I see more and more turbans, black, white, and dark gray ones. The colors of the Taliban. As it was in the past, so it is today. I don’t see any weapons anywhere, though they are probably hidden somewhere within reach. I spend two hours in the headquarters of the NGO, pacing in and out of the director’s room. It serves as his office, but it’s also a kind of common room. We drink tea, always accompanied by candies. A woman appears, the first one I’ve seen in days. She pulls a packet of sweets out of the cupboard and lines the contents up on a tray, which she then offers us. I have cramps in my stomach. I prefer to smoke. I do so outside, out of respect for those who have to put up with a vice that I stubbornly refuse to give up. In the garden around the courtyard there is a man tending to the lawn. He stares at me silently. The woman comes out and signals me to come back inside, they’re asking for me. Ajmal and the Afghan volunteer would prefer that I remain inside. We mustn’t stick out. My presence might attract too much attention and arouse suspicion.
Later, Ajmal will tell me that even the director of the NGO, an Afghan from Lashkar Gar, avoids leaving his office. He does everything via email, he has collaborators in the region, people from the many villages scattered throughout the districts, who update him on the progress of various projects, all of them financed by the Ministry of Public Health: wells, water filtration, and irrigation systems, the conversion of farms, medicine, campaigns against cholera and tuberculosis.
I will discover a lot of things after the fact like this; apparently insignificant details that are actually essential in order to paint a precise picture of the situation. Many of them will be details that Ajmal kept concealed from me—he would not divulge information acquired from his sources to anyone, me included.
Sayed arrives and tells us that everything’s ready—they’re waiting for us. I make a call, yet another attempt to reach my friend who works in the hospital run by the NGO Emergency, the only hospital operating in Lashkar Gah. His cell phone is switched off. I’m certain he’s in the city, but I’m unable to contact him. I wanted to pay him a visit: he could have helped me understand the situation in this district. He might have told me to be cautious about the interview. I call my colleague from Panorama, Giovanni Porzio. He tells me he’ll be in tomorrow on a UN flight from Kabul. He says: “I spoke to Gino Strada.[1] He’s still in Karthum, Sudan. The only thing he told me was to be careful, the city is swarming with Taliban.”
I leave a case containing technical equipment, my trusty knife, the compass I use when sailing, and my torch, at the offices of the NGO. I only take the video camera, my computer, and a notepad. In the pocket of the army-green coat that I’m wearing over my shalwar I have three pens.
We turn on to the main road. The traffic is heavy. Right before a bridge we run into a roadblock. Sayed and Ajmal ask me to pull out my press ID card in case the police stop us. We’ll also need it to identify ourselves to those waiting to meet us for the interview. To the right, fields of opium poppies as far as the eye can see. They skirt the road, even here in the heart of the city. They’re blooming. In two weeks the harvest will begin, a ritual that I will soon learn all about from my Taliban tutors. We make it past the roadblock because the police officer is distracted, busy with another car. A hundred meters further on, at an intersection, we turn left.
A boy is waiting for us alongside a gas station. He’s the driver’s contact, the one who will bring us to the Taliban for our interview. That’s how it’s been planned, at least I think so. He is completely covered by the shawl Afghans almost always wear. This one is light green. Only his eyes are visible, and I see as he glances towards me that they, too, are light green. His profile is angular, his nose thin and long. He does not return my greeting. He looks straight ahead and points out the road to Sayed. The tension is palpable, as is the anticipation. Nobody speaks, we communicate with gestures, and monosyllabic grunts that might mean everything or nothing.
We drive along a wide gravel road that disappears into the crop fields marked by dozens of deep wheel ruts formed over the years by the passage of thousands of vehicles. We bounce in and out of the ruts in something like a gentle dance, and then turn off onto another, smaller road that cuts across irrigation channels. The water occasionally reaches the doors of the car. We almost get bogged a couple of times. Then, the road ends suddenly. Before us there are only crop fields. Sayed looks lost. He isn’t sure where to go and asks his contact. The boy, evasive, doesn’t give him any clear indications. We turn the car around to head back in the direction we came. The maneuver is a little difficult. At the top of a hill, in a circle, we see the shape of three black motorbikes, at least two men on each. I ask if it’s them, but nobody answers. We stop the car. The tension is sky-high—this is the crucial moment. I ready myself. Now they’ll accompany us somewhere, I think. They’ll lead us to the house of the military commander.
