Walking the Precipice

by Barbara Bick

  Chapter 3

  Journey to the Land of the Mujahidin, 2001

  Nasrine and I are flying via Germany, Turkey, and Tajikistan. We are joined by Sara, the twenty-seven-year-old Swiss student and videographer hired to film Mary MacMakin. Our flight arrives in Munich at 1:30 a.m., with a nine-hour wait before the plane to Dushanbe takes off. Our bags are unloaded for transfer to the Tajik plane, with the biggest belonging to Nasrine. They are filled with schoolbooks, many of them heavy medical texts. She has also packed notebooks, posters, maps, and globes, as well as medicines, toiletries, clothes, seed packets, and gifts. Sara has her heavy camera and equipment. I have the least, but my load is still bulky, with a bedroll, heavy walking boots, my Peruvian wool serape, and a number of gift-wrapped scarves. Plagued by the memory of how sick I had been after my last trip, I have also brought along four quart-size bottles of spring water and a small water-purification kit.

  While most of the Afghan refugees are in Pakistani and Iranian camps, Tajikistan holds a sizable portion of the Afghan diaspora. Nasrine’s plans for my one-week trip include only one day in Dushanbe, but it will be packed full: we will try to meet with the Afghan Women’s Association, the Refugee Association, the Peace Institute, and a women’s sewing workshop.

  When we arrive in Afghanistan, we will stay one day at a guesthouse the Northern Alliance maintains in the town of Khoja Bahauddin, where we will meet with the local women’s association, and visit a camp for internally displaced refugees. Then on to the ancient town of Faizabad for two days, where Nasrine lists visits to a school, a university, a television station, and the ubiquitous women’s association. The best will come last: we will go to the Panjshir Valley, Massoud’s home base, and visit schools, a hospital, a displaced persons’ camp, and another women’s association. Then I will return home. All in a week! Looking back, it is hard to believe that such an agenda was even conceivable. In any case, another agenda awaits us. And for Nasrine, another life.

  The Tajik plane is fitted with the narrowest seats and tightest spacing of any I have ever flown in. Despite the discomfort, my eyelids droop and I doze off. Hours later, we reach our Turkish stopover, and everyone stumbles out into the cold, dark night. I feel like a cow in a holding pen as we are herded into a huge, empty Istanbul airport terminal that lacks food services or places to sit. I wander around like a sleepwalker until we are herded back onto the plane.

  It is still night—or night again—when we land in Dushanbe. An Afghan embassy representative together with our interpreter, eighteen-year-old Khusrow, a refugee from the Panjshir Valley, are there to meet us and take us to a hotel.

  Before we go to sleep at 4:30 a.m., Tajik time, we arrange to be awakened at 9:30. When I hear the hotel floor attendant knock on the door, I rise and dress quickly, but Nasrine and Sara are still asleep. I go down to breakfast alone in the big, plush, Russian-style restaurant.

  When we finally get together, we are driven to the Afghan embassy and begin to learn the hazards of travel in foreign countries where we don’t know the rules. Each of us has only one entry visa for Tajikistan, and we used those visas when we entered the country the previous night. We will need another set of entry visas to get back into Dushanbe when we come back from Afghanistan. We should have realized that we didn’t have visas for multiple entries, but somehow none of us did. All our plans for Dushanbe have to be scrapped while we scurry around trying to get our visas.

  We rush out, only to wait in offices all morning. I am frustrated, but recognize the moment as one of those serendipitous occasions that make each trip unique, plunging a traveler into the “real” life of a new country. The city opens up to me as we drive around and go in and out of offices. It seems a genial place, with wide boulevards, green trees, and a mild climate, its streets filled with healthy-looking, busy people.

  The lovely government buildings are less lovely inside. The original large offices and even the marble corridors have been subdivided into dark warrens with ugly, mass-produced metal furniture and stacks of paper overflowing onto floors.

