by Dayna Curry
When they told me about my father’s offer, I was deeply grateful. Though I would have never permitted him to take my place, it was just like my dad to make such an offer. He would give his life for me without a second thought.
Heather & Dayna: Sweeta-jan’s uncle, it turned out, was the carpenter Kati hired two days before our arrest to teach at the Shelter Germany street kids project. This same man had done some of the work on the interior of our house in Wazir—he built a cabinet in our kitchen, he made a table for our living room. He was also one of the sixteen Afghan Shelter Germany employees the Taliban rounded up following our arrest.
When we first arrived at the intelligence prison, Sweeta-jan told us that the sixteen Afghans were being held in the men’s compound.
Georg and Peter were kept in a tiny room—two by three meters—on the upper floor of one of the buildings. Our sixteen employees stayed on the lower level of a second building directly across the men’s courtyard.
The dungeonlike area where the sixteen stayed was the vilest part of the compound; men put there were beaten severely. Sonan, Najib’s boss, inflicted brutal beatings, we were told, using a steel cable to strike the men’s heads with repeated blows. Georg and Peter ordered medicine from the bazaar to treat the Afghan men, many of whom had suffered at the hands of Sonan.
Prisoners would be put in the dungeon early in their incarceration and then moved up to a higher floor whenever the authorities deemed it time—that is, whenever the prisoners came up with the means to pay a bribe, we understood. One afternoon, Georg and Peter saw our employees being led out of the dungeon and then out of the compound. It seemed the sixteen were being released. Later we learned the authorities had taken the men to the city’s most infamous prison, Pul-e-Charkhi.
We found out over the course of our stay that along with the sixteen Shelter Germany Afghan employees, our chowkidar, Khalid, had been imprisoned. On hearing of our arrest, he had refused to abandon his post at our house in Wazir. Eventually, the Taliban found him there, loyally guarding the property. We were heartbroken over Khalid’s detention, and in the weeks following, prayed a great deal for him and his family.
A prisoner from Kandahar informed Georg that the Shelter Germany projects in that city had been utterly ransacked. Georg was devastated, as were the rest of us. We prayed that God would restore double to Shelter Germany and the other aid organizations that lost everything.
Najib permitted us to visit with Georg and Peter daily for the first three weeks of our incarceration. He then reduced the visits to every other day. Najib’s brother, a high-ranking prisoner at the compound, befriended Georg and, toward the end of our stay, smuggled in a radio for Georg along with a camera and a roll of film. Once Georg got the radio, we started getting reliable information on a regular basis. He would come to our room and report the news first thing. He might leave us detailed letters regarding current events tucked under a toshak.
At first, Najib sat with us during the meetings. Though Najib did not speak English, he wanted to supervise our conversations. He never knew his brother had smuggled Georg the radio and camera. Najib was a Taliban commander, after all, and there were limits to his leniency.
One time we learned that Sonan had rebuked Najib about the coed meetings in our room. Apparently, Sonan suspected some funny business. He reprimanded Peter and Georg in accordance with his assumptions. “This is a prison, not a house to be married,” he snapped. We all laughed at the absurdity of the statement.
fifteen
PROCEEDINGS
Heather & Dayna: “I have good news for you!”
The day after we were moved to the intelligence prison, Afghani’s deputy—a short, stocky Talib wearing a white turban—arrived at our courtyard. The deputy was a young man, perhaps in his early thirties. He told us we were to come with him right away. A delegation of high-level Pakistani officials had requested to see us.
We threw on our chawdurs and piled into Najib’s van with Georg and Peter. Finally, things seemed to be moving in the right direction. We knew the United States would probably bomb Afghanistan soon, and we anticipated the meeting with the delegation would yield news concerning our release. We did not expect to remain in the intelligence prison for long. High-level Pakistani officials asking to see us could only mean progress, or so we hoped.
Driving a black Mercedes, the deputy led our two-vehicle caravan through the city to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, where Afghani awaited our arrival. The deputy and one of his armed guards escorted us to an executive conference room on the building’s top floor, and instructed us to sit down. We sat in padded wooden chairs at one end of a long conference table. Large picture windows lined one wall, overlooking a courtyard and garden, and from the room we could see one of the main streets running through Shar-e-Nao.
As we waited, we were served high-quality tea in fancy teapots. We drank from china teacups with handles and spooned in sugar from a sugar dish. Georg encouraged us to pray with the person next to us.
Nearly half an hour later, several Pakistani officials entered the room. They were courteous and polished, and their demeanor was grave. The officials asked us questions about our health and the way we were being treated. Georg did most of the talking.
The two of us told the officials that our parents were in Pakistan awaiting our release, and the men offered to take written messages back to Islamabad on our behalf. We dashed off quick notes. Then the officials brought out several beautiful packages wrapped in shiny metallic paper and tied with pink bows. These gifts—a variety of sweets and delicacies—were meant as tokens of encouragement and support from the Pakistani people, the officials said. The men heartened us, saying that they were discussing our detainment with the Taliban. We graciously expressed our thanks.
