Under an Afghan Sky

by Mellissa Fung

  “Yes, yes,” he insisted. “You go. Maybe two days.”

  “We’ll see, Abdullah,” I replied. “I don’t believe you, but I hope you are right. I hope what you say is true.”

  “I am right!” He picked up the Farsi–English phrase book and started reading the English parts, stopping to ask me how to pronounce certain words.

  “It is a beee-yoo-ti-ful day,” he read, smiling as I nodded when he said the word correctly.

  We worked through half of the phrase book—going through all the sections for greetings, how to order food, what to buy at the market—and were on the section about going to work when I think we both got bored of reading.

  I lit a cigarette, as I was doing with alarming regularity, and took a long drag, blowing out the smoke in a straight stream toward the wooden door. Abdullah watched me and lit one for himself with a lighter he had in the breast pocket of his kameez. From the same pocket he then pulled out a little plastic bag containing a small block of something black.

  “You like?” He held it up to me.

  “What is it?” I asked, thinking it was probably tobacco of some sort, or maybe even hashish.

  “Niswar,” he answered. “You know niswar?”

  I shook my head.

  “What does it do?” I asked.

  Abdullah laughed. “Niswar—it make you feel good. Good. But it is bad!” He laughed some more. “Do not tell my brother I am take niswar!”

  He ripped a bit off the black square and popped it in his mouth, sucking on it slowly. “Mmm. Niswar.” Holding the piece out to me, he insisted, “You try.”

  I shook my head no, and as much as I thought that drugs might not be a bad idea if I was going to be stuck in the hole for much longer, there was no way I was about to try something I’d never had before while I was trapped in a small space with a strange man.

  Abdullah closed his eyes and kept sucking. I lit another cigarette and watched him. The drug, whatever it was, had an almost immediate effect. He was mellowed out, leaning back and resting his head against the wall, eyes closed and mouth still working on the piece of niswar. Soon, Abdullah was in an almost trance-like state, in his own world, oblivious to me and anything else. He sang softly to himself, and it wasn’t long before I heard the sound of snoring.

  So much for scintillating conversation, I thought. I opened my notebook again and found a precious blank page.

  Dear Stef,

  How are you? I’m still here, still in this dark hole, and still okay. My scabs are almost at the point where they’re falling off, and I’m taking that as a sign that this ordeal might be over soon. The scabs are from the stab wounds the first day, when the kidnappers were pushing me into the car. I hit one of them and he didn’t like it, so he stuck a knife into my shoulder. Nice, huh? We can both think of people we’d like to do that to, but we’d never actually do it!

  I’m sure you and everyone else are really worried about me—and I’m writing to tell you that I’m fine. Please try not to worry. I know that’s easier said than done, but you know me, and you know I’ll hang in there.

  It rained today. There was thunder and lightning and everything, and it reminded me of being in the Prairies. I couldn’t see outside, but I’m sure there was a rainbow like we see after almost every Prairie storm. It’s a good sign that I’ll be home soon—so don’t worry. Give Jack and Simon and Luke a scratch from Auntie M and say hi to everyone else for me. Gerry and Shelley and Mal and Coreen and little Henry.

  I know everyone is praying for me, and I’m thankful for the prayers. Keep them up, and I promise I’ll be back soon.

  Love you.

  Stefani Langenegger was my best friend in Saskatchewan. We worked together a lot. She filed for national radio news, while I did the same job for television. We travelled all over the province and were at each other’s house at least three times a week after work, not including weekends, drinking wine, and rum and coke, and eating our way through the Prairie winters. I had been exiled to Regina by the network—to do penance in a remote bureau for a few years. The guy in charge of network news in Toronto wasn’t a big fan of my work. I didn’t mind being far away from him either, but I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to move to the bald, cold Canadian Prairie. If I hadn’t met Langenegger, I don’t know what I would have done. She rescued me from becoming a hermit and hiding out in my apartment. She introduced me to her circle of wonderful friends and, best of all, she was a fellow Canucks fan. She would sit on the other end of the couch as we both yelled profanities at the referees.

