Under an Afghan Sky

by Mellissa Fung

  I was about to write more when I thought I heard footsteps. Not just one person’s, but several sets. My heart started pounding. Voices too. Impossible. It was just after seven in the evening, and I didn’t expect anyone until the next afternoon. I was settling in for what I wanted to believe was the last night in the hole. The footsteps were loud, and soon they were right overhead. Could it be police? Or just nearby farmers?

  “Mellissa!” It was Abdulrahman, again forgetting that I wasn’t answering to my name.

  “Khalid!” Another voice—the real Khalid—or, at least, the man I knew by that name—was calling down.

  “Yes?” I responded.

  “We go. We go now!” Abdulrahman again.

  “What do you mean? You said we go tomorrow!”

  “No, we must go now!”

  “To Kabul?”

  “Yes!”

  I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, and I could feel my extremities going cold. The adrenaline started flowing and I looked around me at the garbage can that had been my home for the last month. I packed everything into my backpack—my notebooks, makeup bag. I shoved the cigarettes and lighter in my pocket, and patted the lower pocket of my hiking pants to make sure I still had my passport, ID, and credit cards.

  The sound of digging started, and dust started falling like rain into the hole. I covered my head with my scarf and sat down on the duvet. They lifted the cover to the hole, and I heard two thumps. I fiddled with the chain and slid my left wrist back into it.

  Khalid and Shafirgullah were making their way toward me down the tunnel. They each had a flashlight.

  “Mellissa, Kabul!” Shafirgullah said. I wasn’t sure if he was mocking me or if he was serious.

  “Khalid, what is happening?” I asked. His brow was furrowed. He was fumbling in his pocket for keys to unlock the padlocks that held the chain to my legs and my arm. He managed to unlock all three this time.

  “What is happening, Khalid?” I asked again.

  “We go—now!” he shouted. I put my shoes on and grabbed my backpack.

  “No, you leave that!” he ordered.

  What? He wasn’t going to let me take my backpack? “But my notebooks are in it! My wallet, all my stuff!”

  “No.” His voice was low and serious. “You leave. Your books—for me. You take wallet. Passport. That is all.”

  “No! You said I could have my notebooks! You bought that notebook for me, Khalid!”

  “No, I bring for you so you can write. What you write—is mine now.”

  I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to let me take my diary and letters. I was suddenly afraid that I wasn’t going to Kabul after all. What if I was going to a new group of kidnappers? That thought sent a chill up my spine. This was the moment I’d been waiting for—but I knew in the back of my mind that going to Kabul wasn’t a guarantee that I was going to be freed.

  “Go, quickly!” Khalid pushed me toward the tunnel. Shafirgullah had gone ahead. I looked back. Khalid was gathering everything else. My knapsack, the remaining packages of cookies and boxes of juice.

  I hurried up the tunnel on my tummy and my elbows, hitting my head when I got to the end. I stood and looked up. There was a crowd outside, around the shaft opening. Khalid came up behind me and lifted me up by the legs. Someone grabbed me and set me on the ground.

  “Sit!” said Abdulrahman. “Mellissa, yes! Sit!” I did as I was told. Soon Khalid scrambled out of the shaft. “We cover your eyes now,” he told me. He tied my dirty black scarf tight around my eyes.

  “Ow!” I complained. “It’s too tight!” I reached up to my face and rearranged the scarf so that I could see a little through a space just above my nose. I looked around as best I could. I saw fat Abdulrahman to my left and Khalid to my right. Abdullah was there, and so was the guy with the lazy eye, who I had not seen since the first week. There were at least two others I didn’t recognize. I heard Shafirgullah say something in rapid Pashto, then felt the barrel of a gun at the back of my head, just above my neck. My blood froze. Had my kidnappers taken me out to execute me?

  “Khalid,” I said softly, my voice quivering a little. “What is going on?” I reached out for his hand, but he brushed mine away.

  “We are angry!” he yelled. “We should kill you now!”

  I was paralyzed. Maybe freedom meant death.

  “We angry!” said Abdulrahman. “But we must walk! Come!”

