The blindfold over my eyes has fallen down to my neck and I fear they’ll be angry, that they will mete out some kind of punishment. Four, five faces smile at me, a confused mass of hands and arms lift me up and out of the trunk. All those mouths repeating in a chorus of shrieking voices: “Please, please, please!” Imitating me, ridiculing me. All I’m thinking about is breathing, I have to get air into my lungs, pull myself together. I tell them my heart is acting strange, that I could kick the bucket here and now, which would be a serious problem for them if their intention is to exchange me for some prisoners.
I look around, turning a full 360 degrees. We’re in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of an immense stretch of sand and stones. Before us, to the south, there is nothing but an enormous, infinite desert. The sun has almost set. To our left there’s a pickup ready, a Toyota V8 turbo. Powerful, rugged, fast. The flat cargo bed is full of pots, gas cookers, lids, weapons, missile launchers, tanks of water and gas, and a dozen kids with guns at the ready: Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns, ammunition belts with two hundred rounds a piece. In the cab, together with two fully loaded anti-tank missile launchers are three more Taliban: the commander whom I met in the farmer’s house; his lieutenant, a kid with long ruffled hair in a white turban; finally, a third man, older, with a dark gray turban, clearly an officer. He’s on a satellite telephone.
A pair of strong arms helps me walk and lifts me into the cargo bed, where I find Ajmal and Sayed. They make room for me. We sit with our back to the passenger cab, leaning up against four large plastic tanks fastened to the cab itself. Sitting like this, our backs will be slightly cushioned when the truck lurches and bounces during our moves.
We huddle in together as best we can, legs crossed, our feet under the pile of covers and mattresses, our hands tied tight behind our backs. Our arms hurt, there is not enough room. But we make do, soldiers and prisoners alike. We’re all in the same boat. We feel the same discomfort and the same pain, and we try to put up with it. I will have to get used to the difficulties, the distress, the hunger, thirst, cold, and heat. This is no longer a simple interview. This is the jihad.
The commander, a small plump man whose name I will later learn is Ali, shifts into first and steps on the gas. We’re heading south. The pickup takes off like a bat out of hell. The eight cylinders roar, the turbo comes to life with a deafening snarl. The soldiers stare at us, and when the pickup jumps and jolts the barrels of their weapons draw dangerously near our chests. Four soldiers are sitting up front in the cab, their backs to the cargo bed and us; another four are sitting on the side with their legs dangling off the truck. The heavy machine guns are leaning against the steel frame of the cargo bed, barrels pointing outwards, ready for action. In the middle, there are four more Taliban. I can’t figure out how they can even fit in—we squeeze together, wriggle for more room, huddle up against one another.
Strangely, I feel almost protected, safe. Now, I fear the others, too: the police, the Afghan army, and the English soldiers stationed in the area. I’m afraid that anyone who finds himself on our tracks might decide to attack. We’re hostages, and as such, in addition to being merchandise to be exchanged, we could also serve, if necessary, as excellent shields for our kidnappers. I lower my head. My hands are tied behind my back and there’s no way I can reach the edges of the quilt that covers us and pull it up over my chest. The Taliban to my left takes care of it for me. His name is Aleef, one of the few who will tell me his name and with whom I will repeatedly attempt to converse. My wound is throbbing and I feel like I might be running a temperature. Every bump, every jolt, every sudden deceleration makes me feel like my brain is knocking against my cranium. I only hope that nothing serious has happened internally, that there is no risk of hemorrhage. We’re in the middle of the desert, there are no doctors around, we don’t even have any medical supplies with us.
The getaway is a rally over sand dunes, hillocks, rocks, tufts of grass and wild shrubs. The pickup leaps and lurches and shakes. We complain, cry out in pain, yelp, and curse. The fabric tied around our wrists makes our forearms swell. We are not following any road or trail, we’re driving over virgin terrain to avoid encounters that could prove dangerous for everyone. The pickup accelerates. The race is getting faster by the minute. I don’t know where we’re heading, how long this trip will last, how it will end. But I’m still alive and that is something.
I observe my two companions. Their heads are hanging. Every jolt sends waves of pain through them, too, especially when in the darkness that surrounds us, Commander Ali doesn’t see the small sand dunes in our path. When this happens, the pickup stops dead, the front wheels sink into the sand, the rear wheels lift off the ground, and a cloud of dust mixed with small stones and uprooted tufts of grass rises and blusters around us. Then, with a series of leaps and lurches that breaks our backs the truck flies off into the night again. Ajmal is covered in sand. He, like me and Sayed, can do nothing more than shake his head, spit the sand out of his mouth, and cough.
The Taliban soldiers, barely twenty years old, laugh, but it’s not cruel laughter; there’s no sadism in this contagious gaiety that seems to be part of their very spirit. I haven’t seen them, and I will never see them, sad, depressed, or angry. They’re a tight-knit group, a crew, and this is their family. They’ve grown up together. Together, they’ve studied the Qur’an, which they know by heart in its original Arabic. They live and fight together. Together, they are ready to kill, to cut throats, to massacre. They long to die in battle, together.
