Days of Fear

by Daniele Mastrogiacomo

  Ajmal and I remain immobile, refusing to believe his words. We fear being deluded once more, for we can no longer believe in anything or anybody. We no longer trust our own shadows. The word “freedom” is no longer part of our vocabulary. We have eliminated it as a form of self-preservation.

  But it’s true. They release us. The mujahedeen that have held us prisoner for the past seven days burst into our cell and send up an excited, contented cry. They’re happy, radiant, they congratulate us, shake our hands, hug us. We stand there like blocks of stone, not reacting to these demonstrations of affection. We consider them part of a fresh trap, theatrical gestures to which our imprisonment has made us accustomed. We reject them entirely. But the Taliban insist: they take a large stone from the garden, place it beneath the padlocks on Ajmal’s chains. They start hitting them with other stones and awls. Two of them work on the locks. Then they’re joined by a third. A fourth and more experienced man offers advice and finally picks up the tools himself and, more methodically and with greater precision than his fellows, he continues striking the padlocks for almost half an hour. The padlocks must be broken, they can’t be opened with the keys: the group that captured us near Lashkar Gah lost them somewhere in the middle of the desert.

  I look at Haji Lalai. He’s on the telephone again. I ask him to be clear and sincere with us. “You’re free,” he repeats, looking me straight in the eyes. Finally the large padlocks on Ajmal’s ankles break open, and, not long after that, my rusty padlocks, smaller but full of dust and earth, are busted open. For the first time in two weeks I can actually walk, take long strides, bend my legs, open them. I can even run—I had almost forgotten I was ever capable of doing so.

  I run around in the middle of the garden dragging Ajmal with me, forcing him, yet again, to get a bit of exercise with me. He resists at first, as he always has, but then goes along with it and finally I see him smile. His grin gets wider and wider until he begins to laugh and to cry. Tears, rivers of joy, roll down his cheeks into his beard, onto his shirt and chest. We unite in a long embrace. We’re free! They let us wash and change our shirts. Mine is still dirty with the blood I lost after they struck me with the Kalashnikov. Now, the Taliban want to show the world that they treat their prisoners well.

  Haji Lalai is in a hurry. He looks at his watch and says, “Let’s go.” Two mujahedeen that I have never seen before accompany me to the exit and put me into a Toyota Corolla station wagon. Haji Lalai himself is at the wheel. Beside him is his lieutenant, Ali Ahmad. They put the chains back on my wrists: a precautionary measure, they explain. We’re in the final stages of the kidnapping, and the smallest hitch could send the whole thing up in smoke.

  I turn towards the house as Ajmal emerges. He makes a gesture of victory: he raises his arms high over his head, his hands still chained. I will repeat this same gesture when we land at Ciampino before the crowd of colleagues and officials who will be there to welcome me. It is a public tribute, a gesture of immense joy at having won the battle that we waged over two weeks of terrible imprisonment, and a grateful acknowledgement of all those who did not give up on us.

  Haji Lalai drives us through poppy fields, across bridges and past intersections. We’re heading for Helmand River and I feel anxiety mounting within me. My hands are tied, there are two mujahedeen, one on either side, blocking my exit. I fear that our liberation has been staged, that we’ve been lied to yet again. I don’t know who to trust, where and how the exchange will happen. Nobody tells me anything. Only Luthar, who has appeared out of nowhere, confirms that I will soon be free. He has his video camera in his hand and he carefully records everything: our exit from the farmhouse, the brief journey, the caravan of vehicles hurtling through poppy fields. The whole thing is under the expert direction of Haji Lalai.

  We stop several times: in front of a cluster of small bodegas that look like places where some kind of food is prepared and perhaps sold; near a house full of Taliban, armed to the teeth and awaiting orders. The atmosphere is electric. Everyone’s nerves are on edge. They are continually in contact via two-way radio—no one uses the telephones anymore.

  We’re still heading towards the river and we’ve entered the same tract of desert where our driver was executed. Panic stiffens my muscles and I feel as if I’m in a straightjacket. There are all the ingredients for another trap: the scene is set, the Taliban journalist has his video camera, the soldiers are armed, their faces covered with shawls and turbans. That barbaric murder, preceded by just such a scene, occurred only three days ago and it could happen again now. The death sentence for acts of espionage has been handed down; it just needs to be executed. It is not a remote hypothesis, rather, something concrete that could happen from one moment to the next.