The Taliban surround us. A car arrives, another Toyota Corolla. There are a lot of them, at least a dozen or so, and they’re all armed. Kalashnikovs, old and new. I look at the gun barrels pointed at us but remain seated in the car, my face hidden behind my patu. I wait for orders and instructions. They’ve already grabbed Ajmal and dragged him out of the car. Now it’s Sayed’s turn. His contact has vanished. We’ll never see him again. Interpreter and driver speak, explain, shout. Their voices are strained. The Taliban pull their hands and arms back and tie them with strips of fabric torn from their turbans. There’s talk, lots of it; everyone is talking at once. There is a lot of confusion and I can’t understand a thing. Now they grab me and pull me out of the car. They’re slightly more gentle with me but decisive in their movements all the same. Their eyes are hard as they look at me. They seem to be asking who I am, what I want, what I’m doing on their turf. I have the impression that they think I’m a spy; their looks are full of suspicion, of hatred mixed with surprise.
I remain immobile as they tie my hands behind my back. Then I begin explaining myself, saying that I’m a journalist. I persist: “We’re journalists.” I mention the interview with the commander; I say that I’m Italian, and, above all, a journalist. I’m convinced it’s all a mistake, perhaps due to something unforeseen. I don’t know, maybe a shoot-out that morning with fatalities and injuries among their ranks. Their anger at something of that nature might have changed everything. Yes, I’m sure that’s it: a mistake that will be cleared up in no time. I stay calm, fighting back only when they blindfold me so tight it hurts my eyes. I discover I’m claustrophobic. I knew I was, but didn’t realize I suffered it to such agonizing extremes. I have to be able to see a little light, even when it’s dark. With my eyes closed and covered I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m dying, wrapped up in something that’s suffocating me.
I react instinctively. I have to free myself of that damned blindfold. I loosen the fabric binding my hands and slip off the blindfold. I protest, repeat again and again that I am a journalist. I’m trying to touch what should be a sensitive point for them by saying that this is not the way to treat a guest, westerner though he may be, one who has chosen to come here to the deep south to give voice and visibility to the Taliban position, to tell the story of a war that the world knows little about.
But these Taliban are soldiers, they obey orders from on high. I protest again; twisting around, I look for other faces and eyes to which I can voice my appeal. Ajmal and Sayed are weeping, emitting feeble laments; perhaps they too feel suffocated by the blindfolds and hoods over their faces.
I’m struck violently on the back, right below my shoulder blade, by the butt of a Kalashnikov. I fall to my knees and raise my hands, I cry, “All right, I’ll put the blindfold back on.” They hit me again, harder this time, in the head. Everything is spinning, moving in and out of focus, but I remain conscious. Blood seeps into my hair, into my blindfold, which is again tied tight around my eyes. I raise my hands and get shakily to my feet. They tell me to get in the trunk.
I obey. I have no choice. I want them to calm down. In this state, t
hey might well kill me, and I’m paralyzed by the thought of it. I get into the trunk of a Corolla, I don’t know if it’s theirs or Sayed’s. From under the blindfold I see my driver and my interpreter sitting in the backseat of the other sedan. They’re immobile, silent. I don’t move, huddled in the car trunk as it fills with blood. My heart is beating wildly. My thoughts focus on everything and nothing: my life, the people I hold dear, the newspaper, what is going to happen and what could happen. I’m trying to convince myself that this is all normal. These are the rules, they simply don’t trust anyone. I know that the Taliban are hard, violent, extremely distrustful, and I consider the fact that they have blindfolded us normal as well—they are taking us to a place where the commandant is waiting to be interviewed and we cannot be allowed to see roads and houses.