  The fat Afghan grabbed me roughly by one arm and started leading me away from the hole. Khalid was walking next to me, and walking quickly. We were rushing, definitely in a big hurry. Someone was talking on a cell phone.

  We walked in the opposite direction from where we’d come when we returned from the mountain a few nights earlier. At least that was my sense from what I could see, given the blindfold, for I really had very little sense of direction. I could make out houses, and mud walls, and trees. They were rushing me along, and I was struggling to keep my balance. I could tell we were on the outskirts of the town, and I saw more trees ahead. The ground was bumpy, and I assumed we were in a grape field. We kept walking, Khalid propping me up whenever I lost my balance. I fell several times, and each time I’d feel the barrel of a gun at my head, signalling me to get up immediately.

  We entered a wooded area outside the town. Someone said something in Pashto, and Khalid pushed my shoulder down. I sat down, along with everyone else, so that we were sitting in a circle on the ground. I could saw Abdulrahman rooting through my knapsack—for about the tenth time. He pulled out my notebooks and flipped through them. Someone lit a cigarette, and I asked for one as well. Khalid lit one and put it in my hand. I promised myself it would be the last cigarette that would touch my lips and then I took a deep breath and blew out a stream of smoke. Khalid was also smoking, and so was the guy with the lazy eye.

  “I’m cold,” I told Khalid. “How much longer are we walking?”

  He sighed. Maybe one hour, he said, maybe two. Khalid put a coat on me. It was a large green camouflage jacket, so big that the shoulders drooped over my arms. Still, it was better than nothing. The night was young, and it would only get colder.

  Someone was talking on a cell phone just beyond the circle. He called out something and Khalid told me we had to get up. “We must go,” he said, yanking me to my feet. Shafirgullah followed, and I could feel the barrel of his gun in my back. I got up and allowed myself to be led, up and down and through more grape fields, walking at one point along a ledge of some sort with a shallow drop down to what looked like a field with a house in a distance.

  We finally made our way to a paved path of some sort. I sensed that we had lost several of our entourage.

  “We are angry,” Khalid said to me. “Tell me why we not kill you now?”

  “Why would you want to kill me?” I was completely confused.

  “Because! I am getting nothing from you!” Getting nothing for me? He wouldn’t release me for nothing. Was he trading me to someone else?

  “What? You are lying,” I challenged him. “You are lying. You wouldn’t be letting me go without getting something for me.”

  “We get nothing for you, do you hear me?” He was almost yelling now.

  “I don’t understand. Then why are you letting me go?” I asked this mostly because I wanted confirmation that I was being released.

  “I should not promise not to kill you,” he said bitterly. “I get nothing now.”

  I still didn’t understand what was going on but decided it was probably better not to ask too many more questions.

  After several minutes on the path we stopped, and they took off my blindfold, satisfied that we were far enough away from the hole that I would not be able to recognize the route back. Hell, I didn’t want to know how to get back, I was so happy to leave it.

  It was a clear night, not as spectacular as that night up on the mountain, but the air was crisp and the moon was high. We were on a narrow path lined on the right with trees that had shed their
leaves, and to the left were hills, quite a distance away. Ahead, I could see more hills and several spots of light—houses, I presumed, set into the slopes.

  Khalid still held onto my elbow, even though I could see, and guided me as we continued walking. “Mellissa,” he said quietly after a little while. “You do not hate me, okay?”

  “Hate you?” I asked.

  “Do not hate us. Okay?”

  “Why would I hate you?”

  “Because we take you. We hurt you. I sorry you were here so long, Mellissa.”

  “I don’t hate you, Khalid. You do what you do for whatever your reasons are. I’m just sorry for you. You live in this country that is torn apart by war.”

  We kept walking, and he looked at me. “You not angry with me?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “I’m not angry. I forgive you.” The words came out of my mouth before I’d had a chance to think about them. But I realized I’d forgiven him a long time ago, almost from the first week. It was true. My kidnappers were just a gang of simple thieves, trying to survive the only way they knew how, caught between the Taliban and the police. It wasn’t right what they did, by any means, but it wouldn’t do me any good to hold a grudge, or to be angry, or forever resentful of what they had done to me.

