Under an Afghan Sky

by Mellissa Fung

  “Very good,” I said.

  “Very good,” he repeated. He sat back and reached into his pocket. “Cigarette?”

  I took it from his hand as he reached for another. Smoking was probably the worst thing we could do in such a small space, but it was a good way to kill the time. The young Afghan lit a match, held it to my smoke, and then his. We both inhaled deeply. He blew the smoke out the doorway and into the tunnel, as if to clear it from our sleep space. I followed suit, and soon our cigarettes were nothing more than glowing embers. I put out the butt of mine in a small notch in the wall behind me. Ashes scattered over my knapsack and camera bag, and I brushed them away. Everything was covered in dust anyway, and I didn’t even want to imagine what my lungs would look like after a few more days in the hole. At least, I hoped it would be only a few more days.

  “Me, bathroom,” Shafirgullah said. I turned around and waited for him to relieve himself into the plastic bottle by the door.

  “Okay,” he said. I watched as he took the can of water and poured it over his hands, scrubbing them hard over the metal bucket. When he was done, he adjusted his skullcap on top of his head and took off his kaffiyeh, spreading it over his blanket. Then he knelt down on top of it to pray.

  Shafirgullah prayed for a good half hour, murmuring what I assumed were passages from the Koran and pressing his forehead to the ground several times.

  I took out my rosary and fingered the beads again, starting to pray my own way. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. I kept looking over at the Afghan in the skullcap, praying hard and looking as devout as some of the born-again Christians in the Deep South. This is where I had trouble. If we were both praying to the same god, like I’d always believed in—and Allah is God, God is Yahweh, Yahweh is Allah—then who was God listening to? Does the God I believe in have a split personality? Does Allah listen to Shafirgullah, and God listen to me? Is that why I was still here—because Allah had overruled my God? How could it be possible that we were praying to the same entity? I watched as Shafirgullah knelt and prayed, his eyes closed, his lips mumbling verses from the Koran, which he had probably learned by heart as a young boy, just as I had learned to pray the rosary when I was a little girl.

  I looked down at the crucifix on my rosary and, instead of reciting the Lord’s Prayer, found myself asking God a lot of questions. Who are you? Who are you listening to? I know he’s as much of a human being as I am, but if we both believe, how could you allow them to take me like this and keep me here, and create such chaos in the lives of my family and friends? I don’t understand.

  The more I thought about it, the more upset I got, so I put the rosary away and took out my notepad.

  Tuesday, October 14, 10 a.m.

  Dearest P,

  Another day and another long wait for something to happen. Shafirgullah, the one who stabbed me on the first day—is my guard today. He’s teaching me some words in Pashto to help pass the time. He’s a funny dude—very conscious of cleanliness and appearance. He must have combed his hair twenty times this morning. I’ve never met another Afghan man quite like him.

  I hope that wherever you are, you’re okay, and I think—if I know you—that you’re in Kabul by now, trying desperately to find out where I am. If I knew, I would tell you, but I have no clue where this hole is and I’m starting to feel a little desperate.

  Khalid said he would take me out for a walk sometime—I’m not sure what that means, but it would be nice to breathe some fresh air. So many things we take for granted that we don’t realize until it’s taken away or until we don’t have it anymore. Even something as simple as fresh air and sunshine. And a bathroom, or a toilet. Or food.

  It’s funny, you know, I remember being at the refugee camp wondering how people live—how they pack their families into these small living quarters.

  In my mind’s eye, I could still see the camp and all the families crowded into it. I had spent a few minutes in a small mud hut covered with a makeshift roof of corrugated metal, a pile of blankets on one side. It was maybe twice the size of the hole I was sitting in. A father, mother, and their five children, ages approximately three to sixteen, were crammed inside. The father had told me he was a cobbler. He had made shoes in a shop in Kandahar City, and his eldest son was his apprentice. They described the life they had left in Kandahar as a happy one, even though they did not have a lot of money. The small business had brought in enough to feed his family, and he was happy that his son was able to work with him.

