It wasn’t that I was in denial about what was happening to me. Rather, I wanted to maintain as much control over the situation as I could, even if it meant holding it in for another hour or two.
I looked at the clock again. It wasn’t even noon. Time is amazing. There’s never enough time when you’re in a hurry, with a deadline looming, and you have a zillion things to do. If I were at home in Canada and awake at six in the morning, on a Sunday like this, I would have already gone to Mass, gone for a run, showered, changed, and barely had time to meet my friends for Sunday brunch. Here, in the darkness of a hole in the ground, with nothing to do, time couldn’t have passed more slowly.
Zahir was playing with his cell phone. I pulled a pen and my notebook out of my knapsack and flipped it open to an empty page. It was one of those thick spiral-bound stenographer’s notebooks, divided into five or six sections. I’d started the last section a few days before, taking notes at the refugee camp, the names of the people we’d interviewed, and details about their background, which I planned to weave into my script on the refugee camp.
I started to write.
Dearest P,
I can’t imagine what you’re thinking right now, or what you’re going through, and I don’t even know where you are, so I just wanted to write and tell you that I’m okay. It happened so quickly—Shokoor and I were just leaving the camp when this car drove up and these men grabbed me. I have two small stab wounds because I threw a punch at one of them when they were trying to get me into the car, but I’m okay. They say they are with the Taliban, but I’m not sure I believe them. They don’t seem entirely organized, and they just keep talking about money.
“What you writing?” Zahir interrupted.
“A letter,” I answered. He shuffled over, grabbed my notepad, tried to read what I’d just written, and handed it back to me.
I think these guys are a bunch of kids with guns, darling. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine and I’ll come home soon. Please tell everyone at home that I’m okay. They’re not hurting me, although I’m not sure where we are. We walked up and over a mountain to get here. I think I’m somewhere outside Kabul. It’s dark here, but I am not afraid. So don’t you be afraid either. I’m just so sorry for all the trouble I’m sure I’m causing everyone. I’m so sorry I ruined our plans. I miss you so much, P. I hope you know how much I miss you and I’m thinking about you. It will be okay. I know you don’t really believe, but if you have that little rosary I gave you the last time you came to Kandahar, and say a prayer for me, I’m sure that will help. I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through. I’m with you, and I’ll be back. I promise.
I put down my pen and blinked back the tears that were threatening to roll down my face. I couldn’t help but imagine the panic that must have already set in. Paul is one of the calmest and most level-headed people I know. The consummate foreign correspondent, he’d reported from every war zone over the last two decades and had been to Afghanistan more times and knew the country better than most journalists in Canada. We’d met in Afghanistan the summer before, and spent five weeks together on the base, jogging around the airfield together, working out at the gym together, and meeting up in Kabul for a few days, on different assignments for our respective networks. We’d kept in very close touch over the past year, exchanging emails and chats almost every day. We’d grown very close and cared about each other deeply, and we both knew we had to make some hard decisions about our personal lives. With a little editorial organizing, we’d arranged another five weeks together in Kandahar.
I started doing the calculations in my head. If Zahir gets to his father by tomorrow, and if it’s really money they want, and not very much money, it could be over in a week. I could arrange to borrow some money when I got back, and repay whoever put up the funds. If Zahir would plead my case to his father, I could be back on the base by next Monday—since there were no flights to Kandahar on Sundays—and we could still catch our scheduled flight out to Dubai on Wednesday.
I picked up my pen again.
It will be okay, P. We’ll still get there. I know we will. I’m here and I’m okay. I just miss you so much it hurts.
xox
The spot of light behind Zahir’s head had faded, a sign that it was getting dark. I wasn’t sure how we’d managed to spend an entire day sitting in that one spot, but I’d been praying the rosary (although I’m not sure rote recitation constitutes real prayer) over and over and over while Zahir napped. I found out a little more about him as we talked on and off throughout the day. He had a girlfriend and he liked listening to music—two admissions, which, as a young devout Muslim, he was both giddy and sheepish in telling me. He told me his mother liked the girl, but he had to wait for his father’s approval before marrying. We talked about marriage and family, and he told me he wanted seven children, one girl and six boys, because he had grown up with only three brothers, but one sister was enough. He asked about my family and seemed surprised to hear that I only had one sister and no brothers. “No boy in your family?” He was incredulous.
I had also caved and peed in the dirty black bucket. Zahir covered his head with his blanket and turned his back while I pulled down my hiking pants. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but the can had obviously been used before and was very dirty and smelly.
The alarm clock read five-thirty, and I had my rosary in my hand and was about to start another decade of Hail Marys when I heard digging overhead. Zahir pointed up.
“Khalid,” he said before covering his mouth and face with his kaffiyeh. It sounded like the digging was being done with a shovel, and billows of dust swept down the tunnel and into the hole. I closed my eyes and covered my head with my scarf. Dust rained down on us for several minutes, and then I could hear something being dragged off the opening of the hole.
“Goodbye, Mellissa.” Zahir moved the wooden door to the side and hiked up his pyjama-like pants to crawl up the tunnel.
“Zahir, please tell your father to hurry,” I implored.
