Walking the Precipice

by Barbara Bick

  Nasrine and I jump in, someone throws my bags in the jeep, and I lean out to kiss Jaheen goodbye as the car shoots out the gate and up the road, and then rocks and sways as we pull onto the pitted dirt path that winds down to the riverside field. I gasp when I see the huge, gleaming military helicopter resting on the field. Tall, uniformed, armed men stand talking in small groups. Another figure in black civilian clothes stands alone, with his back to us. When Nasrine recognizes the man, she pulls back into the car, painfully aware of her disheveled appearance. Zubair grabs my bags and pushes me ahead, rushing us to the helicopter and shoving me onto the steps at its door. I turn around; I want to thank him, to kiss him three times in the Afghan way, to hug him good-bye, but he has already turned and is walking back to the jeep.

  I step into the enormous body of the helicopter and sit down on one of the padded benches lining the sides. The soldiers quickly climb in; obviously they delayed their departure for me. An armchair covered by an oriental carpet is near the entrance. As soon as the civilian man climbs in and sits down in the armchair, the helicopter blades begin to turn, and the aircraft swiftly lifts and soars over the gleaming river. I recognize the man in the armchair as Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Massoud’s close friend and Afghanistan’s foreign minister. During the hour’s flight he never glances my way, never smiles. His shadowed face is grim.

  A familiar-looking man is next to me and leans over to ask me a question, but the roaring noise of the helicopter fills the interior and I have difficulty hearing him. Finally, it dawns on me that this is Massoud’s nephew, the defense attaché at the Afghan embassy in Dushanbe. He is asking me about Sara. I explain that she is in the Panjshir Valley to film Mary, but that is as much conversation as I can manage.

  The trip is taking much longer than before. I wonder where we are headed, but suddenly I can no longer think as an overwhelming happiness swells and surges, abates, and then surges again through my body. I have survived and I am going home! Absurdities burst in my brain: I will soon bathe my whole body, wash my hair, and stand under hot water. I am going to sleep under clean sheets, drink coffee, and have a glass of liquor. I want steak and salad. Abruptly, my brain switches. I seem to have no volition over my emotions or thoughts. I think of the others left behind, of the murdered Assim; despairing Jaheen; and Zubair, always ready to help. Tears fill my eyes at Zubair’s kindness to me—a stranger and a foreigner, who has so much while he has so little. Zubair must have pleaded with his chief, Dr. Abdullah, to delay his schedule and allow me on his plane. I feel no one has ever done so much for me. I am filled with distress that I have not been able to thank him.

  The helicopter lands at a remote section of a major airport. The military men disembark first, then Dr. Abdullah and Massoud’s nephew. No one looks in my direction. I search for my bags. There is no one to help me. I pull my two bags over to the door and hurry down the steps. I call out for help but there is no one. I see the minister and his entourage striding away. Panic and adrenaline give me strength and I tug the bags down, pull up the handle of my wheeled suitcase and run after the men, dragging the bags behind me.

  The group of men grows smaller as they recede into the distance down the long runway. Even in my panic, some particle of my mind is infinitely amused at the vision of this old woman running and stumbling, pulling her bags and desperately yelling, “Wait, wait, please wait for me!” Then the group is gone. Large black cars and vans pull off the runway.

  I stop running and slowly walk on, not sure where I am and what I should do. Still far from any airport building, I come to a small white car. Two men get out, take my bags, open the back door of the automobile and motion to me to get in. They are smiling and one says in English, “Did you think we would leave you?” The Afghan Foreign Ministry has sent a car for me.

  I gratefully sink back in the seat. I don’t know where I am or what will happen next, and for the moment, I don’t especially care. What will happen will happen. Inshallah. We drive out of the airport onto a side road—no queuing up for passport scrutiny, no bureaucracy, no customs. I envision myself stumbling down the runway just minutes before and feel as though I have become part of a Keystone Kops routine. But I cannot stop thinking about the tragedy I have left behind.

