Under an Afghan Sky

by Mellissa Fung

  It was tournament day for the girls of Kabul, and some fifty young soccer players, divided among about eight teams, had traded their traditional headscarves for baseball caps—an amazing event in a country where women, just years before, were forbidden from even being spectators in that same arena.

  The tournament was Awista’s brainchild, part of the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, an organization she started in order to teach leadership skills to young women in her home country. She herself had the opportunity to study and learn in the United States, and it was her dream to bring the same opportunities home to young women in Afghanistan who might otherwise not be able to play sports. It was about empowering girls in a country where girls grew up being told they were not equals. Sport, Awista told me, had the power to change all that.

  She introduced me to one of the coaches, a man named Abdul Saboor Walizada. He was the coach of the Afghan national women’s team, and he was there to offer advice, and scout. “More women,” he told me, “are interested in playing, and there is a lot of talent among the girls you see here. We will have a strong national team.”

  In the few years since Awista had started the program, the number of girls participating had multiplied, from tens to hundreds. They had even played in Ghazi Stadium in Kabul, where the Taliban had routinely carried out public executions of women who were accused of violating the most minor of laws.

  Awista was a remarkable person. She had studied at the University of Rochester, in New York, where she played goal for the women’s hockey team. We talked a lot about how participating in team sports as young girls helped to shape our views and built our confidence as young women. It was what she was hoping to do for the young women of Afghanistan.

  “I’ve seen these girls,” she said. “They change. They come to the field in their school uniform and they have their long black jackets and their pants and their headscarves, and as soon as they put on their sports clothes, their personality changes, and these are girls you couldn’t recognize as being the same girls who walked on the field.”

  She introduced me to some of the girls playing that day. Thirteen-year-old Maliha Mahmoodi told me through a translator that she’d been interested in soccer since she was very young but that there wasn’t an opportunity to play, even just a few years ago. Now, here she was, and thrilled for the opportunity. “It means it shows progress in the country,” she told me, her big brown eyes flashing with excitement. “When we play soccer, it’s like serving the country, and it shows that girls in Afghanistan are equal.”

  Zainab Fakovi was sixteen, and she’d been watching boys and men play soccer since she was little but had just started playing herself a few years ago, with the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange. For her, the opportunity to play soccer meant more than just sport. “It means I am a liberated girl, and it means girls can do anything we want. Men and women have equal rights.” When I asked what she thought it meant for her future, and for Afghanistan’s future, she didn’t hesitate. “It means I can be whatever I want. It means our country can be the best in the world.” When I asked her what she wanted to be, she looked straight at me and said, “A journalist. Like you.”

  Lesson learned already. Sports can empower. Awista’s philosophy was playing out right in front of her eyes. But she credited the girls themselves. “I’ve seen some of these girls evolve in the last three years into being confident young women,” she told me. “And I have no doubt that soccer has played a key role in giving them that confidence. And whether they choose to play soccer, or they choose to take that confidence into the classroom, I’ve definitely seen them being able to emerge as leaders and have an ability to make life decisions, and own those decisions and have the confidence to make those decisions. And I think that’s a key lesson we can teach these young girls as they emerge as future leaders of this country.”

  It was one of the most uplifting and inspiring afternoons I think I’ve ever spent—in the company of these young women, laughing and running, and competing on the field, watched over by their older sister who had come back from America to help them see their own potential. No longer shackled to an old, oppressive culture, they were free to run and play and choose their future, with the full knowledge that they were participating in something that was forbidden to them just a few years before.

  Remembering their determination buoyed my spirits. The next day was Sunday and soon I too would be free again.

  Shafirgullah was bored. He played Snake Xenzia on his cell phone for about an hour, then handed the phone to me. I amused myself for a few minutes but handed it back to him after getting frustrated. Three weeks of trying to manoeuvre the snake around itself and I still couldn’t master the stupid game.

  I was sticking to my routine of praying the rosary every hour on the hour, trying hard to meditate as I recited the prayers and passed the beads through my fingers. I meditated on Jesus’ birth, his travels, his teachings, his suffering, and ultimately, his crucifixion. I tried not to think about anything else. I wanted to focus on the prayers, not get distracted by other thoughts.

  Halfway through, I was interrupted by the ringing of Shafirgullah’s cell phone.

  “As-Salaam Alaikum,” he said, and that was all I could understand. The conversation lasted a few minutes and then he hung up.

  “Kabul,” he said, looking at me. “You Kabul.”

  “Saba?” I asked, double-checking. As much as I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I couldn’t help myself. I had heard saba—the Pashto word for “tomorrow”—so many times from my kidnappers that I had stopped counting. “Tomorrow” never came.

  “Inshallah, saba,” Shafirgullah replied.

  There was that word again. “Inshallah.” God willing. I fingered my rosary again and pressed the crucifix into the back of my hand so hard that it made an indentation.