They laugh when the pickup struggles over these rollercoaster dips and rises. They want to measure our resistance and make us understand that this is their life. They will share their joys and their sufferings with us, their food and their famine, their thirst and their water. We will never go without. Their attentiveness leaves us dumbfounded, but we will learn to fear it when we discover what they’re capable of.
The air is clear, clean, fresh. I look up above me: a black mantle lit by millions of stars shining with a brightness that is only possible in the desert. I’m reminded of night crossings in the sailboat when I was a kid. My father would hand me the rudder, leaving the watch to me. We would be in the middle of the sea, and I, the lone navigator. I would occasionally look at the compass, but I had learned to use the stars to plot my position. I do the same thing now. I can make out the constellations. We’re in a different hemisphere but I know which direction we’re heading. We’re going south, perhaps southwest. I picture the map of Afghanistan, visualize the districts in this part of the country, which I have learned by heart, and realize that the Taliban are taking us as far as possible from the place where we were abducted. We’re heading into the southernmost reaches of Helmand province, where they feel safer, where there are no trails and little risk of crossing paths with anyone.
It’s past midnight when we arrive in a village surrounded by opium-poppy plantations. It’s on the banks of the Helmand River, which here makes one of its many turns before heading west and emptying into Lake Hamun, in Nimroz Province. We’ll be staying here for the night. It’s pitch black. In the districts we will crisscross over the course of our captivity there is no electricity. When the sun goes down, they light torches, or, at most, a gas-fueled lantern. They go to bed shortly after sunset and wake before dawn.
The Taliban need to find a place to stay. They can count on the people of this village—they have friends here, people who support them. Nonetheless, they avoid showing us around too much. They order me to cover my head and keep my mouth closed. We stop at a widening in the road and a small group of people gathers around the pickup. They’re curious. Word has spread. The mujahedeen, legendary heroes cloaked in an aura of mystery, have arrived with their precious booty: three captive spies who were operating in their territory. They are discreet but they cannot help showing us off a little, like game they have just bagged. This is how they reinforce their reputation and increase consensus among the masses.
Men, boys,
even young children, draw close. They emerge out of the darkness. Here and there a lighter illuminates their faces as they scrutinize us, silently, their curiosity mixed with condemnation. I’m dying for a cigarette. A man who speaks a few words of English offers me one and I am allowed to smoke it. They let me speak, complain, explain. I talk without interruption to calm my nerves and ease the tension. Almost as if it were a game, a stupid game of soldiers and prisoners. They ask me who I am. I am a journalist, I say. It’s a detail, for me a vital one, that I will continue to impress upon the Taliban. The story of three captured spies is an obvious lie, an easy excuse for an arrest that in reality is nothing more than kidnapping, a trap. I obstinately insist on establishing another rule: each of us must assume responsibility for our actions. They must admit that they arrested me, abducted me, that they are moving me to some hideout because they want to use me as ransom. I accept this but demand the respect that any prisoner deserves. I discuss the question with Commander Ali that evening. At first he rejects my demands, but I finally convince him to accept them. He will return to the question often during the seven days we spend together, putting everything in doubt again and again.
It’s still Monday, March 5. We move another few kilometers toward an isolated group of houses. The Taliban help us get down from the cargo bed, they unload covers, gas stoves, teapots, weapons, and ammunition. The put us in a barn full of grain sacks, bags of seeds, equipment, old canisters, large containers made of black, smoke-stained clay. We sleep stretched out on a straw mat, all three of us together, our hands still tied with a strip of fabric but mercifully no longer behind our backs. I have certain bodily needs. The tension and the adrenalin mean that I must often ask leave to meet my bodily needs. This will be a feature of my detention. I will also use this need as an excuse to get in some exercise, get a breath of fresh air, try to keep my body in shape, especially my legs, which will end up reduced to something like matchsticks. I use the same excuse to interrupt the monotony of hours and hours stretched out on makeshift beds and to calm the waves of panic that assail me, at times so violently that I can’t breathe. That night, Commander Ali warns me: “Once you’re inside your cell, you don’t come back out. If you knock for your needs, we’ll kill you.”
We sleep like logs. Tired, distraught, incapable of fully accepting a situation that we continue to think of as a bad dream, a nightmare from which we expect to wake sooner or later and recount to our loved ones as if it were a sign to be interpreted. But that’s not how things turn out.
The sudden wake up call—the small steel door opening and slamming against the wall—brings us hurtling back to reality. The Taliban on guard emits a short, sharp order: time for morning prayers, the first of five such prayer sessions that every Muslim must observe daily. This one is among the most important; the prayer must be recited according to a precise ritual and followed by a series of gestures. You must wash your hands, feet, face, ears, nose, mouth, arms, and elbows first. A method for eliminating all the impurities absorbed by the body during the previous day and night. You can skip these ablutions only if you have not yet taken care of your own needs. It is a delicate and very spiritual moment in which one comes before God. It is a question of respect and devotion.