He took my hand and looked into my eyes. “Yes, I promise. You go home soon.”
And then he inched his way into the tunnel and up. I could hear voices speaking in Pashto outside. A few minutes went by and I heard a thud. I could see a pair of worn black leather shoes at the end of the tunnel.
“Hello, Mellissa!” It was fat Abdulrahman from last night, with two white plastic shopping bags.
“Hello, Abdulrahman,” I replied.
“How are you? Do you like your house?”
“No. It is dark and uncomfortable. I want to go back to Kabul.”
“You will go, you will go,” he assured me.
A second pair of leather shoes appeared at the end of the tunnel. It was Khalid.
“Mellissa.” He held out his hand as if to shake mine. I took his hand and he held it tightly. “How are you, Mellissa?”
“I am okay, Khalid. When can I go home?”
“You not like here? I make this house.”
“I want to go home.”
The two Afghans spoke to each other in Pashto, then Abdulrahman reached into one of the big white plastic bags. He pulled out a kameez and matching pants, nylon and the colour of rust, with vertical beige stripes.
“Here,” he said. “This for you. You wear.”
I picked up the outfit and ran my fingers over it. It was better than the smelly men’s kameez they had put me in for the ride through town on the motorcycle.
“Are you hungry, Mellissa?” Khalid asked.
I shook my head. The only things I’d managed to eat all day were two chocolate cookies. Khalid reached inside the plastic bag and pulled out several sleeves of cookies—mango cream, orange cream, strawberry cream. He also pulled out two apples and several boxes of mango juice.
“You must eat,” he told me.
“Not hungry,” I answered.
He took a juice box, stuck a straw in it, and handed it to me. “You must,” he said.
I took it fr
om his hand and took a sip. It was syrupy thick and sweet. Still, it was probably better than the water I’d been drinking from the red plastic can. I noticed there was also a full green plastic can of water, no cleaner than the water in the red can.
“It is good?” he asked. I nodded.
“I come tomorrow,” Khalid said, moving toward the opening of the hole.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“I go home. I come tomorrow. My uncle stay here tonight,” he said.
“When can I go home?” I asked.
“Inshallah, soon,” he said. “I go now. I see you tomorrow.” He crawled up the tunnel and back out, leaving me with fat Abdulrahman. I heard something that sounded like a heavy wooden board being dragged over the hole and then the sound of shovels. I covered my face with my scarf as dust swept in. Abdulrahman did the same. The whole process took about five minutes and at the end of it, after the dust had settled, Abdulrahman looked up and stared at me with his beady little eyes.
“You no like your house,” he laughed at me.
“No, I hate it here. I want to go home,” I said to him.
“What? It is a very good house,” he smiled. “I help make this house.”
“I thought Khalid said he made this place.”
“Yes, Khalid and me. We build. Very nice, you no like?”
“No, it’s dark and not very comfortable. It’s hard to sleep.”
“You no like your clothes I bring for you?”
I didn’t say anything. I was perfectly happy in my bloodstained clothes.
“You wear.” It sounded like an order.
I took the top and put it over my head, over my ruined flowered kameez.
“No, you take off,” the fat Afghan said.
“It’s okay. I’ll keep it on. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a little blood.”
“No. Off.”
Reluctantly, I pulled my bloodied kameez over my head, leaving my once-white undershirt on. I noticed that it, too, was now brown with dried blood. I felt self-conscious with Abdulrahman staring at me, so I quickly slipped the clean rust-coloured kameez on and adjusted the sleeves. It was too big, but at least it was clean.
“Pants,” he said. I stood up, my head almost touching the ceiling, and pulled the baggy pants over my hiking pants. They immediately fell off. Abdulrahman laughed and shook his head.
“You too thin,” he said, pointing at my waist.
“It’s not me; the pants are too big,” I said, sitting down. “Where did you get these? Who do they belong to?”
“A friend of Khalid,” he replied. “A girl.”
“Khalid’s girlfriend?” I asked.
“No, friend.”
I sat back on my blanket, leaning my back against my knapsack and camera bag, and stared at him for a while. Abdulrahman was short, with a round stomach that stuck out, frizzy dark hair under his skullcap, and small dark eyes. He pointed to my knapsack and said, “Give to me.” I did as instructed and watched as he, like Zahir, and Khalid, and Shafirgullah before him, went through all my belongings, pulling out one credit card at a time from my wallet, one item after another from my makeup bag.
“What is this?” he asked, producing a compact.
“Makeup,” I answered.
“I take for my wife.” He put the black compact in his pocket.
“Where is your wife?” I asked.
“She is in Kabul. With my son.”
“How old is your son?”
“He is two year old. He look like my wife. She very pretty.”
“How old are you?”
“You ask many questions, Mellissa. Why?”
“I am a journalist. I always ask questions. How old are you?” I repeated, knowing I would probably get only an approximate answer from him.
“Maybe I am twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”
“You only have the one son?”
“Yes. My wife, she want more. We have a few more. There is time.” He paused for a second. “I call her.” He took his cell phone out of his breast pocket and held it up to the ceiling, as if to find a signal from the highest point of the room. Then he dialed a number and put the setting on speakerphone so that I could hear. A woman’s voice answered on the third ring.