  God, please. Please be willing. Please let tomorrow come soon and with it, let me go home to my family and friends. Please, let this be over and let me go back to my life. You are the only one who can help me. Please, please, please. I have never needed you so much. I know there must be a reason that I am going through this trial, and I trust in you to help me through it. But please, I need to go home soon. For my parents and my friends and for my own sanity. Please, God. Let this be over tomorrow.

  Shafirgullah was also praying. He was on his knees, his head on the ground, facing the wall adjacent to the tunnel. He was chanting softly, murmuring almost, and his eyes were closed. I wondered what he was praying for. I was praying for freedom, and for my family, but I didn’t know whether he was just reciting the Koran or asking for something. I sometimes feel a bit guilty—maybe it’s the old Catholic guilt—that I never hesitate to kneel when I need help. Please God, help me do well on this exam tomorrow. Please God, let me get this job. Please God, don’t let my grandmother die. Please God, take her to heaven.

  I typically started my prayers by saying, Thank you, God, for everything you’ve done for me today. And always.

  These days, it was a little hard to try to find something to thank him for, except for the fact that I was still alive. I needed help. Shafirgullah looked as if he were just praying for the sake of praying, but I wondered again if he was asking for anything. Forgiveness, maybe, for what he was doing? Help, perhaps, to avoid arrest?

  After a while, I realized that his chanting had turned to snoring, and I turned out the lamp. The battery was dying anyway, and so I prayed in the dark until I fell asleep.

  I woke early in anticipation. Sunday. Freedom day. They had been telling me, and I was almost convinced, that I would return to Kabul that night. I didn’t know what to expect or when the digging would start, and my stomach was fluttering. I had to keep telling myself to remain calm, that it would happen at some point during the day and that I should just go about my routine like it was another average day in captivity.

  So I stood up and did my exercises. I could feel that my muscles had started to atrophy after three weeks of sitting in pretty much one
position. I wondered if I would remember how to walk when they took me out of the hole. Shafirgullah woke up around noon—it was a long sleep even by his standards, and he seemed groggy for it all day. He chugged down two boxes of juice and ate a box of chocolate cookies. His phone rang twice through the afternoon, and short conversations followed each time.

  And then we waited. I prayed on the hour, thanking God for my coming freedom and asking him to forgive my captors for everything they had done. At noon, I figured there would be six more rosaries to pray. At one, five more, and I kept counting down all afternoon.

  I started getting my belongings together. I put my notebooks in my backpack and my running shoes on. I ran my dirty fingers through my matted hair and washed my face with some of the water from the can.

  Six o’clock came. No digging. I picked up my rosary again, resigned to praying one more decade. Seven o’clock. Still no digging. Fifty more Hail Marys.

  Then, just after seven-thirty, I heard footsteps.

  “Shafirgullah” came a voice from above. He answered, and the digging started.

  My heart was pounding. It was happening. They were going to dig me out and take me back to Kabul. It was really going to happen. I would be back at my hotel in Kabul tonight. I would see Paul.

  The digging stopped and a blast of cold air swept into the hole. I got up to crawl up the tunnel, but Shafirgullah stopped me.

  “I go,” he said. “You. Here.”

  I looked at him, sure that he was going ahead to help me out of the shaft at the end of the tunnel, but then I heard a loud thump. It was Khalid. Shafirgullah scrambled up the tunnel.

  “Khalid,” I said, “what is happening?”

  “Shut up!” he yelled at me.

  “What’s wrong, Khalid? Why are you yelling at me?”

  “Shut up!” he shouted.

  “I thought I was going to Kabul tonight. You and Shafirgullah both said.”

  “You not go Kabul. You stay here!” He sounded like someone else, not the Khalid I knew. Not the same person I had spent the last three weeks with. Adrenaline seemed to be pumping through my entire body.

  He took out a thick metal chain and started to wrap it around my ankles, locking it with a padlock. Then he wrapped one of the ends of the same chain around my right wrist.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled.

  “Shut up! We leave you here tonight.”

  “Why are you doing this, Khalid? You said I was your sister. This is how you treat your sister?”

  “Shut up! We leave you. You do not know what happen.” His voice was agitated, his eyes flashing.

  “What’s wrong, Khalid?” I said softly, tears in my eyes. “Tell me. Don’t just do this to me without telling me anything. What is wrong?”

  He stared at me for a while. “You don’t know anything. I have bad thing happen. You no understand.”

  “Then tell me. Help me understand. What happened?”

  He was getting impatient with me and then spat it out. “My mother die! Okay? My mother die!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was so disappointed not to be leaving that night that I was at a loss for words at that moment. So I said the only thing I could think of under the circumstances. “I’m sorry, Khalid. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  He seemed taken aback, and told me again only that she had died.

  “I didn’t know she was sick, Khalid,” I said, hoping to start a conversation again. If I was going to have to stay in the hole, I wanted the chain off my ankles. They were already starting to press into my flesh. He didn’t respond for several seconds, just stared at the chain around my feet.

  “We leave you here. If you call, we will hear you. You know the house—we are there, okay? We are there. If you call, I will come down and I will kill you.”

  “Khalid, please! Take the chain off. It hurts. I’m not going anywhere. Where can I go anyway? Please, don’t make me wear them. Please.”