  It all changed in the summer of 2008, when the fighting in Kandahar got worse. Not a day went by, he told me, without the rattle of gunfire, the explosions of mortars, and the constant threat of a bomb. I remembered the cobbler’s feet. They were shoeless and so caked with mud that you could barely see his toes—it was hard to believe this man made shoes for a living.

  The family had left with everything they had and were now trying to survive in this small space. Yet, he was more than welcoming to two journalists, insisting on making tea from his small black kettle and pouring it into small glasses for me and Shokoor—we were his guests in his small mud hut, and he treated us as such.

  We drank the tea quickly, thanked the family, and left.

  I’d never felt so helpless as I did during my time at that camp. All those families—widows, children, babies, puppies—with nowhere to go, victims of a war they wanted no part of. But that’s why I was there. To tell their story, and hopefully make people see how much suffering there is among the innocent civilians caught in war. It might sound a little corny, but it’s why I became a journalist in the first place. I thought that if we could understand each other a little more, the world might be a better place. (I remember watching stories about the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s and then trying to convince one of my grade school teachers that we should all go on a fast for several days, so we might be able to understand what people in Africa are going through.) I’ve always believed that if even one of my stories could move just one person to think about something differently, understand something a little more deeply, maybe write a letter to the governor or premier, then I’d done my job and done it well. And that’s what I was hoping to do at the refugee camp.

  We have no idea in the West how much we have, I continued writing. If people in the West could even get a glimpse of how most Afghans live, maybe we’d be a little more thankful for what we do have.

  “You hungry?” Shafirgullah had finished with his morning prayers.

  I shook my head.

  “Cigarette?” he offered.

  I couldn’t help it. Again he lit it for me and handed it to me, the smoke already beginning to fill the air. Then he pointed at my shoulder. It had been more than a day since I had dressed the stab wound. The pink toilet paper I’d used to staunch the bleeding was now glued to the wound by blood, becoming part of the scab that had formed.

  “Hurt?” he asked.

  “It’s okay, a little pain, yes.”

  “I sorry,” he said. It was maybe the third or fourth time he’d apologized for stabbing me. I wondered if a tenet of his religion was that one should not hurt women.

  “It’s okay. It will be okay.” I wished I knew more about Islam so I could better understand where he was coming from, particularly because there was already a language barrier. I knew that women generally had fewer rights than men. The sexuality of a woman is veiled so as to prevent men from being tempted into committing a corporal sin. It’s not for me to be critical of other religions. God knows there are enough problems with Christian fundamentalists in Western society, but it always struck me that the subjugation of women in Muslim culture was the root of many of that society’s problems. Young girls are painfully circumcised. Then they’re covered up and hidden from view, the property of a husband in an arranged marriage. Men are seen as owners of their women, whether they’re daughters or wives, sisters or cousins.

  So much has been written about the stifling morality that separates men and women. Some
hold the view that sexual frustration of Muslim men is at the root of male aggression. Whatever it was, I didn’t know how to reconcile the two religions, the two beliefs. Women in Islam are just viewed differently from women in Christianity. But yet, from what I could gather through conversations with my kidnappers, they were treating me differently, maybe better, than they would if I were a man. I didn’t doubt them when they told me they would have left me alone in the dark for days without light or food. I believed them when they said they would have beaten me with their guns.

  Shafirgullah’s phone rang.

  “As-Salaam Alaikum,” he said. He spoke for a while in Pashto before hanging up.

  “Khalid,” he said to me.

  “Where Khalid? He is coming tonight, yes?” I asked. “Khalid, Kabul.”

  “Why Khalid go Kabul?” I asked. I was speaking in broken English, maybe subconsciously hoping he would understand me better this way. He just shook his head.

  “So Khalid not coming tonight.”

  “No, he no come.”

