by Dayna Curry
Najib came in. “No,” he snapped. “Leave it.”
I folded the destarkhaan over the tops of the glasses and left everything in the middle of the floor.
Heather & Dayna: In those days we never knew when Najib would come and move us to the night prison. We kept a suitcase packed and ready at all times. The two of us shared a suitcase. That evening, we grabbed more things than usual—toiletries, coffee, cheese. We did not know whether we were leaving for good.
When we got to the van, Georg and Peter were there waiting. For the last couple of weeks on these trips, we women usually waited on the men. The routine went like this: We would go to the van. We would refuse, in accordance with Georg’s instructions, to get into the van until Georg and Peter arrived. We did not want to give the Taliban a chance to drive off with us. Georg would always come some minutes later. Najib then would blame the delay on Peter, claiming he moved slowly. When Peter finally arrived, Najib would say to him, “You are old.” Peter would agree. “Bale, Peer astum.” Yes, I am old. This evening was different.
We got to the van, handed the men the pot of hot soup, and climbed in. As the van pulled into the office-building compound, Kati noticed that the bright spotlight at the entrance had been turned off.
We took the stairs to our hallway. Men congregated there; one, a prisoner and contact of Georg’s, walked with a limp. Later we learned that the man had been trying to plot a dramatic escape from the prison for that evening in the event the Northern Alliance overtook Kabul. Georg told him quite plainly that we did not want anything to do with grisly schemes.
We entered our room. It was just before six o’clock. The atmosphere seemed tense. We could hear men moving around in the hallway. Then the bombing started. Explosions rocked the building. Gunfire erupted. One bomb dropped so close to the compound, the plastic over one of our windows blew up like a balloon. We wondered if the Northern Alliance was already in Kabul.
Heather: Due to the heavy bombing, I requested to go downstairs with Peter and Georg. The others insisted that they did not want to go.
“I will go to the basement by myself,” I explained. Staying temporarily in the basement with Georg and Peter appealed more to me than sitting in an open room during the middle of a heavy raid and possible invasion by Northern Alliance troops. I called to one of the guards and requested he send for Georg.
Georg came up to the room. “If the bombing continues to get worse, I will request permission to have you brought down,” he assured me.
Dayna: Georg told us that a guard he had befriended would come and take us underground if the bombing became any heavier. Spending the night in a dungeon with male criminals seemed a less-than-palatable arrangement, but we finally agreed it would be safer than staying above ground.
Heather & Dayna: Not much time had passed before Georg again came to our door. He came under the pretense of wanting to borrow medicine, but in fact he brought important news: Northern Alliance forces were ten kilometers outside of the city.
“Do not open the door unless you hear my voice,” he firmly instructed.
At nine o’clock Kati and Silke went back to their room across the hall. We decided to lie down and try to sleep. “When we wake up, this city may not be in Taliban hands anymore,” someone remarked.
Soon afterward a vehicle pulled up to the building. We began to hear movement in the hallway. By 9:30, the hall was abuzz with the activity of men. Pounding broke out on our door. “Come on. You must leave,” we heard.
We went to the door and heard the voice of one of our guards, a youthful, almost tender-looking man who had treated us kindly during our nights at the office prison. He spoke through the door. We thought he was leaving and trying to tell us goodbye. Then we realized: “He is telling us that we have to leave.”
The banging on the door grew more forceful. The men demanded we come out.
“We are not opening that door unless we hear our boss’s voice,” insisted Diana.
Finally we heard Georg: “Ladies, you must collect your things. These men have Kalashnikovs. They are nervous and upset.”
We pulled on our clothes, gathered our belongings, and opened the door to Georg.
A group of armed men dressed for war, some with their faces wrapped in turbans, moved anxiously up and down the corridor. We recognized two of the men. One, the leader, was the large man from the intelligence ministry who came to our door with a video camera perhaps a week prior. Next to him stood the youthful guard who had treated us with favor. Najib was nowhere around.
“They are taking us back to the other prison,” Georg said.
Heather: “That’s a lie,” I said to Georg. “They are telling us a lie. Najib would be here if we were returning to the other prison.”
“Heather, we cannot do anything about it. We have to go with them.”
“We will go,” I said, “but I know we’re not going back to that prison.”
I was carrying my suitcase, pillow, and a burlap bag. A soldier turned to me: “Leave your things. You do not need them. You will be back in the morning.”
“I have everything I own in this suitcase, and I am not leaving it behind.” I knew we would not be returning in the morning.
He smiled. “Okay. For you, we can take your things.” Everyone left carrying a small bag.
Heather & Dayna: As the men led us down the hall, some commotion broke out around Kati and Silke’s room. The women were not opening the door. They said they could not hear Georg’s voice. Once they heard him, they grabbed what they could and followed our column outside.
The men put us into what looked like an enormous sport utility vehicle. In the back, bench seats on either side of the truck bed faced inward. Diana was one of the first to climb in.
“What am I stepping on?” she asked.
“Rocket launchers,” a Talib answered. The excitement never seemed to end.