  The convoy stops a few meters from the riverbank. The leaders of the group get out of the car and sit down beneath a small cluster of palm trees. They watch the horizon through binoculars. They speak on their two-ways and wait for answers. The wait lasts at least two hours.

  Then a signal arrives. They get back in the vehicles and we begin moving again, but back in the direction we came from. We trace a long wide arc and return to the banks of the river Helmand at another point, about three hundred meters away from the site of Sayed Agha’s execution. The Corolla heads straight for the river and stops in front of an iron barge.

  On the other side of the river there are dozens of men. Behind me forms a long, compact phalanx of armed men. They run to join us, coming out of nowhere, pulling out rifles, rocket launchers, and large-gauge machine guns. I am in the middle, feeling, even now—now more than ever—like vulnerable prey. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I crouch down on my heels behind the barge.

  I’m afraid that they might start shooting. I ask, my voice little more than a whisper, “Who are all those people on the other side of the river?” The commandant replies in English. Finally. He speaks it perfectly. He lied to me to the very end. “Friends, they’re friends,” he says. I don’t trust him. “They’re soldiers, but whose? Afghan? Italian? British? They won’t start shooting, will they?” Haji Lalai reassures me, but his men are getting more and more agitated, and he knows it. They’re moving too close to the riverbank. They want nothing more than to shoot, to fight, but there’s nothing against which they can hurl their accumulated rage. “Stay back and don’t fire,” says Haji Lalai. The soldiers obey. They stop dead in their tracks. They oversee the process. From a distance.

  We board the barge. First two, then three Taliban board with me, then more, until the iron barge is full with about ten Taliban. It twists to one side—at that point in the river the current is strong. The barge is hand-operated; it’s necessary to pull a cable that connects one side of the river to the other. A few minutes pass during which many hands grasp the vibrating, shuddering cable, during which I remain seated at on the floor of the barge. They finally take the chains from my wrists. They tell me to keep my turban on, to keep my wound, which is still dressed in band-aids, covered.

  The minute we touch the other shore they pile out of the barge. There is rejoicing, a tangle of embraces, many smiles, loud greetings. It is completely chaotic: they touch me, they hug me, they bounce me from one to the other.

  I’m free. I’m really free. I smile and think of Ajmal. I can picture him somewhere in the midst of this desert, unchained and ready to leave for Kabul. “I know,” he told me during the few confused minutes prior to our departures. “They will arrest me, they’ll put me in jail. The Afghan police will want to interrogate me. It’s logical enough. But I prefer that kind of prison: my father can visit me every day. I will feel protected, safe.”

  Somebody grabs me by the shoulders. I turn. A voice whispers, “Welcome back. You’re safe now.” The leaders, the soldiers, everyone, let go with bursts of machine-gun fire and blasts from their Kalashnikovs. They are celebrating a victory. I jump with every shot. My nerves are shattered. I collapse before even the slightest form of violence. I’ve seen too much of it. I can’
t stand it anymore.

  Haji Lalai, the commandant, pulls me aside for the last time. He smiles with that angelic look of his and whispers in my ear: “You are a lucky man.” He repeats what the man who orchestrated our abduction told me two nights ago: “Remember, you were saved by Mullah Omar himself. He decided not to cut your throat.” Then, calmly, almost as if he were saying farewell and good luck, he adds, “God willing, we will see one another in Paradise.”

  THE MEDIATOR

  The Mediator, Rahmatullah Hanefi, director of the Emergency-run hospital in Lashkar Gah, shakes me: “Let’s go. You’d better get in the car right now.” He has been standing at a distance all this while. Nobody has greeted him or embraced him. We leave, with a car in front of us and a jeep behind us, both carrying our guarantors: four tribal leaders who will escort us along the road back. Three hundred kilometers of desert, dunes, rises and depressions, small lakes. It’s a difficult journey. The atmosphere is tense. We are still in hostile territory.

