always exhorting us not to be upset, we set the song to the tune of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” One line went, “If the Taliban put you in prison, say two or three days, but it’s forty-five days, don’t worry. Be happy.”
In the afternoons, the Afghan women occasionally would fill their time by playing games. Early on, I taught them how to play duck-duck-goose. I did not know the Dari words for duck and goose, so at Dayna’s suggestion I renamed the game cat-cat-dog—or, in Dari, peshak-peshak-sag. The women loved the game and often played it on their own.
One of the Afghan women’s games looked fun but very dangerous. A number of the women would grasp the edges of a blanket, put one person in the middle, and then, by jerking the blanket, throw that person up in the air. I warned them that someone might get hurt playing this game, but the women persisted.
One day a few of our group got up the guts to try the blanket-throwing game. Silke got on the blanket first; then, with a little persuasion, Kati tried. Dayna ventured a try, too, but I opted for looking on.
On another occasion, Dayna and I tried to teach the women how to swing-dance. We had only learned how to swing-dance ourselves the evening before our arrest, and the women did not seem overly impressed with our moves. Being without music no doubt hurt our cause.
Though the Taliban outlawed all nonreligious music, the Afghan women—displaying the true heart of Afghan culture—made music on a variety of improvised instruments. In the women’s hands, our green plastic washing tubs became sonorous bass drums. Some of the women would turn the tubs upside down and play amazingly intricate beats, while others sang spontaneous melodies over the rhythms.
The women often sang dirges, lamenting their plight as prisoners. One of the most common songs had this mournful lyric: “Mother, mother, why have you let the Taliban take me prisoner? Why did you raise me only to weep?”
Still other women would dance to the beats played out on the washtubs. Mariam’s helper, Shalah, was the most exuberant dancer of all. Young and beautiful, Shalah played off her sensuality and often danced provocative routines, at least by Afghan standards.
About nineteen years old, Shalah was the self-appointed leader of the pack of Afghan women. She was one of the few educated women in the prison and sometimes substituted for the women’s teacher during lessons. Shalah had a rich inner life, which she expressed through art and writing. Once she showed us a book containing her poems about prison life and sketches of Afghan women—sketches that, of course, were outlawed by the Taliban.
Shalah also assisted Mariam in daily administrative and household chores, including the distribution of food at mealtime. Occasionally, Mariam even gave Shalah the authority to discipline the girls who misbehaved.
Yet for all the favor and recognition Shalah received, she was not without her own struggles. She and her father were both thrown into prison when they refused the marriage proposal of a Taliban neighbor to Shalah. The Talib demanded the father pay a bribe to get his daughter off the hook. Shalah’s father, a poor man, did not have the money, so both he and his daughter were arrested. Eventually Shalah’s father was released, but her own fate remained uncertain.
Mariam had high hopes for Shalah to marry a blue-eyed mullah, the deputy commander of the compound, who also was a friend of our translator, Karim. We affectionately nicknamed this young, handsome deputy “Big Eyes.”
Shalah did not seem overly stuck on the prospect of marrying Big Eyes—she had a number of other ideas. One day before we were ordered not to associate with the Afghan women, Shalah and some other girls joined Dayna and me in our room for conversation.
“You should become Muslims,” Shalah announced. “All you have to do is say this.” She began
to repeat the Muslim confession.
“No, no,” interrupted another young woman. “They do not need to change. They are good like they are.”
Shalah did not argue. Instead she proceeded to ask us about life in America and casually came around to the subject of suitors. “Do you have any brothers?” Shalah asked Dayna.
“Yes, I have one,” Dayna replied, somewhat amused.
“How old is he?” Shalah asked.
“Twenty-five.”
Shalah’s eyes widened with interest. “Is he cute?”
“Yes,” Dayna answered, “I think so.”
“Can you tell him about me and see if he would take a pretty Afghan girl as his wife?”
Dayna laughed and told her she would speak to her brother.
Shortly after that exchange, the girls were no longer permitted to spend time with us alone in our room, but they did gather at the window to take a peek inside on occasion.
Our room at the reform school prison was drab and dank. Only a whale-shaped concrete patch covering a large hole in the wall added variety. Silke, an artist, determined that we needed something to spruce up the atmosphere and decided to carve a mural of animals onto our walls. We called our room the Kabul Zoo.
Within a few days, our walls teemed with mammals: An enormous elephant stood out as the focal point; a monkey hung on the elephant’s trunk; a camel curved around one corner of the room; a smiling cat sat beside a crocodile. One of Mariam’s little girls had put in a request for the cat. “Peshak,” she simply said on entering our room one day.
Silke created a tree around a socket in the wall for a wood-burning stove and added an opossum to its limbs. Bats hung from the neck of a lanky giraffe. The whale-shaped patch of cement obviously became a whale. As a backdrop were the mountains of Kabul covered with mud houses.
Silke created this masterpiece using a tool from her manicure kit with which she chipped through an old layer of cream-colored paint. Lime-green paint underneath formed the outlines of the animals. Silke mixed lotion and mud to produce brown paint of varying shades. Then she used her hands or pieces of toilet paper to dab the concoction onto the wall, adding texture to her animals. All of the Afghan women observed the development of the mural with utter amazement. Many of the girls had never seen the animals depicted on the wall. With great difficulty we tried to explain the likes of alligators and opossums.