  I felt a pang of guilt thinking that I was putting her through another bout of hell. Earlier in the year, she had driven me to the emergency ward at the hospital in Regina. I had woken up one morning in severe pain, unable to get out of bed. After a battery of tests, the young emergency room physician diagnosed me with stage 4 ovarian cancer. It was shocking news, and I was sent to a bigger hospital, where an oncologist would be waiting for me.

  Stef left work immediately after I called her for a ride, and on the way I told her what the doctor said. The car came to a screeching halt. “What? That’s crazy, Fungy. They can’t just know that from a CT scan! Did they do a biopsy? No, so how can they tell you that?”

  She was angry and worried, and when I had surgery the next day, she was there. Fortunately it turned about to be a benign tumour—though it was the size of a small melon!—and I was sent home to recuperate, minus an ovary and with a four-inch trophy scar down the centre of my abdomen. Stef and Shelley and Coreen spent the next few weeks bringing me food and keeping me company as I got my strength back. Even before I was thrown into that nightmare, I knew I was extremely fortunate to have the most amazing friends anyone could have. You can’t overestimate the power of girlfriends. I knew that they were out there, thinking good thoughts and saying prayers, and that made it impossible not to believe that this nightmare would end well, and that I would soon be going home.

  My thoughts were disturbed by Abdullah’s loud snores, which reminded me that home was still very far away. It was past midnight, and the lamp was fading again. New batteries came every few days, but they were made in China and prone to a short life span. I decided to save whatever juice was left in them and turned the light off. I was starting to get used to the darkness, which was sometimes preferable to the artificial fluorescent lamp. But as usual, I had trouble sleeping. I closed my eyes and tossed and turned until the clock’s little hand hit three. And then I must have dozed off.

  Abdullah woke early. The effects of the niswar appeared to have worn off, and he was cheery and talkative while he did his morning ablutions. He had the same routine as his brother, right down to using the toothbrush contraption. The only thing he didn’t do was comb his hair several times with a fine comb, looking at himself in a pocket mirror. Instead, he put his skullcap neatly on his head and seemed ready to face the day.

  He asked if I could read him some of the stories in the old schoolbook—the one Khalid had brought the first week. I read a few stories about Ali and Hamid going to the store and to school, and Abdullah nodded, apparently understanding what was being read to him. Then he reached for the Farsi–English phrase book and flipped through it.

  “I am angry at you!”

  I looked over at him, unsure if he was reading from the book. He was pointing to a phrase in the book. It did say, “I am angry at you.”

  “I am angry at you! Mellissa, I am angry at you!”

  “Why you angry, Abdullah?” I asked.

  “You not Muslim!” was the reply.

  Not this again. I’d had this conversation with every one of my captors, and there was no reason to think I could escape it with this one, but I was tired of it, and didn’t want to engage anymore.

  “I am Christian,” I answered.

  “Why you not Muslim? You must be Muslim. Muslim the best. Koran the best. You must be Muslim.”

  “I don’t know enough about Islam to be Muslim. I don’t know the Koran. How can I be Muslim
?”

  “You must read Koran!” Abdullah’s eyes were flashing now, and he moved in closer to me so that his face was just inches from mine. He was almost spitting in my eyes. I backed away.

  “I promise, Abdullah, that when I get home to Canada I will read the Koran and learn more about Islam,” I said.

  “You must be Muslim!” he repeated.

  “I need to know more about it before I can become Muslim,” I argued. “I can’t just stop being Christian because you’re telling me to.”

  “Muslim. You. Then you are my friend,” he told me.

  I nodded. I promised myself I would try to learn more about Islam when I got out of this place. And it wasn’t just because I was trying to appease my captor—I was genuinely curious. I wanted to know where it said in the Koran that it was okay to kidnap someone and force them to convert. Although, I reminded myself, Christians did much worse during the Crusades.