  This was upsetting, only because it meant I wouldn’t be able to ask Khalid everything I wanted to know. Had his father contacted the network? Had he called Paul? Were they talking about money? They had been so focused on money that it would have been naive of me to think they would release me for nothing. I know that my company had insurance for situations like this, but I felt guilty about all the money that was sure to be spent on gaining my freedom, whether it was for hiring negotiators like AKE or an actual ransom payment, which is something I felt very uncomfortable with. I was a hostage because others had paid these kidnappers. If they got payment for me, the vicious cycle would be perpetuated. I silently vowed that however much it cost, I could always take out a big loan and pay it back. I just wanted to know that there was movement, that talks were happening, and that maybe I would get to go back to my life soon.

  “Why Khalid go Kabul?” I repeated. Shafirgullah responded in Pashto, speaking very quickly, and I didn’t understand. I asked him what he was saying. He spoke in Pashto again and I shook my head. He looked at me and laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “I want to go home. Don’t you understand? Of course you don’t. How would you know what it feels like to be a prisoner?”

  He continued talking in Pashto and laughing. It began to feel like he was mocking me, and I was getting angry.

  We fell into a long silence. I was tired of this. Tired of him, and tired of being stuck in a hole. I pulled the blanket over me and turned to the wall.

  “You sleep?” he asked in English.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “I sleep.” The Afghan lay down, and soon I could hear deep breathing.

  I was a little relieved to be left alone, and I reached for my notebook and turned up the flame on the kerosene lamp, almost daring the smoke to fill the hole.

  Hi again, dear P,

  I miss you so much. I am so sorry for putting you through this, and I just want to come home. I don’t know how much longer I will last here. I’m writing to you by the light of a kerosene lamp and I’m surrounded by smelly black smoke. It’s dark and dank and I’m trying very hard not to feel sorry for myself and stay positive and think about the day I get to come home.

  I hope that’s soon. I figure if I’m out by the weekend, I can still catch the Kam Air flight to Kandahar and be back to pick up my stuff and we’d still be on schedule to leave KAF on Wednesday.

  Please try not to worry about me. I’m okay. They’re not beating me or anything. It’s just boredom I’m fighting and the hard part is watching the clock. I’ve never known time to move so slowly. It’s funny, because we’re always on a deadline, fighting the clock. Do you remember we were just talking the other day about how time flies when we’re together, even in the dustbowl of KAF. Now it seems like time is standing still, and not when I want it to.

  I noticed that the lamp was fading, and I realized that the kerosene was running low. I reached for the plastic bag, where I knew there was a bottle of it. I blew out the flame and poured some more kerosene into the base, then lit a match.

  I preferred the warm glow of this lamp to the harsh fluorescent light bulb of the day before. It reminded me of the fireplace at my best friend Kelly McClughan’s house on Chesterman Beach in Tofino, on the north end of Vancouver Island. We’d come in from an afternoon of surfing, put a fire on, pour a glass of single malt, and sit in front of the fire and talk about the big wave we missed or the big wipeout—or rather, my big wipeout.

  I might be an avid surfer, but I wouldn’t say I’m a good one. I just get on my board, catch a wave from time to time, and feel transported. And it’s a great escape for me, really one of the few times when I’m focused on just one thing. I’m cursed with an overactive mind, constantly thinking about one thing or another—but usually work related, whether it’s a story or a person or something I should be doing. So to get out on the water and surf for a few hours is freedom from all of that.

  I love the feeling of standing on water, propelled by nothing but the power of the waves. I think it’s maybe because I was born on an island, Hong Kong, and grew up in Vancouver, next to the ocean, that I’ve always felt at home by the sea. It’s a romantic idea anyway.

  My last trip to Tofino had been the summer before—with Kelly and my friend Kas. I spent my mornings out running on the path leading into town, and the afternoons playing in the surf. It was Kas’s first trip to Tofino, a small town populated by hippie environmentalists in the 1960s and 1970s but today a bit of a resort destination, drawing tourists from all over the world to fish in its salmon-rich waters and surf in its cold white waves. Despite this, the natural beauty of the place has not changed. Tall cedars, part of the old-growth forest, line the beaches and give grey owls a place to hide. Sometimes a thick fog blankets the beach, especially in the fall, and a heavy dampness settles in. Those are the days when you curl up by the fire and lose yourself in a book.

