Under an Afghan Sky
Page 32
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, called me while I was in Saleh’s office to tell me how happy he was that I had been released. Like Saleh, he reiterated that not a cent had been paid for my release. Prime Minister Stephen Harper also called me later that night. I don’t remember much of that conversation, but I do remember congratulating him on his election victory.
To my great dismay, I was told that Shokoor and his brother had been arrested and jailed, the only suspects the Afghan police could come up with in my disappearance. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard, that our trusted colleague was a suspect, especially after I’d been so afraid that my kidnappers would hunt him down while I was in captivity. The Canadian ambassador at the time, the wonderful Ron Hoffmann, was trying to negotiate Shokoor’s release, and I didn’t want to leave the country until I knew that he was okay, but his freedom didn’t come until two weeks after mine.
The ambassador opened up the embassy to me—and to Paul, who was still in Kabul waiting for my release. He met me at the embassy that night. It turned out that the negotiators wouldn’t let him answer his phone that last day. Even though the Afghan authorities had agreed to release the mother of Khalid’s “friend” or father, the people who were holding me were still trying to squeeze the negotiators for money. They called several times, threatening to kill me unless they got it.
I learned that the CBC had set up a negotiating team in a local guest house. Jamie Purdon, my immediate boss, flew in from Toronto, as did Margaret Evans, the talented and experienced CBC correspondent from Jerusalem. There was a team from our security firm, AKE, and the CBC had brought in a second security company as well—the British-based Control Risks, who specialize in kidnapping and ransom. The group in Kabul communicated on a constant basis with a team at CBC headquarters in Toronto, who were set up in a boardroom dubbed the “war room,” which was staffed twenty-four hours a day for the twenty-eight days I was gone.
Paul and I spent three days at the embassy, trying to decompress. Ron’s cook, Linus, made me cheeseburgers and taught me how to make mantu, the delicious meat-filled Afghan dumplings, which I ate hungrily.
There was a contingent from the RCMP to meet me as well. The kindly Al McCambridge had the difficult job of debriefing me about my experience, and then escorted us out of the country on a Pamir flight to Dubai days later. My sister and Kelly flew to Dubai to meet me and take me back to North America, where I would be reunited with my parents. I’m still amazed at how strong they were through their ordeal.
My last image of Afghanistan was through that airplane window. I remember looking down at the mountains as we flew south, wondering if that was the peak where we had hiked to that night, and what my kidnappers were doing at that moment, where they were. As the plane climbed higher, I thought about the soldiers down there who were still fighting the war, still trying to make a difference. I wondered what had happened to the little girl in the pink and black scarf I’d met outside the PRT in Kandahar.
And I hoped I would be able to come back someday, to what might be a better, safer place, not just for me, but more importantly, for children like her.
Acknowledgements
To my editor, Jim Gifford, whose patience and steady guidance helped me through a long and at times difficult writing process, my eternal gratitude. Your insight and talent are evident throughout these pages. And to my copy editor, Judy Phillips, for your critical eye and strong sense of story. Thank you for making me a better writer.
To Perry Zimel, my manager, my dear friend, who took care of so much for me when I returned, I cannot thank you enough. You are right. There is a reason for everything.
To family—my sister, Vanessa; and my parents, Joyce and Kellog—I am humbled by your strength and courage and love, and I cannot thank you enough for what you endured because of me.
To my amazing friends—in particular, Kelly McClughan, Jen Barr, Kas Roussy, Marie Morrissey, Angela Naus, Maureen Taylor, Jen and Brian Burke, Denelle Balfour, Stefani Langenegger, Coreen and Mal Moore, Shelley and Gerry Thue—you were my pillar of strength for four weeks, and you continue to be there for me. I am lucky to be surrounded by so much love.
To the “war room” at the CBC in Toronto, and everyone who worked tirelessly for my release, thank you for your dedication, your long hours, and all those sleepless nights. A special thank you to Hubert Lacroix. Your generosity and caring toward my parents while I was gone will never be forgotten.
To Paul, who lifts me up and gives me so much, and who inspires me to be better every day, you have lived this story a thousand different ways. I would not be here, and this book would not have been written, without you.