“As-Salaam Alaikum.” I could hear her voice loud and clear. You would hardly know we were in a hole.
“Salaam,” Abdulrahman said, and the two proceeded to chat for a few minutes, their conversation punctuated by laughter. Then I heard a baby’s voice. Abdulrahman pointed at the phone and looked at me. “My son. Do you hear him?”
I nodded and forced myself to smile. It hardly seemed fair that he was freely able to call his family and laugh and smile with them, while I was cut off from my loved ones, who were probably sick with worry about me.
“It’s not fair,” I said after Abdulrahman had said goodbye to his wife and son.
“What is not fair?” he asked.
“You can talk to your wife, and I can’t talk to anyone.”
“Yes, it is not fair,” he laughed again, his laugh high-pitched and piercing.
“Let me make a phone call,” I suggested. “That is fair.”
“No,” he answered. “You cannot.”
“Please? My family and friends are very worried about me. I just want to tell them I’m okay, and that you are taking good care of me.”
“No,” he answered.
“Please?” I pleaded. “It will only take two minutes to call them. One minute. Just to say hello.”
He appeared to think about it for a while, then shook his head. “No.”
“Maybe tomorrow? Think about it.”
“Maybe.”
Abdulrahman reached again for the white bag and pulled out an apple. He offered it to me but I shook my head. He bit into it, finishing the entire thing in about four big bites, the juice running down into his beard. He wiped it off with the sleeve of his light green kameez.
“It is good. You need to eat,” he told me, reaching next for a package of orange-flavoured cream-filled cookies. He ripped open the sleeve, grabbed a handful, and tossed the rest to me. I took one and bit into it. The sweet artificial orange taste spread between my teeth. If this was going to be my diet for a while, I was sure I’d develop serious cavities, and going to the dentist is not something I enjoy, even on a good day. In fact, I’d gone to great pains to avoid the dentist over the last three years, making sure I brushed and flossed at least three times a day. Now I wasn’t sure when I’d get to brush my teeth again.
Defiantly, I grabbed another cookie and stuffed it into my mouth, as if to say, Fuck it. If this is my fate, I may as well go all out. I chewed the cookie and imagined all the sugar molecules getting into every crack and nook of my teeth.
“You like biscuit,” Abdulrahman said to me, not really asking a question.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I tell Khalid to bring you rice tomorrow,” he suggested.
“I want to go home tomorrow.”
“You go home, maybe three days.”
“Really?” This was the first time I’d heard a timeline from any of the kidnappers. I didn’t believe him, but I really, truly, desperately wanted to.
“Money come, you go.” Abdulrahman made a gesture with his hand as if brushing me off. “Money come, you go.”
I asked him when the money would come, how it would come, and when I could go.
“If money come—tomorrow, you go. Tomorrow, Monday, you go Tuesday,” he replied.
“Why can’t I go on Monday if that’s the day the money comes?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what? Maybe I can go?” I was starting to get impatient.
“Maybe you go back to Kabul.”
I sighed. I wasn’t getting any straight answers.
“Abdulrahman. This kidnapping racket. How does it work? You kidnap someone and then what happens?”
Abdulrahman scratched his crotch and readjusted his skullcap.
> “We ask for money—from your father, friend, your company. We get money, you go back to Kabul.”
“How long does this take?” I could feel a burning anger inside my stomach.
“Few weeks.”
“A few weeks? How many?” I was beginning to treat him like an interview subject who was being deliberately evasive, like so many politicians I’d tried to get straight answers from over the years. He was no different.
“Last two people, they go last night.”
“You have other hostages?”
“‘Hostage’ bad word,” Abdulrahman admonished me. “You are our guest.” He grinned.
“Guest?” I almost spat out the word. “You stab your guests and throw them in holes in the ground? Is that your idea of hospitality? How many other ‘guests’ do you have right now?”
“The two are gone. You are only guest now. Khalid going to look for more.”
“That’s nice. Hopefully you treat them better.”
“You are lucky. You are woman. We no leave you here yourself,” he said, ignoring the anger that was flashing in my eyes. “The two men—we leave them alone. We tie their hands, feet…” He motioned with his hands that they were handcuffed and tied to the ceiling. “We give water, biscuit; no one go there to stay with them. You are woman, we have to stay with you.”
“Why?”
“Muslim law.”
I shook my head. Here we go, I thought, another discussion about Islam. I had no appetite and no interest, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.
“Where does it say in the Koran that it’s okay to kidnap a woman and stab her?” I challenged.
“Tsk, tsk.” Abdulrahman shook his head. “You no understand. We do this work for Allah. You must read Koran.”
“I read the Bible. But I would like to read the Koran, so I can see where you get this from. Because I don’t believe Allah would be happy that you’re holding me as a prisoner.”
“You Muslim, we no keep you here. You no Muslim, you are our guest.” He grinned again. I noticed he had a crooked set of top teeth.
“You think Allah says it’s okay for you to kidnap me and throw me in a hole?”
Under an Afghan Sky Page 6