After thirty minutes, the meeting ended and we were ushered out of the conference room. Georg told us that one of the men had remarked to him that our situation looked hopeful and that we might be released soon, which encouraged us. Otherwise, we left the Foreign Affairs building with no concrete information about our plight, nothing on which we could stand. We were thankful the men had taken the time to meet with us, but we came away disappointed.
Nearly a week later, no progress had been made on our case, while the atmosphere in Kabul seemed to be heating up. The Taliban were testing weapons around the city, and we heard that demonstrators burned a Pakistani flag to protest that country’s cooperation with America in its war on terror. We became increasingly concerned that our lawyer, Atif Ali Khan, might not venture across the border after all.
We discussed various courses of action and decided to petition the court to allow us to defend ourselves. By defending ourselves—and not having to wait on a lawyer—we figured we would be able to move things along with greater agility. Georg wrote a letter of request to the chief justice concerning our change in strategy. He even wrote a letter to Mullah Omar himself, pleading for our pardon and quick release. We needed to get the ball rolling.
The courier of these letters was Karim, our faithful translator from the reform school prison. Karim also worked as a translator for the justices while they were reviewing our case. Apparently, the boss at the reform school never told Karim we were being moved to the intelligence prison. To find us, Karim had to appeal to one of his contacts in the prison system. When our friend finally arrived, we were overjoyed to see him.
“Are you healthy? How are you?” he asked. “Do not worry. Najib is a good man, and he will take good care of you. I will come to see you when I can.” Unlike other Taliban officials who made similar assertions, Karim kept his promise.
On September 24, Karim delivered Georg’s letter to the Supreme Court requesting we be allowed to move forward and defend ourselves. We got an answer the next day when Afghani arrived at our prison with some letters, money, and items that our parents had left for us before being evacuated to Islamabad nearly two weeks earlier.
“Your lawyer is on his way,” Afghani announce
d, smiling. “You will be going to court soon.”
Our reaction to this declaration was mixed. We wanted to get the court proceedings over with before the United States started bombing Afghanistan, and we knew we did not have much time. But we did not know whether a lawyer at this point would expedite the process or bog the proceedings down. We hoped our lawyer would be able to work quickly; at least he finally was on his way.
Afghani’s deputy and another Talib came to see us a few days later. By that time, demonstrators in Kabul had burned buildings and cars inside the old U.S. embassy compound to protest America’s imminent attack on the country. The demonstration did not help build our confidence that we would be given a fair trial.
When the deputy and his helper came in, they pulled out a Polaroid camera. As ambassadors for a regime that disallowed pictures or representations of living things, the men told us they needed to take our photographs for the court’s records. Not only that, we had to pay for these pictures—1,500 rupees in total, or twenty-two U.S. dollars. The men made us pose in a chair in front of one of the courtyard walls. None of us enjoyed the exercise.
The next morning Afghani came back, this time with our lawyer, Atif Ali Khan, and his assistant, Bismillah Jan. The meeting was very brief. Atif introduced himself and greeted us with cordiality and respect. Bismillah, several years older than Atif, smiled graciously and seemed to be a kind, collected man. Atif told us he would meet with us again the next day.
On September 30, we joined Atif and Bismillah for another round of official proceedings at the Supreme Court building. Najib loaded us up in his van that morning, but Silke stayed behind. She was ill and did not feel like she could attend. For some reason, even as we all climbed into his vehicle, Najib did not notice Silke’s absence.
Again we drove through the city to the government compound. This time no caravan of Taliban trucks accompanied us, nor did a crush of journalists assemble at the gate vying for photographs and sound bites. The front steps were clear of mayhem as well. Without ceremony we followed Najib and a few armed Taliban guards into the building.
We were not permitted to wait in the same room with Peter and Georg this time and instead were directed to a plain room with toshaks while the men were led down the hall. No one took note of our group’s diminished number.
After several minutes, a few Taliban officials came to our room with sheets of paper. Yet again the government required our name, our father’s name, our grandfather’s name, country of origin, and so on. “Ughhh,” we whispered.
After one of the officials finished passing out the paper, we asked him for an extra sheet. We needed it for Silke, who was ill, Kati explained. She told the man she had been given written permission to sign the information in Silke’s place. The official hesitated but seemed amenable. He said he would talk to his superiors, and the men quickly left the room.
Within moments Najib entered. “Why didn’t you tell me she was not coming?” he asked in an exasperated tone. “We cannot continue with the trial without her. Somebody will have to go back. She has to be here.”
Kati stood up and left with Najib. We waited in the room. Kati returned with Silke twenty minutes later.
Once Silke had filled out her information, the guards led the rest of us into the courtroom. As before, the eighteen justices were sitting in their horseshoe. We took seats in the front of the room facing the chief justice’s desk and the wall adorned with the prayer rug, whip, and swords. Though sparsely attended compared to our last visit, the courtroom was nearly filled, this time mainly with Taliban officials.
After we sat down, a Talib passed us a heavy green book, which appeared to be a courtroom register. The book was open to a page covered with our very expensive Polaroid photographs. They were not even good photographs. We all looked gaunt and unhealthy. Atif’s picture appeared with ours, along with photographs of two witnesses, in this case Taliban officials. We each were instructed to place our thumbprint alongside our photograph and sign our names.