And to the members of the Canadian Forces—those who’ve come home, those who haven’t, and those who continue the mission in Afghanistan—and their families, you are all the true heroes. You inspire and remind us every day that the world can be a better place. We cannot thank you enough for your sacrifice.
About the Authors
MELLISSA FUNG has been a reporter for CBC Television since 2003. As a national correspondent, she has covered numerous topics on both Canadian and world affairs, including the Robert Pickton trial and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She was sent on assignment to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 and was abducted during her second tour. Fung divides her time between Toronto and Washington, D.C.
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PRAISE FOR
Under an Afghan Sky
“Richly detailed.”—The Globe and Mail
“Engrossing…. What makes this book so affecting… is not any Hollywood-style drama or tension, but a rather unexpected and touching relationship she builds with one of her abductors.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“It’s a powerful, warts-and-all study of how someone stays together in an unimaginable situation rife with incessant self-questioning and ‘what-if’ scenarios: Could she strangle her sleeping captor while he stores? Would she be able to get out of the whole under her own steam?… Fung invites us into her own worst nightmare, providing honest reflections on her own strengths and limitations…. [A] courageous contribution to the written history of the past decade.” —Quill & Quire
“There’s a wonderful tension in Under an Afghan Sky between the wide-eyed curiosity, innocence, decency, resilience, and compassion of the narrator and the reader’s sense of peril in the suffocating confinement, the ever-present likelihood of murder, and the backdrop of a fundamentally irrational conflict. I came away feeling that anybody but Mellissa would probably have perished and that she survived because of the strength of her character, which certainly surprised some of her kidnappers. I was totally captivated.”—Linden MacIntyre, author of The Bishop’s Man
“Grabbed at gunpoint, stabbed in the shoulder, knifed in the hand, thrown in an underground hole for twenty-eight days, and yet Mellissa Fung never stops being a reporter. Fung puts you in that awful, dark, rancid hole with her, and lets you listen in as she never stops confronting her kidnappers. Vivid in its detail, dramatic in its conversation, Under an Afghan Sky is riveting journalism, and guess what? There’s even an endearing love story that runs throughout the book.” —Peter Mansbridge
“When I reached Mellissa Fung by telephone in Kabul, shortly after her release, we spoke at great length, like two sisters. The account she has written about the twenty-eight days of captivity is striking, because it gives us the full measure of her strength, which was put to the test, and her humanity.” —Michaëlle Jean
“Mellissa Fung’s vivid portrait of the soul of a journalist even in the most terrifying of circumstances is a recognition of the never-yielding human spirit. When we follow our calling it can save our lives. Her experience is an example of this.” —Sandra Oh
“In Under an Afghan Sky, Mellissa Fung touches on some difficult issues and does not divide the world into the two realms of good and evil. As she tells of the long days and nights she spen
t with her captors in a hole in the ground, we get to know them as the flawed human beings that they were, desperate individuals who had been pushed to the edge by war, poverty, and political and religious extremism. This is an important book that can lead the reader to a better understanding of a very complicated country.”
—Marina Nemat, author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran
Credits
Cover photo of landscape: Elisabet Zeilon/Glasshouse Images
Cover photo of Mellissa Fung: Paul Workman
Author photo: Paul Workman
Copyright
Under an Afghan Sky
Copyright © 2011 by Mellissa Fung.
Excerpts from the diaries of Paul Workman © 2011 by Paul Workman.
Reproduced by permission of Paul Workman.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 978-1-443-40826-4
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in a hardcover edition: 2011
This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2012
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Fung, Mellissa
Under an Afghan sky : a memoir of captivity / Mellissa Fung.
ISBN 978-1-55468-681-0
1. Fung, Mellissa—Captivity, 2008. 2. Hostages—Afghanistan—Biography. 3. Hostages—Canada—Biography. 4. Journalists—Canada—Biography. 5. Afghan War, 2001– —Personal narratives, Canadian. I. Title.
DS371.43.F86A3 2012 958.104’7092 C2012-900726-9
RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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