I do not pray to my God that morning. They hand me a small empty canteen, one of those used to hold oil for cooking, and jerk their heads toward a spot where I can go to empty my bowels. I will not be out of their sight, and more importantly, the spot lies away from Mecca, the direction in which the militants, Sayed and Ajmal, are all praying. I watch them from afar, sitting on their heels. Mine have grown sore, unaccustomed as I am to this position. They insisted that I sit this way right from the start, and not, as they repeat with disdain, “western style.” I will grow so used to this position that even two days after my liberation I will not be able to assume others without pain.
They pray as a group, one beside the other, including my two collaborators, whose hands have been freed for the occasion. Each man kneels on his own carefully laid mat, and calmly performs the same gestures to a rhythm set down by a boy who, because of his seniority, his religious knowledge and acquired merit, officiates over the rite, alone, in front of the group.
Tuesday, March 6. The pickup is ready. The cargo bed is full of covers. The weapons are already in place. Ten minutes after having been woken, time enough to gulp down some tea and a few pieces of bread, and we’re on our way. They tell me to get down, remain wrapped in my shawl, hidden under the dirty, dusty covers. I vanish beneath that mountain of wool, plastic and cotton and immediately begin to have trouble breathing. There’s no air. With my hands, which, fortunately, are tied in front of my body today and not behind my back, I open a small spy hole through which a little air and light enter. I have been told we have to cross a river on a small barge and that nobody, including the ferryman, must see me. So I obey their orders and stay hidden beneath the covers.
Ajmal and Sayed, on the other hand, don’t need to hide. Only their hands, tied with a length of fabric, are hidden beneath the covers. They’re Afghans. They can be swapped for Taliban soldiers currently in jail. Our captors watch them like hawks. If they make some sign, try to send some kind of signal, even the smallest, with their eyes, we may be killed on the spot. It’d be a trifling thing for the mujahedeen and nobody, certainly not the inhabitants of the village, would dare to say a thing.
Hidden under the mountain of covers I hear the Toyota maneuvering onto a barge. The motor of the little iron ferry starts, accelerates, chugs, and we begin the river crossing, twisting and rocking in the strong current. I pray to God that we make it to the other side. With my hands tied I’d never manage to swim to safety if we end up in the water. But after a few minutes we reach the shore.
The pickup roars to life again, and starts back on its mad race. To the south, further and further south, towards a second and then a third stretch of desert. The sky is blue, the sun has risen on my left. The Taliban push aside the covers and tell me that I can come out, thanking me for having remained hidden and quiet. One at a time, they pull out a small round silver container with engravings on the lid, and figures and symbols in Pashto. Each is full of a green powder. They arrange a line of the powder on the palms of their hands and then lick it up with their tongues. It is something they repeat every couple of hours.
I imagine it’s some kind of drug. When I ask them about it, the boys laugh and offer me some to try. It doesn’t strike me as such a good idea. Ajmal explains that it is a kind of hallucinogenic tobacco; you put it in your mouth and wait for your natural laboratory to call forth the effect. He also tells me it’s a very strong stimulant. “They’re used to it,” he warns me. “If you use it, the effects might not be so good.” I ask, needling them slightly, whether their religion allows such a thing, given that they don’t drink, don’t listen to music, don’t engage in sex, have never read anything except the Qur’an, and distrust anything that smacks of the depraved and impure west. They explain that there are no prohibitions concerning drugs, and that it’s not even a drug, really.
Aleef, the Taliban with whom I exchange a few words of English every so often, replies, needling me and provoking me in return: “You smoke cigarettes, we eat tobacco.” I suggest he smoke a cigarette, that he try something new. He tells me it’s impossible. It isn’t the Qur’an that forbids smoking but the commander in chief, Mullah Omar, “Amir ul-Momineen.” He says this seriously, without the hint of a smile, which would be seen as showing a lack of respect for the supreme leader. He explains that Omar issued a special fatwa after consulting with the other ten members of the Supreme Shura. In that moment, whoever had been a smoker was no longer a smoker.
Indeed, in the fifteen days we spent together, I never saw one of them with a cigarette in his mouth.
The pickup flies over the desert dunes. We tear along old tracks hidden by the shifting sands and dotted with small sharp rocks of various colors: yellow, purple, light blue, black. We drive over countless
small hills stretching all the way to the horizon. After a couple of hours we see the outline of two mountains rising up out of an immense plain populated only by herds of camels and mules, and flocks of small black and brown lambs with thick wool. Many are wild, but when I look more carefully I can make out the shape of a small boy shepherding others with a stick. We are hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town. Yet there he is, alone, perhaps with nothing more than a flask of water, accustomed to wandering for days and days in the middle of this desolate land.
The landscape is devastatingly beautiful. Dunes rise out of the desert floor like ocean waves during a storm, their crests sculpted by the wind. As far as the eye can see, a succession of rolling hills, marshes, small lakes, and palm trees. A tiny black dot interrupts the horizon. It is moving away from us, trailed by a cloud of dust. One of the Taliban kneels, stares long and hard at the horizon, looks around, and then turns back to that suspicious presence. He yells something, the others reply and pick up their weapons. They pull him down and shake him up a little. One at a time, they, too, straighten up and stare at the black dot for a while.
Days of Fear Page 6