  “Shut up,” he said. “I will kill you if you call out.” And then he crawled out of the hole.

  “Khalid, don’t leave me here!” I shouted, but my voice was already muffled by the noise of digging. Dust filled the air, but I was too upset to move into my usual position under the duvet. Besides, I was chained to myself and my mobility was limited. It hurt to even try to move. The heavy chain was digging into my ankles and my wrist. So instead I sat there in a daze, my back against the wall, and let the dirt settle on my hair and on my notebook, and seep into my lungs.

  The digging stopped after a few minutes. I heard the sound of footsteps fading into the distance. I was, for the first time in three weeks, truly alone.

  Dearest M,

  I’m going to climb into bed now, M, feeling guilty about sleeping in sheets under a warm duvet and you more than likely sprawled on a dirty mattress on the floor, with only a couple of blankets to keep you warm. I would trade places with you any time and I only wish it had been me who had been kidnapped, instead of you. My phone is on and I’m still hoping you will call in the middle of the night and say, “I’m free! Come and get me.” If only it were that simple.

  xx

  I remained immobilized for a while, unable to move, in shock about what had just happened. How could I go from being almost certain that I was about to be released to being shackled and left alone with more questions than answers, all in the space of a few minutes?

  I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t muster the tears. I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t find my voice. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but I couldn’t find the humour in it. I wanted to pray, but I was too angry at God. I threw the rosary down on the blanket and cursed it. I was on a prayer strike. No more praying.

  So I smoked. I chain-smoked as many cigarettes as I could stomach until I felt like I was going to throw up smoke. About an hour later, I heard footsteps overhead. Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp. And then a voice. “Mellissa!” It was Abdulrahman.

  “Yes?” I called out.

  “Do not talk too loudly,” he called down.

  “What is going on?” I ignored his order.

  “Shh! There are people. They watching us. You no talk loudly.”

  “Who is watching us? And why have you left me here like this? What is happening?”

  “Something… something happen. It is very bad. Khalid mother—she die.”

  I felt bad for Khalid. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose your mother suddenly. But at the same time, I felt a sense of despair. This was surely a setback for my release. I could be here for a lot longer than I was ready for.

  “What is going to happen now?” I asked Abdulrahman. “Does Khalid have to go to Pakistan for the funeral? Are you going to Pakistan for the funeral?”

  I seemed to remember that in Muslim culture, the body has to be buried as soon as possible after death. If Khalid’s family was in Peshawar, he would have to leave that night, if she hadn’t already been buried.

  “No, we not go to Pakistan,” Abdulrahman said. “Maybe Khalid go. We come back, four, five days.”

  “You’re leaving me here for four or five days?” I asked, incredulous. I knew there wasn’t enough juice, or cookies, to last me that long down there by myself.

  “Maybe. We come back,” he assured me.

  Then I heard another voice. “Mellissa.” It was Khalid.

  “Khalid. Why are you doing this to me? You don’t have to put me in a chain. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t open the door to up there anyway.” I was pleading to have him come and unshackle me, but he wasn’t listening. “Khalid. I am very sorry for you. I know you say you loved your mother very much. I can’t imagine how hard this is. But I promise, I will not go anywhere.”

  “Okay,” he replied. “We go now. But we come back.”

  “Wait! Don’t go!” I called out. “I need more juice. I need more cookies. I will starve and I am already sick.”

  “We come back,” he called down again. “Do not speak. If you he
ar someone, do not speak.”

  Abdulrahman chimed in. “Your name is Khalid. No speaking if someone say ‘Mellissa’! We call you Khalid; then you speak. You understand?”

  “My name is Khalid?” I asked. It took me a while to realize that they didn’t want me to answer if someone outside the gang called down. I was to respond only when they addressed me as “Khalid.”

  “Yes, we go now,” Abdulrahman said. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait! Khalid!” I called.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m really sorry about your mother. I am. I am sorry for you and your family.” I meant it. I felt terrible for him. And his mother could not have been that old, given Khalid’s and Zahir’s ages.

  “Thank you,” the reply came from above. “Goodbye.”

  I heard their footsteps fade and soon silence filled the hole once again. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I didn’t want to smoke anymore, at least not that night. I looked at the alarm clock. It was just after nine. Now what? Khalid and his family would be spending the next few days dealing with their loss. I hoped they wouldn’t forget they had a hostage whose “case” needed to be finished. But I was resigned to the fact that I may be in the hole a lot longer than I had been prepared to be.

  I tried to loosen the chain around my wrist. I wriggled it around to try to free my hand, but it was too tight, as was the end around my ankles. I stood up and realized I couldn’t really move my right arm without straining the chain around my feet. If I so much as lift my hand, the chain around my feet pulled, rubbing the metal right into my flesh. I’d have to try to avoid sudden movements. It was bad enough to be held hostage in a hole, but it felt a hundred times worse to be chained up. If I’d been lonely before, with no one to talk to but one of my Afghan guards, it was that much more desolate now, without even another presence in the hole to distract me from the reality of where I was.