  Kas told me how much she was blown away by the beauty of Tofino. One night, we took a walk on the beach after dinner with a few friends. The sand had a phosphorescent glow in the moonlight. It was a magical, happy place, and I desperately wanted to take Paul there. In my mind I could see us walking on the beach together, bundled up in big sweaters to shield us from the cold and the wind.

  I opened my eyes and saw the dark mud wall in front of me. Fuck. I was as far away from my happy place as I could ever be. The lamp was flickering and black smoke was pouring out of it. I turned the knob down, and realized there was a draft blowing into the room from one of the pipes, and it was blowing the flame around. I stood up and stared into the pipe. I couldn’t see much, as the opening was obscured by rocks. But there was definitely a draft.

  The familiar ring of the Nokia phone woke Shafirgullah from his slumber. He answered and had a short conversation with someone in Pashto, then played with the phone for a while before looking over at me again.

  “You, game?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, until he took the SIM card out of the phone and then handed the phone to me.

  “Game,” he said.

  I scrolled through the phone and saw that it was set to Pashto or Farsi. I clicked on settings, switched it to English, then found the games icon. There was a soccer game and a game called Snake Xenzia. Shafirgullah pointed to the snake game, so I clicked on it and a screen with a big dot and a snake figure appeared. I realized that by using the phone’s arrow buttons, I could control the snake. The goal is to “eat” as many of the balls as you can without running into the snake as it grows longer.

  I played the game for a while, until I realized the phone battery was running low. I didn’t want to waste the battery playing a game, especially if Khalid was maybe going to call, so I handed the phone back to Shafirgullah.

  “You no game?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Maybe later.”

  He put the SIM card back in the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

/>   “You, biscuit?” he asked, reaching for the cookies. I shook my head again. He shrugged and pulled out two juice boxes and another sleeve of cookies. He opened the package and started eating, and sucking juice noisily out of the box. He held out the package to me and I took two cookies, and then a juice box. I was trying not to drink too much because it was a pain to have to use the garbage can as a toilet, but I was quite thirsty.

  “Juice good.” Shafirgullah reached for another box and drank it until the box caved in on itself. I nodded and thanked him.

  The afternoon must have passed because eventually I heard footsteps up above. Someone called down to Shafirgullah and soon I could hear digging. I wasn’t sure what was happening because I didn’t think Khalid was coming, since he was in Kabul. Shafirgullah put the wooden door over the entrance and shrouded it with his blanket to protect us from the dust that was about to fill the hole. Soon I could feel cool air coming through the entrance. Shafirgullah removed his blanket, set the wooden door to the side, and scrambled up the tunnel.

  Darling M,

  I woke up at four o’clock and had a sense you were awake too. I wasn’t restless, but couldn’t get back to sleep. My mind was preoccupied with all kinds of crazy thoughts. What will you be wearing when they release you? Who will pick you up and where? How will they handle the media? Then I dozed for a while and had a dream about you coming home. You were wearing black and walking toward me down the dim hallway of a hotel. But it wasn’t you, it was somebody short and heavier, somebody I seemed to know. I kept shouting, “Where’s Mellissa? Where’s Mellissa?”

  There was a small earth tremor around 5:30 that I’m sure you felt as well. That was my first thought! “Did Mellissa feel it?” I think I dozed off again, but it was fitful, and I finally got up around 7:30.

  The first thing I do now is throw on pants and go to the kitchen for a pot of tea. They know me well, and we always smile and shake hands. There’s a young waiter named Jawad, who calls me “Mr. Paul.” The cook makes croissants and fresh bread every morning, and it makes me think of you. Everything makes me think of you. I keep telling myself I cannot lose you now, I will not lose you.