  It is a long day of negotiating an unfamiliar bureaucracy, but a successful one—or so we think. When we return, at last, to the Afghan embassy, a translator informs us that we will also need a second set of exit visas from Tajikistan! Without them, we will not be able to board the plane for our trip home. During all our time that day with various officials, no one had seen fit to tell us this.

  The news has just begun to sink in when Massoud’s nephew, who is the defense attaché in Dushanbe, comes into the office to greet us. He looks remarkably like pictures of his uncle, with the same long, narrow face. “No problem!” He airily waves away our dilemma. “When you are due to leave, just pay a fee for another exit visa and that will be that.”

  But one crisis solved seems to activate another. A new official walks into the office almost immediately and reports that no planes can fly into Afghanistan until September 9, nearly two weeks away. We are flabbergasted. Has something terrible happened? No. It appears that Tajikistan is preparing to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union and has decided to close its border with Afghanistan. Could they fear an attack from the Taliban? We never find out, but the news is devastating for us. Nasrine and I go over and over my alternatives. Should I spend my week in Dushanbe and return home as scheduled without seeing Afghanistan? Or change my plans and my ticket, and wait with Nasrine and Sara until we can all enter the country? I quickly come to the only possible decision: I will go to Afghanistan.

  But the roller coaster ride is not yet over. The defense attaché comes into the room with good news: We don’t have to wait until the ninth after all. He has arranged for a van to pick us up early the next morning and drive us to Kalab, a small military air base that the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmonov, has provided for Massoud’s use. There, one of Massoud’s helicopters will fly us to Khoja Bahauddin in Afghanistan, as planned. I am so relieved and happy that I cannot stop thanking him.

  Finally, we relax. I am not entirely sorry that Nasrine’s plans for Dushanbe are now impossible. I have spent years on official trips, trudging through tours of schools and hospitals and sitting through meetings with associations. I know they are important, informative, occasionally even moving—but I’ve had more than enough of them, and secretly I’ve come to dread them. I am delighted that instead I have a few hours to enjoy this charming city.

  Dushanbe was created by the Soviets from a small provincial village and its population is now about five million. We are in the downtown, central district, which is crossed by wide boulevards bordered by full-grown shade trees. From a 1960s visit to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as part of a peace delegation, I am familiar with the practice of digging gullies alongside many of the streets where fresh, clean water flows to cool the semitropical air. Streets are also cooled and cleaned by nightly wash downs. Wide, unbroken sidewalks are full of pedestrians, the majority of adult women wearing traditional dress: colorful, loose-fitting shifts patterned with a multicolored design of jagged stripes. College students are clustered around several schools. Buildings, freshly painted white for the anniversary celebration, are low, two or three storied, imparting a pleasant, provincial ambiance. Some public buildings mirror Washington, D.C.’s neoclassical style. Murals and mosaics on many buildings and fences add a colorful note.

  During the night I wake to a turbulent thunderstorm and am fearful that we will not be able to leave, but I fall back asleep. At three in the morning I am awakened again, this time by Nasrine banging on the door. She has read her clock wrong and thinks it’s time to get up. Again I drop off. Despite the bad night, we manage to be ready on time and leave the city at 6:30 on a clear and cool morning, accompanied by a man from the Afghan defense attaché’s office.

  The drive to the remote military air base takes three and a half hours. Outside the central city, Dushanbe’s grand buildings disappear, replaced by the kind of makeshift housing found in impoverished areas that ring
cities throughout the global South. The car climbs several high barren hills, passes rivers, and then goes by a sun-dashed blue lake spotted with miniscule rocky islets. As we descend into a valley of cotton plantations, the air gets hotter and hotter. Goats, turkeys, and geese roam freely in the villages. We pass orchards and vineyards, great swathes of wheat fields stretching to the horizon, and herds of cows and horses. Further south, the houses and walls are made of mud and straw, and there are acres of shining green rice. All this land belongs to the state, and the major crop, cotton, continues to be exported to textile factories in Russia. As part of Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries were exploited for their natural resources and cultivated as agricultural colonies. Much of that economy still prevails.