I open the trunk from the inside by pulling a cable my fingers have found. For a second, just for a second, I contemplate trying to escape: I could throw myself from the moving car. But I have no idea where we are and what’s around us. It could prove a fatal error. The risk is too high, it’d be better to stay in the trunk. I hold it open a little so I can breathe.
The Corolla stops suddenly. I hear them shouting orders outside. Somebody opens the trunk, which I’ve just managed to close in time. They prod me with the muzzles of their Kalashnikovs and order me out of the car. I obey. With my hands still tied behind my back I indicate the injury on my head as best I can. I have to stop the bleeding, but with my arms behind my back there’s no way to do it alone. I complain, saying this is no way to welcome a guest. They smile, and some of them laugh. They reply as one voice, “journalist, journalist,” chanting, mocking. It will be the same story the whole time we are together. On one side, three prisoners taken hostage in what was an unexpected and unimaginable kidnapping, and on the other, fifteen soldiers proud of the prey they have bagged. Kindness and politeness alternate with sudden rage. I believe, I intuit, that they don’t want to hurt me. For now. They respect me. I even manage to intimidate them to a certain extent. I obey their orders. I am and will always be a journalist, not a soldier, or a mercenary, and I have nothing to hide, to cover up, or to deny. I can no longer stand the blindfold over my eyes, and ask them to take it off. It is soaked with blood and this complicates matters. Especially for them. They loosen it.
Now I can make them out. They’re all wearing gray shalwars with either black or white turbans. It could be a kind of uniform. I notice a patch on the sleeves of some of their jackets, like military flashes. I read “arba,” which in Arabic means four. Perhaps it indicates the unit or brigade to which they belong. They are soldiers, militants, not bandits. This reassures me. Because the idea of being killed here like a dog, without any explanation, reason, or excuse, terrifies me. Everything depends on this gang of boys; I stare at them one by one. Not much older than twenty; armed, hardened, resolute, as strong and thin as nails. Their faces are wide; they treat their black beards with great care, admiring themselves in little hand mirrors they carry in their shirt pockets.
We wait for about an hour with our hands tied behind our backs. The blindfold has fallen down to my neck. I can look around. We are enclosed by the cob walls of something that must be a kind of shelter for livestock. It’s old, dilapidated and abandoned. The soldiers push me into a corner, they don’t want anyone to see me. I take cover from the sun beside a crumbling wall. At gunpoint I’m ordered back into the sunlight.
Ajmal and Sayed are on their knees, far from me, hands tied behind their backs and white hoods over their heads. They don’t complain, and hardly speak. They passively accept this situation. Every so often they say something, mere fragments of sentences, timid protests and desperate attempts to explain. I hear the word “journalist” often, but I have no idea what they’re talking about or how our present company responds. There is no discussion, only resignation. We are waiting for someone to arrive, to give a short sharp order that will decide our fate.
The crumbling walls block my view of the surroundings. I take a guess at the time it took to get here, and feel certain that we are not far from where they ambushed us. Perhaps the people who arrested us are merely suspicious—we may still be able to do the interview. In spite of everything, I am optimistic. I try to calm down. I breathe deeply, and even manage to smile. Shaking my head, I tell them in English, “We’re here for an interview with a military commander. He knows everything about it and he’s waiting for us. If this is your way of protecting your boss, okay. But ask him, at least. He knows, he’s been informed, he’ll tell you who we are.”
The smell of manure is strong. There must be stables nearby, but I don’t see nor hear any animals. Even the birds have stopped singing. At the spot where they ambushed us, the birds were raising a racket. Sayed continues his lament but his appeals fall on deaf ears. The Taliban keep us at gunpoint, in silence. I move, slowly. There is a shout, an order, and I move back under the sun, behind a small wall. I can’t stay sitting on my heels—I keep losing my balance. I stand up and explain that my back and head hurt, that I’m worried about the blow to the head and the blood that’s running down my neck, onto my chest, all the way to the waist of my pants. I have to stop the bleeding I explain, using gestures, smiling in an effort to ease the tension. I’m not dangerous and I have no intention of doing anything other than what they tell me to do. I’m a journalist, I repeat. I’m here for an interview. With a military commander. I look at my companions, asking them to translate for me and to confirm what I’m telling the Taliban. With their heads bent low they mutter something that is muffled by the hoods covering their heads. I look at the faces of the soldiers. One, perhaps the highest-ranking soldier amongst them, smiles. His teeth are brilliant white, the expression on his face almost friendly. He cries: “Journalist, journalist. No, you are a spy! You’re a spy, a British spy.” He brings his right hand to his neck and drags it across his throat as if it were a knife. Still smiling, he repeats, “Spy, spy, British.”