Heather: My picture looked particularly bad. My cheekbones jutted out, and dark circles underscored my eyes. Dayna and I joked about how sickly I appeared. I knew I was not underfed, but for some reason no matter how much I seemed to eat, I was losing weight. Later I discovered the problem—worms.
Heather & Dayna: “This is your lawyer,” announced a Talib translator. “Do you agree to have him?” He gestured toward Atif.
Each of us replied according to the formality required: “Yes, my name is Dayna Curry,” or “Yes, my name is Heather Mercer, and I agree to have Atif Ali Khan as my lawyer.”
Then the translator turned to Atif. “Do you agree to represent these eight people?” he asked, naming each of us.
“Yes,” Atif replied. “I agree to represent them all.”
Next the prosecutor read the charges—in Dari. Atif did not speak Dari, only Pashtu, the language of the Taliban. None of us spoke Dari well enough to understand the charges. At times we could pick up bits and pieces of meaning, but not enough to grasp the substance of the text.
Atif interrupted the prosecutor. “I do not understand Dari,” he remarked politely.
The prosecutor explained that the charges would be read out in Dari and a written translation provided to Atif later. We assumed that the prosecutor presented the charges in Dari for the Afghan media present in the room—that is, so the charges could be broadcast over the radio. We also wondered whether the Taliban wanted to ward off any objections we might raise to the charges if we were able to understand them while they were being read.
“You have up to fifteen days to present your defense,” the chief justice stated at the end of the proceeding. He insisted the pending war would not affect the progress of our case.
Atif and Bismillah accompanied the eight of us back to our room in the intelligence prison. To our delight, they came bearing Oreos, Sprites, and Cokes. Such treats became regular accessories to our consultations with Atif and Bismillah. One day they brought us Chips Ahoy and Mars Bars. Another day Bismillah carried in a more nutritious snack—a big carton of grapes. On all of their trips to Kabul, the men delivered packages from our parents containing jam, peanut butter, candy, coffee, and other food products. We were grateful for these delicacies and recognized our unique position in having a whole team of people working diligently to secure our release.
“What was the reason behind your choosing me?” Atif asked as we partook of the refreshments that first afternoon. He was a slight, very young-looking man with light skin and a short beard, which he seemed to be growing out. “I am not the most experienced lawyer you could have chosen.”
We were honest. “Really, you were our only option,” we told him. “You know Pashtu, you know the Pashtun culture, and you have studied Islamic law. You were also educated in the West.”
“Well,” he responded, “while I am not the most experienced, I believe that with my background in Islamic law and our good relationships with the Taliban, we will be able to provide you a good defense.”
Bismillah had contacts at significant levels of leadership within the Taliban administration. A Pakistani national, Bismillah grew up in the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border. He always wore a brown, wool hat of the sort characteristically seen in northern Afghanistan. He smiled and shook his head in agreement while talking to us, often adding “Enshallah” to his statements in a positive tone—unlike the boss and his men at the reform school prison. We were grateful for Bismillah’s assistance. His relationships would enable him and Atif to start off on the right foot as they built our case.
While we sat together, Atif—a devout Muslim—told us that by defending us he wanted to do something great for God. He said he wanted the world to see Islam in a better light. He wanted to show the world that Muslims and Christians could work together. Atif presented himself in a friendly, professional manner and seemed confident all would go well.
“I will give you my best,” he promised, smiling. He assured
us the Taliban would treat us fairly. We were not certain we believed him.
Atif went to the court building the following morning to pick up an English translation of the charges, but no translated charges were ready. In fact, they were not ready for four days. Instead, Atif and Bismillah resorted to collecting a written copy of the charges in Dari. Bismillah did his best to translate the Dari charges into Pashtu, and then Atif translated the Pashtu into a sketchy English.
Meanwhile, we worked with Atif individually reviewing the lines of questioning our interrogators had employed. Each of us wrote out statements describing for Atif the events leading up to our arrests. We felt encouraged that we were getting somewhere on our end with the process. Now if only the court would do its part.
On October 4, the court finally provided us with a very poor English translation of the charges. Atif gave each of us a copy and instructed us to notate inaccuracies. Our names and our fathers’ names were listed at the top of the first page.
The overarching charge was that we had spread the “abolished Religion of Christanity” among Afghans. Though very difficult to follow, the translated text stated that the two of us were arrested while inviting an Afghan family to accept Christianity. The storybook copies and CD were mentioned as evidence, and our apology for causing problems in Afghanistan appeared. The charges further alleged that we visited the family in the name of our organization—particularly in the name of the street kids project. The organization and its projects were fronts for preaching, according to the charges. For our actions, the text concluded, we were subject to punishment under Islamic law.
sixteen
BOMBS, BIRDS, CATS, AND MICE
I bought eight little birds and will release them today after a meeting we are going to have with Mr. [Atif Ali] Khan to discuss your case. All of us will be there, including the three consular diplomats. The press will likely be there after the meeting so they will see us release the birds. Of course, this is symbolic of you guys and your release to freedom soon.