  We drive into the small, sequestered Kalab airfield. I later learn that this rustic military base is the one the CIA has been using since the previous year, when, concerned about the Taliban’s collaboration with Al Qaeda and bin Laden’s terrorist training camps, they decided to establish contact with Massoud. CIA teams usually flew into Afghanistan on one of the rusting, patched-together M1-17 transport helicopters that Massoud kept at Kalab. Fearing they were risking agents’ lives with every trip, headquarters sent a team of mechanics knowledgeable about Russian helicopters out to Kalab. Apparently, the mechanics were stunned that Massoud’s men had managed to create functioning aircraft from Hind attack engines packed into the bays of M1-17 transports. They reported that the helicopters were “flying miracles,” mismatched gum-and-baling-wire machines.

  One of these flying miracles is standing on the tarmac when we arrive, its blades already rotating. The defense attaché’s man is agitated. He quickly throws all our bags out of the trunk, helps us out of the car, then pulls us along, urging, “Hurry, hurry, please, the helicopter is waiting!” Nasrine is adamant that we’re not going anywhere just yet. She insists that we have to change into our good clothes.

  “Please, please, get on the helicopter,” the Afghan begs.

  But Nasrine whispers to me, “I think Massoud himself will be in Khoja Bahauddin. I think we will be able to interview him.” She turns to the Afghan and says in a tone that allows no disagreement, “We must change our clothes.”

  He throws up his hands and leads us to a rugged outhouse several yards away, each of us dragging a piece of luggage. I pull out my one good outfit, a peacock blue silk shirt and pants that I brought for official occasions, and as I’m throwing the shirt over my head, I hear a terrible sound: the engine of the helicopter as it roars by over our heads. I peek out in time to see the Afghan shrug his shoulders, get back into the car, and drive off.

  Nasrine, Sara, and I stand outside the shack, dumbfounded. In an instant, we have been stranded in this forlorn spot. I am sweating in my ridiculous tight silk outfit, anxious, and furious at Nasrine. But there is no time for recrimination. A group of heavyset, bearded men swagger over to us and demand our passports. At least Nasrine can communicate with them, since the Tajik language is closely related to Dari. Reluctantly, we take out our passports and hand them over. The Tajiks tell us that they are military border guards and we have to go through customs with them. It is now clear that this is what our Afghan friends had wanted us to avoid and why a helicopter had been ready to go the instant we arrived.

  We follow the men over dusty, rocky paths, dragging our luggage with us, to an old train boxcar sitting in a field of weeds and desiccated trees. Hours of harassment commence, to the great amusement of a gaggle of soldiers hanging around for the show. Nasrine whispers that we are to say nothing, offer nothing, that she will do all the talking. Of course, Sara and I are incapable of contributing anything, since we don’t speak Tajik. The two of us sit on rusted, rickety chairs and try to be as unobtrusive as possible. But Sara is young and pretty and the center of attention for all the men. She is petrified. I am mainly uncomfortable in my inappropriate silk in the intense heat.

  Each of us is taken into the boxcar and interviewed, with Nasrine serving as translator. The head man keeps up a jocular tone as he comes on to Sara. When Nasrine realizes that they are essentially brigands, that what they really want is money, she regains a measure of confidence and negotiates a sum. Now that they have what they want, the men bring us to a low outbuilding and into a storeroom where we will spend the night. We have no idea when another helicopter will arrive and have no choice but to settle in and wait. At least this time, they’ve helped us drag our suitcases.

  The room we are in is used by the local women who come daily to clean the offices and sleeping quarters of the crew. We pull together some army cots scattered around the room and lie down to rest, but our trials are not over. Sara is becoming ill; she turns feverish and begins to toss on her narrow cot. Fortunately, a small medical team, there to treat the soldiers, is housed across the hall. They kindly bring over some medication, and all three of us turn in for the night, after a “dinner” of tea and rice.