  When we leave the airport, I realize I am in Dushanbe. The city seems impossibly ravishing as I look out of the car window at rows of lofty green trees; wide, clean boulevards; people striding briskly on paved sidewalks; new automobiles, trams, and buses; functioning traffic lights; and police. I am back in what is to me normal life. No burqas, not even many headscarves. I watch the women on the sidewalks, some in Western dress, others in their colorful national garment, hair free, faces bare.

  The car pulls into the circular driveway of a hotel that seems incredibly glamorous after Khoja Bahauddin. The Afghans hand me my bags, smile, bow, and are gone. I carry my suitcases up a few wide marble steps into the lobby, suddenly a little panicky at being on my own. I press my travel purse to my side, passport and credit card safe inside. I will be all right.

  The lobby is empty. The women at the registration counter look puzzled by my unexpected appearance—there are few single foreign women wandering around Dushanbe. They call over another woman who speaks a little English; she takes my passport and asks me to wait a few minutes. Suddenly very tired, and feeling downright dirty, I gingerly sit down on a sofa and look up at a small television screen hung from a ceiling rafter. I see a news report of a skyscraper tower collapsing, fires bursting from buildings, explosions. I cannot understand the language; it might be Russian.

  A tall man stands nearby, also watching the TV. “Do you speak English?” I ask. He nods.

  “Do you know what country that is?” He looks at me strangely. “You don’t know?” he asks, with what sounds like a French accent. He bends down to me, then slowly says, “That’s New York.”

  “But, but . . . what?” I stammer.

  “Terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York. There are many dead.” I feel a blow, as though I have been punched, hard.

  A French Afghan woman joins us, a journalist traveling with the man I have been speaking to, who is also a journalist. I tell her where I have been and why. Her name is Nilab and she knows Nasrine and Shoukria. She rapidly brings me up to date on the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and tells me that there are no flights to the United States.

  I am too stunned to fully understand. I had just begun to gain a sense of normalcy that instantly drains away. I accept a key and follow a porter, who takes my bag and leads me to my room. I strip and walk into the bathroom, turn the hot water on in the shower, step in, and stand under the steaming water. I just stand there under the hot water without feeling. I soap my body, slowly and carefully, over every bit of skin, pour shampoo on my head and scrub and scrub. After a while I step out and rub myself down with a bath towel. I pull back the bedcover, lie down naked on the starched white sheets of the bed, and then my body starts to convulse. Great sobs move up from my stomach, through my body and come out my mouth in loud gasping groans. I shake and sob and after a while tears start to flow.

  This goes on for a long while, but then my body finally stops reacting, my mind takes over. I need to know what has happened. I see a TV and turn it on, switching channels until I come to an English-language news station. I lie down again, pull the covers up, and over and over again watch pictures of the attacks, now two days old but still playing continuously on the TV.

  It is late afternoon. I open my suitcase, put on clean clothes, and go downstairs for some food and then go back to the room, lie down, turn on the BBC, and keep it on all night as I sleep, wake, cry, and fall asleep again.

  The next morning, I go over what I have to do before the plane to Munich leaves in several days. First I call Khosrow, our translator when we first arrived in Dushanbe en route to Afghanistan. He will come to the hotel that morning. Then I call family and friends in the States and in Munich and leave messages on their a
nswering machines. I need to know if everyone is OK and to let them know I am all right. My instinctive first stop, in a situation like this, would be the American embassy, but Nasrine has told me the United States has no embassy in Dushanbe. Before Khosrow arrives I call the number of a Tajik woman who speaks English, given to me by Connie Borde from French NEGAR. The woman will meet me that evening.