We crammed into the truck. The quarters were tight and uncomfortable. On one bench, Diana, Silke, Kati, and Peter sat atop several rocket launchers. We sat with Ursula and Georg on an empty seat. More weaponry lay on the floor under our feet. Our bags were piled on top of us. From floor to ceiling the truck was packed; the atmosphere was suffocating.
Dayna: I was sitting on the end of the bench seat, and just before we drove off, a Talib got in beside me. He kept his Kalashnikov between his legs. There was little room even to twitch. The Talib and I sat cheek-to-cheek.
He asked me questions: “Where are you from? Are you from America?”
Heather and Diana urged me not to answer the man.
“What do I do?” I asked Georg.
Georg spoke firmly to the Talib: “Do not talk to the lady.”
Heather & Dayna: We drove through the city while bombs continued to fall. As expected, we passed right by the intelligence prison.
“You have betrayed us!” Georg exclaimed in Pashtu. “You have lied to us. You told us you were taking us back to the prison. We are supposed to be your guests. You are treating us terribly.”
Georg spent several minutes trying to get them to disclose where they were taking us. They laughed as if to mock us. We asked Georg to translate.
“Georg, is this the road to Kandahar?”
“I do not know yet,” he replied. Kandahar, the Taliban seat of power, would be a very dangerous place for us to go.
It was difficult to breathe in the vehicle. We cracked the window and let in some cold air; then we closed the window against the cold. So went the ride: open the window, then close.
Dayna: Just beyond the city limits, we stopped on the side of the road so our driver could consult with some other men. We did not know whether men were being added to our caravan. Perhaps the men were discussing where they would take us.
I turned to the Talib next to me. “Where are we going?”
“Wardak.” Wardak was the home village of several Taliban from the reform school prison. Mariam’s family lived in Wardak.
Wardak was on the road to K
andahar.
The caravan started up again. Along the road, tanks and Taliban trucks fled the city. No bombs were dropping. A quarter of an hour down the road, the driver called something out to the guard crunched up next to me.
“Kabul gereft. Kabul gereft,” the driver said. Kabul has been taken.
Wow, I thought. We missed it. We missed the Northern Alliance. We really missed our chance to go free in Kabul.
“We missed it by thirty minutes,” Georg said.
For some time, I had dared to hope our release would happen soon, that we would be home by Thanksgiving. I believed God had spoken to me. Now we were in the hands of men we did not know, men who were not interested in our safety, men who, in fact, had just been overthrown. We were hostages.
“Lord, mobilize more prayer for us,” Diana cried out. “Wake up people to pray!”
It was a low moment.
Heather began singing, “There is a light in the darkness and his name is Jesus.” Then she asked for a Bible. I gave her mine. She pulled out her flashlight and began to read to us. She spoke with strength. She took the lead. She who had been afraid now confidently comforted us in our distress.
Heather: I began to read our favorite passages of scripture aloud. We had woven many of the verses together into songs. I would read a passage. Then we would sing the accompanying song.
I read Psalm 121, and we sang, “The Lord Will Keep Me from All Harm,” a song Dayna wrote.
Another of Dayna’s songs, “Wait for the Lord, Be Strong and Take Heart,” accompanied Psalm 27.
I read Psalm 55 and we sang a song of Kati’s: “He Ransoms Me Unharmed.”
Then Psalm 126 and Kati’s “We Were Like People Who Dreamed.” This song spoke of captives who returned to their homeland singing and dancing with joy over their dream come true. One line went, “Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ ”
We sang Kati’s song from Psalm 86, “Hear and Answer Me,” and Dayna’s song from Psalm 31, “My Times Are in Your Hands.” We sang the song Dayna and I wrote the day after our arrest, “Fear Not,” from Isaiah 43.
We sang many of the songs we had written and some we had not written. Just as we had hoped, we went out of prison singing.
The driver turned on the radio to try to drown us out. We blasted the poor Talib soldier next to Dayna.
“These songs were written for this night,” Diana said. “They were written for right now.” We all started to laugh. In what should have been our most terrifying moment, we relaxed. I relaxed. We worshiped Jesus. The situation had gotten so beyond our control that we could not worry over it any longer. There were no props to lean on. Only Jesus would be our way of escape.
“God, what miracle are you going to perform to get us out of this one?” we said.
Heather & Dayna: Two hours later our caravan stopped again, this time for gas near Wardak, but we did not stop long. We got back on the road and drove farther south. At two o’clock in the morning, we pulled off the main road onto a small dirt road. We drove up a hill, passing some metal shipping containers, and eventually reached the front gate of a compound. The metal gate was green with decorative blue and yellow ironwork at the top. We assumed we were in front of a house.
“I guess we are going in there for the night,” someone said. But the caravan of vehicles kept moving past the compound. We pulled up alongside a shipping container and stopped.
The heavyset intelligence official who had tried to video us back at the office prison came alongside the passenger’s side of our vehicle. The youthful guard we knew accompanied him. We also noticed that Georg’s prisoner contact, who walked with a limp, had come along as part of the caravan. The men engaged Georg. We understood that the men were talking about money. Could we get a large sum from our governments or families? We thought the men said that if we could come up with ransom money they would release us.