  Abdullah seemed satisfied that he had persuaded me to study the teachings of Muhammad and rewarded himself with another piece of niswar. He spent the rest of the day in a haze, which was fine by me. He didn’t even bat an eye when I stood up to do my exercises.

  And he didn’t notice the sound of footsteps overhead late in the afternoon.

  I sat up but didn’t say anything. Abdullah’s eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving. He was fast asleep. Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.

  I stood up and put my ear to a pipe hole, but I couldn’t hear any voices. After several minutes, the footsteps faded. Now I was really curious. If it had been one of the gang, they would have called down a pipe to Abdullah. So perhaps it was a villager wandering around the area, like the woman we heard calling to her son earlier. The only other options were the police, or another gang, trying to find out where my captors were hiding me.

  Later that night when Khalid came to replace Abdullah, I told him I had heard footsteps again. He seemed perturbed.

  “Who are they?” I asked, picking up a cold french fry from the grease-stained newspaper wrapper. It was the second time he’d brought me fries and bread. Khalid shook his head and looked at me closely.

  “Is it the police?” I pressed.

  “It is Taliban. Taliban—are all around this place,” he said solemnly. “They know we have you.”

  “But you’re all Taliban. You’re all the same,” I argued. “What do they want?”

  “Do you know… two people”—I assumed he meant two other groups aside from this particular gang of kidnappers—”they know we have you. They give us they money. Then they will take you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that, Khalid,” I said. “My friends will give you the money. You talked to them. They’ll give you the money you want. I’ll give you the money if I could.”

  My friends and family didn’t love me, Khalid told me, and weren’t going to pay the ransom. Anyway, he continued, “Taliban… they give me, how to say, more money. Why do I not take more money?” This was precisely what I didn’t want to happen. To be sold from one band of kidnappers to another, or worse, to the real Taliban.

  “Khalid, you can’t just take money from anyone. You took me, you’re responsible for me.” I was pleading again. He said nothing but looked to be deep in thought, which heightened my sense of unease. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I felt like I had to keep talking.

  “Besides,” I blurted out, “I’m not feeling well, and you can’t sell a sick hostage to the Taliban. They will be angry, and then they will hunt you down and kill you.”

  “You are sick?” he asked. I nodded and rubbed my stomach. It wasn’t exactly a lie. My tummy had been off for the last few days, and I was running out of Cipro, breaking it into little pieces to conserve what I had.

  “My stomach hurts,” I told him. “It’s been hurting for days. It will only get worse, and I will need to see a doctor soon.”

  He stared at me for a while. “You must eat. You not eating.”

  “I ate a little. You see—I had some chips. But I am not hungry. You cannot eat if you are not hungry,” I told him.

  He broke off a piece of bread and handed it to me. I shook my head no. He took my hand and shoved it into my palm. “Eat a little, little,” he said. “Please.”

  I took a small bite. It was cold and chewy and hard, and I shook my head again. “I cannot eat. My stomach is not good.”

  “You have pain?”

  “Yes. Pain. How to say it in Pashto?”

  “Dard,” he told me.

  “I have dard,” I repeated. “You must help me get out of this place soon, Khalid. My pain will get worse, and I will need to see a doctor.” He looked at me like he wasn’t sure what to say and whether he believed me. So I told him about my operation earlier in the year. And then I lifted up my shirt to show him the scar on my stomach. His eyes widened.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “It’s where they operated on me. A few months ago. I had a big tumour.” I was pretty sure he wouldn’t know what the word meant, so I made a ball with my hands.

  “A tumour, in my stomach.” I pointed at my belly. “That is why I have dard here now. I will need to see a doctor if my pain does not go away.

  Khalid sighed and put his head in his hands.

  “Why you no tell me?” he asked. I could tell that he didn’t like the idea of having a sick hostage on his hands. I hoped it would help expedite the process, lend a new and different sense of urgency to “finishing my case” and getting me off his hands.

  “When was I going to tell you? Would it have made a difference? You already took me,” I argued. “You didn’t know I was sick.”