  Shoukria, who had left Faizabad for Dushanbe, is still in there and she comes to the hotel with Khosrow. After embracing and weeping together, we spend some time attempting to analyze the meaning and consequences of the attacks in the United States. With her slight command of English and my even poorer French, communication is frustrating for both of us. I am able to make Shoukria understand that in Khoja Bahauddin we had not known about the 9/11 attacks. She is puzzled, as she knows that people in Kabul are aware of what has happened, and that there were radios at the compound. Later I learn that Nasrine, Zubair, and the compound staff heard BBC reports about the attacks on the satellite radio. Nasrine wanted me to know, but those gentle young Afghans insisted I not be told; they did not want me to worry about my Washington family, knowing there was no way for me to contact them.

  Talking with Shoukria, I begin to realize what the 9/11 attacks may mean for the people of Afghanistan, since their country is the home base of Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters. Shoukria has helped the Afghan community in Dushanbe compose a statement to the United Nations, as intermediary to the United States, asking that Kabul not be bombed in any act of retribution. All the refugees, including Shoukria, have family in the capital.

  Khosrow arrives and we go to the airport, where we track down a clerk, who locates my reservation on her computer. It seems like a miracle. I have a ticket and will leave in a few days.

  When I get back to the hotel, the lobby is filled with newly arrived journalists rushing back and forth, encumbered by multiple cameras, bulging briefcases, and cell phones. They bring with them an atmosphere of excitement, an enviable sense of being in the know and of collegiality. Male and female, from many different countries, they rush in, crouch over drinks, talk excitedly, rush off. Rumors proliferate—borders are closed, no civil planes allowed to leave; the United States is preparing for war and revenge. Someone says that the United States will use Dushanbe’s airport as a base to launch attacks on Afghanistan and that there will be no civilian flights in the foreseeable future. I go out to dinner with Connie Borde’s friend, Zarona, who tells me that the US embassy has moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan, but that a small Tajik crew provides a few services for the embassy. Zarona calls there and leaves a message with my name and hotel. She tells me that there was a taped State Department travel warning for US citizens in Dushanbe, advising them to avoid crowds and remain inside after dark.

  Khosrow comes the next day with news that Nasrine’s husband, Max, and her brother, Omar, have called and want Nasrine to get out of Afghanistan. I begin to feel anxious about my own situation. I call my sister to get a chain of my friends to call the State Department and insist they help me to leave.

  My sister calls back to report that the State Department will get me out via Moscow and to expect someone from the embassy that day. He arrives soon after and introduces himself as the regional security officer. He seems annoyed at having to come from Almaty to meet me and proceeds to interview me in an officious—and suspicious—manner. Having expected a warm fellow American on a rescue mission, I am offended to be treated as if I am being interrogated by the CIA.

  “What were you doing in Afghanistan?” he demands.

  “I was on a mission to observe the condition of women.”

  Raised eyebrow. “What organization are you traveling with?”

  “I am traveling as an individual but I have been with an Afghan American friend and we both work with an Afghan women’s organization called NEGAR.”

  “Is that a United Nations NGO?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Where did you go in Afghanistan?”

  “I was in Khoja Bahauddin and Faizabad.”

  “Who arranged your trip?” And so it goes. I grant that after 9/11 he has a reason to be suspicious of anyone coming out of Afghanistan. But it is unpleasant.

  He tells me to be ready at 6:00 the next morning, when I will be picked up by an embassy clerk and taken to the airport. I tell him that I had planned to go with a British friend I have met in the hotel, in her staff car. He coldly brushes me off. “Mrs. Bick, you either go in the embassy car or we will not accept any responsibility for getting you out of Tajikistan. If we are responsible for you, and there is any delay in the scheduled flight tomorrow, our driver will arrange for you to be put on a plane for Almaty and from there to Moscow.” I decide to go along with anything he asks.

  That night, bags packed and in bed, I realize how I have cut off thinking about Afghanistan, about the aftermath of Massoud’s murder and the pain of Assim’s death, and about what the future may bring. I still cannot bear to think about what our response will be to the attacks in the United States. I know in my heart of hearts that having survived this experience through the great kindness of so many Afghans, I must somehow be of service to them in the future.