We had talked as a group about the money option before—would we give money if the Taliban wanted it? Some answered with a firm no.
Dayna: I did not feel right about money being given for our handover. The thought gave me a sick feeling. That way out would only encourage the whole hostage-ransom cycle. I did not want to be a part of perpetuating such activity. I wanted God to be glorified in our means of escape. I wanted it to be clear to the world that God got us out of Afghanistan through prayer, not through financial negotiations.
Heather: I admired the others’ faith, but I did not mind pursuing the money route if that was the only option at hand. Time was of the essence. The situation on the ground in Afghanistan was deteriorating by the minute, and we had heard of no other surefire means to get away from our captors. We at least wanted to call our parents and diplomats and find out what would be best to do.
I asked the youthful guard from the night prison, “Is this why you have taken us—for money? Is this what you want?”
“Yes,” he remarked casually. “You will be fine. They just want money. Bandikhaana khalaas shud.” Jail is finished.
Heather & Dayna: Georg complained that none of our governments knew of our whereabouts.
“We will take you to a satellite phone tomorrow so you can call them,” the intelligence official said. “We will prepare a comfortable room for you for tonight.”
Meanwhile, someone opened the back of our vehicle. The air was bitterly cold. The temperature had dropped well below freezing. We women were dressed in our long johns and dresses. We wore thin socks and plastic slip-on sandals. None of us had coats. Most of us were without blankets.
We got out of the truck. About two dozen armed Taliban in heavy camouflage jackets milled around the area.
One said, “You’re sleeping in there.” He gestured toward the shipping container.
We gasped. The container was about twelve feet deep, big enough to hold two large vans. Inside were a few dirty toshaks and a couple of blankets.
Georg argued with the men. “I cannot believe you would keep us in such conditions,” he said, exasperated. “You are putting men and women together in the same place. This is absolutely unacceptable!”
“Do not worry,” quipped the youthful guard from the night prison. “Tomorrow we will put you in a luxurious place. This is only for tonight.” He smirked.
By this time the youthful, tender guard had metamorphosed into a warrior. He wore a thick camouflage jacket and an enormous turban. Rounds of ammunition encircled his torso. A scarf covered all of his face but his eyes. His manner was at once mellow and edged, casual and shrewd. He was no longer our friend. He was ready for war.
Dayna: Georg continued to argue with the men. Peter stayed with him. Heather refused to go inside the container out of concern that the Taliban would lock us inside. The rest of us were exhausted. We resigned ourselves to the arrangements.
“How can I help?” I said to the others. They were organizing the toshaks and blankets and determining who would sleep where. We all had our sheets with us, which helped for cleanliness. I felt very distressed but tried to make the best of the situation.
Kati and I went around behind the container, looking for someplace to use the bathroom. Armed men lurked everywhere. Kati and I stood in front of each other and held up our chawdurs as curtains. None of the men bothered us.
Back in the container, we huddled together for warmth. I balled into a fetal position, covered my head with my blanket, and tried to warm myself with my breath. It was no use. The night was miserable.
Heather: Several Taliban urged me to go into the shipping container with the other women.
“No,” I told them. “I am fine out here.” I was standing near the vehicle. Men hovered around me. I watched my back. I wondered if they would attempt to shoot me for refusing to go into the container.
“Look, all of your friends are in there,” one Talib coaxed. “They are all warm and have blankets. You should be in there with your friends. You will be happy. Out here you will be cold.”
“I
am sorry. I am happy standing right here. I am not going in that container.” I could not imagine going into the container. If I went inside, the men could close the doors and lock us in. They could blow up the container, which we understood was a common practice during the war between the Mujahideen. It was not safe for all of us to go inside the container. I was not going to be locked in anywhere.
“Heather, they are not playing games,” Georg said firmly. “They mean business. They are angry. You need to come in here.”
He tried to explain to the men that I believed they would attempt to lock the door if I went inside. But as he talked, the circle of men gradually closed in around me. In a minute or two I was standing at the door of the container. I did not want to get shot. I looked at Georg.
Finally, I went in and sat down right at the entrance. Georg and Peter took spots near me. Just as I had suspected, one Talib moved to close the doors. I called on Georg to do something about it.
“You cannot shut the door,” Georg insisted to the men. They conceded and posted an armed guard inside the doorway with us. Then they pulled a vehicle, in which other men were sleeping, right up to the door to protect against our possible escape.
Before the man with the limp whom Georg knew from our office prison left for the night, he took off his thick wool head scarf and handed it to me.
“You will freeze,” I said. “I cannot take it.”
“No, no. I insist that you take it.”
I hesitated. “Take it,” Georg said. “He wants to give it to you.”
“Thank you so much for your kindness,” I said, and wrapped the scarf around me. I took a sweatshirt out of my suitcase, and a Talib brought me a blanket. It was too cold to sleep, and I thought someone needed to stay awake and keep watch. I sat against the wall and prayed.
At about four-thirty, a man came to the door. He gave the guard a pot of tea and a bowl of burning cinders from a fire. The guard and I warmed our hands over the bowl. “Are you cold?” the guard asked.