  “Eat,” he told me. It was all he could think of to say. “Maybe we find doctor.”

  “A doctor? Here? They wouldn’t know how to treat me. I need special medicines and only the doctors back home in Canada know what to do. It’s a special case. I had a major operation.”

  I knew it wouldn’t be possible for them to get a doctor to see me. I was a hostage, and they would be afraid of any doctor giving them up. But I knew from the look on Khalid’s face that this was something he hadn’t counted on, and he was at a loss as to what to do about me, especially if I got worse.

  “Shogufa,” he said, “is a little little dard.”

  “Shogufa is sick?” I asked. “What is wrong with her?”

  “She have nas—stomach—pain. Dard. Like you.”

  “Has she seen a doctor? She should see a doctor or she will end up like me, with a tumour that needs to be taken out.” I wasn’t just saying that to scare him. After my tumour scare, I’d been warning all my friends to make sure they see a doctor if they felt even the least bit of abnormal pain. I had ignored the pain in my belly for months, and it had cost me an ovary.

  “You must tell her to see a doctor, Khalid. You don’t want her to have what I had.” He nodded yes, he would make her see someone.

  “Do it soon, Khalid,” I insisted. “Do you love her?”

  He nodded again. “Yes. I love her. We get married.”

  “Well, if you really love her, you’ll make sure she sees a doctor.”

  He took his cell phone out of his pocket and put the SIM card back in. It kept sliding out, and he reached back into his pocket and pulled out a piece of a toothpick, which he then tucked into the back of the phone to hold the SIM card in place. He punched in some numbers, and I could hear the phone ringing on the other end. A woman’s voice answered.

  “Salaam,” Khalid said. His voice was deep and serious, but the conversation, which lasted several minutes, was punctuated by a few laughs.

  He hung up and turned to me. “I tell her. Doctor. Okay?”

  “You just called her to tell her that?” I asked.

  “I tell her what you say.”

  It was quite amazing, I thought, that my kidnapper, in the midst of dealing with his hostage, would call his girlfriend to tell her to see a doctor for the pain in her stomach. There was something about it that was endearing, and it made me believe
that deep down, beneath the bravado of being at best a bandit and at worst a Taliban sympathizer, this was a young man who could be human and thoughtful and kind. The same one who would think to bring me french fries that he asked his girlfriend to make. The same one who took my hand on that first day and told me not to be afraid.

  “Good, I’m glad,” I told him. “It’s important. You don’t want her to be sick, like me.”

  “No, sick bad,” he said. I rubbed my stomach again and reached for the package of cigarettes.

  “You no smoke,” Khalid objected. “You smoke too much.”

  “It doesn’t make me sick. It’s okay.” I held out my hand for his lighter, but he took the pack of smokes out of my hand.

  “Khalid! Let me have one. Please.”

  He looked at me carefully, as if studying me, and then took a cigarette out of the package, licked the ends, lit it, and handed it to me.

  “Why do you lick the ends?” I asked, making a licking motion in case he didn’t know the word.

  “So this… how do I say…” He pointed at the end of my cigarette.

  “The ash?” I asked.

  “Yes. So it not go everywhere.” It was true. The wetness at the end of the cigarette held the ash together in one long cylinder, which I was able to flick into the trash can. We smoked another cigarette after that, and continued smoking until the package was empty and my head was heavy with smoke.

  “No more,” Khalid said. “Sleep come to me.” He lay back and stretched his legs out. “Sleep no come to you? You must sleep,” he told me, his eyes already closed. “You sick. You must sleep, Mellissa.”

  “I will try, Khalid. Good night.”

  I heard his breathing deepen after a few minutes. I wished that sleep could come to me as easily, but I was not the least bit tired, so I decided to keep the lamp on for a while longer and flipped open my notebook. There were only a few pages left, and I remembered the prayer I had said the other day. Please God, please don’t let me run out of pages before I am freed. Please help me out of this hole before I have no more space to write. I wrote those exact words on one of the few precious pages I had left. And then I continued.