  I hardly sleep. At 6:00 a.m. I get into the large black car beside a Tajik embassy clerk and, as we drive through the silent streets, I am filled with fear for Afghanistan and the people I have met during this incredible voyage.

  Two days later I have made it all the way to the States, after spending one night in Munich with dear friends Gisela and Eberhardt Köpp. My plan had been to be with my family on Martha’s Vineyard, but instead of going to New York, from which I had booked a flight to the Vineyard, the plane is rerouted to Philadelphia, which is ill prepared for the onslaught of diverted traffic. I push through to what I hope is the line of passengers waiting to proceed through newly implemented security procedures before boarding my next flight.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the young man waiting in the line behind me. “Would you please watch my bag while I go up to find out if I am in the correct line?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” shouts the man. “You take your goddamn bag with you.” And he glares at me.

  “OK, OK,” I stammer, more puzzled than offended. I take my bag and leave the line to get information. Then it slowly dawns on me. Suspicion. Fear. My bag might contain bombs. I am home, but the terrain has shifted yet again.

  It takes many hours to get to the Vineyard, as I navigate this new world of security precautions and cancelled travel options. I have to spend the night in Woods Hole but am on next morning’s first ferry to Vineyard Haven. The cloudless blue sky, the deep-blue Sound filled with white sails of end-of-summer boaters, seem not of the real world. The real world to me is now poverty, drought, and oppression. I know that the experience of the past few weeks will be embedded in my very being. But now I shut it down.

  The ferry is nearing the dock. With joy, I open up my soul to homecoming. I hurry down to the deck to be among the first stepping off onto land and rush to embrace my waiting family.

  Chapter 7

  Kabul Redux, 2003

  On October 7, 2001, a few minutes after 9:00 p.m. Afghanistan time, the US retaliates against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, striking thirty-one military targets and Al Qaeda training camps across the country. It is a modest attack, as such bombing raids go; nonetheless, I am thrown into emotional turmoil. I feel exultant that the women and children, the people of Afghanistan, will be freed from the Taliban nightmare, but I am pained that so many of my friends are actively opposed to what they see as just another American intervention.

  I long to be close to people who see the broader peril of what the Taliban has done to the people of Afghanistan. I am in touch with Nasrine, but not as much as I would like, because of the erratic condition of the Afghan telephone and Internet systems. After I left Afghanistan, Nasrine went to the Panjshir Valley and joined thousands of mourners at Massoud’s funeral. As the Taliban militias fled Kabul before the ons
laught of US air attacks and the city was liberated by the Northern Alliance, Nasrine moved to Kabul. Now, she is aflame with hope for the renewal of her beloved country and continues to garner signatures from hundreds of Afghans for NEGAR’s declaration.

  I hear from Connie Borde in Paris that she is working very hard with Shoukria, who is commuting between Paris and Kabul. The American expats and the French women in NEGAR are helping to plan and arrange support for a series of seminars in Afghanistan that will provide information to women about the new constitution being drafted, to enable their participation in the process. The draft is Islamic throughout, but it has important democratic elements. It states, for example, that Afghanistan must abide by all international treaties and conventions it has signed, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It also ensures that women will make up at least 16.5 percent of the membership of the upper legislative house.

  I am also in email contact with Mary MacMakin. Mary and Sara had met up with a group of Swiss technicians in Panjshir who were setting up a communications bank for the valley, providing heavy batteries, each of which, according to Mary, had to be carried by two men. When the technicians were finished, Sara left for home with her countrymen. For Mary, there was no such easy egress from the valley. She made a harrowing journey on horseback to Pakistan, clad only in her light cotton clothes as she and her guide rode through snow and icy storms over the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. Now, Mary, too, has jubilantly returned to Kabul after its liberation from the Taliban and begun the process of relocating all her projects. We agree that in the spring, Mary will stay with me on one of her regular trips to the States to visit family and raise funds for her projects.