  “You not hate me?” he asked again.

  “No, I forgive you,” I told him.

  It was just the four of us now, walking this path through the Afghan countryside. Abdulrahman walked ahead, and Shafirgullah followed behind. We came upon a construction site where it looked like a road was being built. I thought it must be the one they had told me about the first week, being built by Chinese workers.

  All of my kidnappers were armed, alert, and at the ready, should someone or something pop out and surprise us. Shafirgullah ran ahead and jumped into the construction site, looking around before waving us over. Abdulrahman said something in Pashto, and the two of them pointed to a house in the distance. It was lit, but far enough away that whoever might be inside would not be able to make out four lonely figures making their way across the landscape.

  We continued on. It was getting colder, and Khalid seemed concerned that I was becoming tired. We stopped for a while, and Abdulrahman made a call on his cell phone while Shafirgullah guarded the perimeter around us. Abdulrahman finished his call and gave us the signal to continue walking.

  “Mellissa,” Khalid said. “When you go to Kabul, you not tell police about us, okay?”

  “I’m probably not going to see any police,” I replied.

  “They ask you who take you, you tell them—Khalid. Okay? No Abdulrahman, no Shafirgullah, okay? You say ‘Khalid,’” he instructed.

  “Khalid isn’t your real name, is it?” I asked. He didn’t respond, but I knew he wouldn’t say it was okay to tell the police I was with “Khalid” if that were his name. “What’s your real name? Hezbollah?” I pressed.

  “You just say ‘Khalid.’ You understand?”

  “Okay. No Abdulrahman. No Shafirgullah. Just Khalid.”

  We were now walking up a small hill on the paved road. I could see the faint outlines of a house on our right, a dim light the only other hint of its presence in the dark. I wondered if there was electricity out here, or if it was just a candle. I wasn’t sure if there was even electricity in the town we had come from.

  “Are you really going to email me?” I asked Khalid. He turned and looked at me. The man who had taken me from the refugee camp four weeks earlier suddenly looked like a young boy.

  “I will not forget you, Mellissa,” he said.

  I felt a strange sense of calm as we continued walking. I wasn’t sure where we were going or who we would be meeting, but Khalid’s earlier instructions suggested that they were taking me somewhere where I might come into contact with the police. Maybe today really was freedom day after all. I still didn’t want to get my hopes up, just in case I was being handed over to some other group, but either way, I felt at peace. If, at the end of the walk, I would be handed over to someone else, I knew in my heart I was ready for it. If I was being released, I was more than ready to go home.

  I wondered, though, if the authorities would try to arrest my kidnappers. Wouldn’t they be afraid of turning me in if the police were involved? Would there be a confrontation? A shootout? No, impossible! They knew what they were doing. They would not let me go if they were afraid of walking into a trap.

  I was just wondering how this was going to work when Shafirgullah cocked his gun and motioned for us all to get down. Khalid pushed me to the ground, and then forced me to crouch behind a bush.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered. He put his finger to his lips. What were my kidnappers afraid of running into? If I was being handed over for release, they would be wary of running into other groups, like the Taliban.

  I watched from my spot behind the bush as Shafirgullah and Abdulrahman checked the area around us, their guns cocked and ready. A few minutes later, Abdulrahman gave the all-clear and we resumed our trek.

  In the far distance—kilometres away, I could make out what looked like a city. I wondered if it was Kabul. It was impossible to tell because it just looked like a glowing speck off in the distance. Although our pace had slowed, Khalid was still holding my arm. Shafirgullah was now walking behind us, Abdulrahman in front.

  The path that we were walking on had morphed into a road wide enough for vehicles, with an embankment on one side. Through the darkness, I could make out a black SUV. And then I saw them. Lined up on the embankment, dark figures—men in black with guns—two, three, four, five, six—I stopped counting.

  Abdulrahman came to a standstill. Two men stood in front of the SUV. One wore a turban, the other a dark suit. The fat Afghan cocked his gun, and one of the men waved him away.