  The next morning, after a breakfast of tea and nan, the ubiquitous bread of much of this region, Nasrine walks over to the base headquarters to see if she can find out anything. She comes back with the news that the Afghans know where we are and a representative will be with us later in the morning. Soon enough, an Afghan major under Massoud’s command, who is resident in a nearby town, comes to meet with us. He is middle aged and looks so much like one of my uncles that I immediately feel comforted, certain that he will rescue us. Perhaps he will, but not right away, as it turns out. He says that Tajik security has learned about us, and the regional security chief has decided that we must immediately go to his office, nearly forty miles away. What can we do? We get into a car with the major and a Tajik security officer and head off.

  The situation has made us testy—I more than Sara, who nurses her misery in silence. Nasrine drives me into a fit of exasperation by continually calling Tajik security the KGB. I retort that KGB is an outdated ex-Soviet term and inappropriate. We both sulk.

  The security chief’s office is a new building in the center of a small town. We are greeted cordially, and then a long discourse ensues between the Afghan major and the Tajik chief. According to Nasrine, the chief begins by claiming that no more helicopters are available and we will have to return to Dushanbe. The major insists that’s not possible. The chief then says we do not have the correct documents; we should have gone to the Department of Labor—no, to the Department of Foreign Relations. It quickly becomes clear that here is someone else who wants something from us. Not money, it turns out. No, he wants the Afghan major to provide his men with fifty uniforms, so that they can make a good showing at the tenth-anniversary celebrations. Nasrine and I, friends again, feel terrible that we have brought this burden on the Afghans. But a bargain is struck, there are cordial handshakes all around, and we are driven back to spend another night at the grim base.

  This time, the base staff have decided to make us more comfortable, and a kitchen worker arrives with a dinner of borscht, salad, and melon. I eat nothing. I have begun to have stomach cramps, and the only latrine is a dark, stinking outhouse. I sip a little of my precious water and eat some candy, thinking about how rapidly my projected week is disappearing. I decide that once in Afghanistan, I must stay for an additional week.

  The next morning dawns bright and hot. And what a morning it will be! Three helicopters are lined up on the field. Time passes, nothing is moving. What can go wrong now? Finally, Nasrine tramps over to the base headquarters to locate someone in charge. The message is that we will definitely leave that day. Determined that we will be ready this time, we drag our bags out to the field, as near to one of the helicopters as we can get, and sit down. The sun creeps across the sky, and there are no trees for shade, but we continue our vigil on the airfield, resolved that no helicopter will take off without us. Sara is passive; Nasrine and I pace, more and more anxious as the hours pass.

  As we patrol the airfield, we have ample time to study the helicopters, which are small and battere
d, discarded Russian machines. Finally a pilot strides onto the field. Without bothering to acknowledge his passengers, he climbs into the nearest machine to fiddle with something. Then, frowning, he climbs out, peers under the aircraft, mutters what sound even to our ears like curses, and strides off the field. By this time several base workers are out on the tarmac with us, and to our nervous inquiries they reply that it appears the helicopter has a leaking gas tank and cannot be flown that morning. We lug our bags over to the next helicopter and, as our faces and arms redden from the sun, we wait again, and hope.

  The pilot strides onto the field once more. We watch him closely. He walks around the second machine, kicks it in several places, bends to look over the tires. He mutters something. Then he turns and walks over to the last helicopter. This time, as we pull frantically on our bags, the base workers join in and lift the heaviest. The pilot is on top of the machine, using a screwdriver to tighten the rotor blades. Then he waves to us to get in and climbs down.

  We are so afraid of not being able to leave that we have lost all fear about our means of getting out. But at my age, actually climbing into the helicopter—without, of course, any of those portable steps—presents a whole new challenge. Our bags are thrown in, and Sara and Nasrine haul themselves aboard, but I am totally stymied. The workers prove to be real gents: while Nasrine and Sara pull at my arms from above, the men lift me from behind and shove.