So, they accuse us of being spies, collaborating with the British forces, who have infiltrators in the Emirate. This accusation can be no coincidence. Of course, it’s the standard sentence pronounced by those who arrest you and hold you prisoner; an aggravating factor that will be weighed in the balance when they decide whether you are to live or to die. And it’s true that Her Majesty’s soldiers have been stationed, together with Canadian soldiers, in southern Afghanistan, in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, territories that historically have been under Taliban control. So it’s natural to assume that spies captured in the area work for MI6, the English secret intelligence services. But to be fingered as one of Her Majesty’s subjects so soon after having been captured cannot be due only to the fact that I am blond with blue eyes. There is something unusual about it that arouses my suspicions. So much certainty, almost as if the sentence were already decided. There is no other explanation: someone sold us out. Someone took advantage of the persistent rumors circulating in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces about the arrival of three journalists, one of them a foreigner, and alerted the Taliban to our presence in Lashkar Gah. But who? And why? For money or to curry favor with the Taliban? The only other possibility is that, without our knowing it, we have been used as bait to lure our interlocutors out into the open.
Something must have triggered this reaction on the part of the Taliban. I thought about it over and over again during my captivity. It was something I tried to talk about with Ajmal during our long sleepless nights wrapped in the darkness of our cells, whispering words of concern, reproach, courage, and disappointment as we grew steadily angrier at the absurd situation in which we found ourselves, victims of an unforeseen and unforeseeable abduction. Ajmal would shake his head and apologize: “There has been a misunderstanding,” he would say. An error, a misunderstanding. Then, to conclude, with an air of surprise: “I don’t understand. The policy of the Taliban has changed all of a sudden. They’ve never had a problem with journalists. Now they consider us enemies.”
DESERT
FLIGHT
I’m perspiring heavily. Sweat mixed with blood is dripping from my hair onto my face. I try to get a sense of how many and how serious my head injuries are. I can’t use my hands, as they’re still tied. I ask my captors for help. They look at me in silence and make gestures meant to calm me. They laugh and then become serious all of a sudden. They glance quickly at one another and exchange little guttural noises. Two motorbikes are arriving with four more Taliban on them. Ajmal and Sayed are taken away and thrown back into the Corolla that brought them here. It’s not Sayed’s car, which has vanished, perhaps hidden somewhere: someone might see it, note the license plate, and alert the police or the Afghan army.
Then they pull me up as well. I cast a final glance in the direction of my two collaborators and tell them in English to stay calm, everything will work out. I’m sure we’re heading to our appointment. We’ll soon be able to conduct the interview we’ve been waiting for and put an end to this rather theatrical situation, which, in my opinion, could really have been avoided. I remain composed. The worst is over. For now, they’re not going to kill us. The commander must have called, convinced them of their error, and demanded our release. We are the journalists he was expecting.
They put the blindfold back on. I draw in as much air as I can and hold my breath. But I don’t protest. I don’t want to get hit with a rifle butt again. I obey their orders and they show me respect. This is the first rule we’ve been able to establish. We all accept it. They push me over to a motorcycle and put a large black plastic bag over my head. The driver of the bike shifts into first. Though my hands are still bound I grab hold of the small rear rack—two pieces of metal. The ride doesn’t last long: a few minutes over small hills, a long descent down a dirt track. It is not the same road that Ajmal, Sayed, and I had been on earlier.
Days of Fear Page 4