  To my surprise, Abdulrahman then greeted the men with a hug. “Salaam,” he said.

  “Salaam,” they answered.

  The men exchanged a few words, then the one in the suit gestured toward me. Abdulrahman turned to Khalid and me and motioned for us to come to him. Again to my surprise, Khalid let go of my arm and pushed me forward.

  “Go! Goodbye!” he said.

  I couldn’t move. I tried holding onto Khalid’s hand, but he pushed me away toward Abdulrahman.

  “Goodbye, Mellissa! Go!”

  I took a tentative step forward. Abdulrahman was still waving me over. I took another step. Impatiently, my captor stepped back and grabbed my arm, hauling me toward him and the two men.

  “Hello,” the man in the suit said to me.

  “Hello,” I replied. “Who are you?”

  His English wasn’t good. Abdulrahman answered that his name was Haji Janan. “He is an important person,” the fat Afghan said in English, and then translated that into Pashto for the others. They laughed, and Haji Janan took my hand. “We go,” he said, leading me to the waiting black SUV.

  I looked at Abdulrahman and then to Khalid, who had stepped farther back.

  “You go,” Abdulrahman said. “Kabul!”

  Haji Janan opened the passenger door to the SUV. I climbed in, and he followed. The man in the turban got in the other side, so that I was sitting between them. The driver started the engine. I could still see all those figures, standing on the embankment, dressed in black and holding rifles, poised and ready to shoot. And as we drove down the hill, I saw that there were dozens of them lining the road—for at least a kilometre or two. Plus about a dozen other SUVs on the side of the road, which, as we drove past them, pulled out and followed us.

  I turned to the man in the suit. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He didn’t seem to understand.

  “Are we going to Kabul?” I tried again.

  This time, he recognized the word “Kabul” and nodded. “Yes! Kabul!”

  It was what I had been waiting for. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  The two Afghans on either side of me were speaking to each other and laughing. The man in the turban pulled
out his cell phone and started making calls, speaking in loud, excited Pashto.

  I suddenly realized I had to call someone. I asked Haji Janan if I could borrow his cell phone. He happily handed it to me. His screensaver was a drawing of a red rose.

  “Call anybody!” he told me.

  I punched in the numbers for Paul’s Afghan cell phone.

  No answer. How could that be?

  I tried again. Maybe I had dialed the numbers wrong. Still no answer. Maybe he’d left the country.

  I tried a third time. No answer. Where was he? I had to call someone, had to let someone know that I was free and alive.

  Haji Janan took the phone back and made a quick call. I could hear a man’s voice on the other end of the line. He handed the phone back to me when he was done.

  “Can I dial long distance?” I asked.

  “Call, call!”

  I punched in the numbers most familiar to me—the ones I’d been dialing for more than thirty years. I could hear faint ringing, and I tried to adjust the volume. After three rings, I heard a voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

  There was a pause.

  “Mui?” he asked, using my Cantonese nickname.

  “Hi, Dad, it’s me. I’m okay. I’m so sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. I’m okay. I’m on my way home.”

  Epilogue

  It’s been months since that night in Kabul, and I’m back in my happy place in Kelly’s condo in Tofino. I’ve been back at work as a journalist for the CBC for a while, and I’ve been surfing and savouring my freedom, but the memories of my time in the hole are still vivid and sometimes haunt my dreams. Which is one of the reasons why I decided to write this story.

  I was taken that night to the office of the head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh, who greeted me by telling me that not a penny had been given to my kidnappers in exchange for my freedom.

  We spoke at length in his office, surrounded by his aides, as we waited for the Canadian ambassador to come and get me. He asked me to describe my kidnappers, and where I had been held (as it turns out, the village was Maidan, in Wardak province). He nodded knowingly as I spoke, and I could tell he knew who they were. I later found out that he had arrested the mother, the brother, and the sister-in-law of Khalid’s “friend” or father in Peshawar, as they were trying to cross the border into Pakistan. They were thrown in jail the day that Khalid came to put the chains on me. It was a straight trade: my kidnappers released me in exchange for the authorities’ guarantee that the mother would be released from prison simultaneously.