  The mediator watches me in the rearview mirror. He sees my tears, watches my sobs, he reaches back and takes my hand in his. “I didn’t want to come,” he says. “I’m risking my life and that of my family. I did it because Gino Strada asked me to. He’s waiting for you.”

  Slowly, I begin to understand. My eyes full of tears, I ask: “Emergency?” Rahmatullah nods and smiles. He pulls out an ID. “I’m from Emergency. Check it. Stay calm, you’re safe now.” Then he continues: “I haven’t slept for three days and three nights. We worked hard, we didn’t stop for an instant. It was really very difficult to pull you out of that hole. An impossible endeavor, but we did it. I didn’t want to, I would never have come here, into these lands. The risks are great, and we are still running them now. But this is how we work: we’re a humanitarian organization. For us, human life holds the highest value, it represents an absolute. We cure and we save people. We saved you and Ajmal. We would have liked to do the same thing for Sayed.”

  I look around, smoke, cry. I let myself go. I chase out the nightmares, release all the anxiety, anguish and pain that accumulated over two weeks of physical and psychological torture.

  That hell is now behind me. But another authentic hell is yet to arrive. It will strike me in waves, hour after hour, as surprises, shocks, arrests, ferocious arguments, and threats arrive one after the other. And at the end of all this comes the final devastating blow: the death of my Afghan interpreter. He will be held prisoner for another fifteen days, then his throat will be cut, he will be decapitated, perhaps as part of the same ritual that befell our friend Sayed. Betray­ed by the Taliban, by himself, by someone who was playing with our lives in a game that was bigger than any of us could know.

  There’s time for the penultimate daily prayer, the one that precedes sundown. The sun is setting in the west, disappearing behind the sand hills. The sky is red and orange, long purple ribbons in the sky announce the coming of night. Rahmatullah has already laid his mat out and is facing Mecca. The tribal chiefs arrange theirs beside him. They pray in silence following a rite that I have seen many times during our captivity. I pray too, at a distance. I thank my God for the fact that I am alive; I thank him also for Ajmal’s life. I think back to my friend, I ask myself what he’s doing right now, who will accompany him to Kabul. I remember how afraid he was these last days, when euphoria at the possibility of our imminent release alternated with moments of profound distress. I always tried to avoid slipping into the well of depression. I exalted every grain of hope that came our way. We continued to hope, because hope was the only way we knew to resist.

  I ask Rahmatullah if he has any news of my friend. I speak quietly, glancing left and right warily. I still do not feel secure, we are in the middle of the desert, in Taliban territory. They could still stop us, attack us, abduct us again. The idea alone is enough to strike dread in my heart. I’m not sure I could endure anything like that. It would be another awful shock, the latest of many.

  The mediator does not reply. He gets back into the car and invites me to do the same. We’re in a hurry, the sky grows darker by the minute. Lashkar Gah is still a long way away. I look at the dunes, the large oases transformed into marshes, herds of camels drinking at their edges, and I realize that I would never have been able to leave the heart of Taliban territory alone. I am certain of it. It would have been impossible; they would have caught me immediately and probably have killed me. Even the tribal leaders have difficulty finding and following the trails that are barely visible on this carpet of stones and sand. On our left, at the edge of a long high sand dune, I can see the shapes of several armored vehicles. “English,” says Rahmatullah. “They keep their distance. They watch without intervening.”

  The landscape changes suddenly and we finally turn onto a paved road. Small villages appear here and there, men and young boys sit near the intersections and watch us pass, their looks curious and suspicious. We stop a few kilometers outside the city to say farewell to our guarantors—their work ends here. Rahmatullah is finally able to get a signal on his cell phone. He calls Emergency and asks for Gino Strada. He speaks instead with Strada’s collaborator, Gina. He explains where we are, and how long it’s going to take us to get there. His first words on the telephone are: “They released him. Daniele is in the car with me. Safe and sound.”

  I’m riding beside Rahmatullah now, on his left, in the passenger seat. The Skoda’s steering wheel is on the right. It’s a brand-new model, the seats still covered in plastic. The mediator keeps shooting looks at me. He is keeping tabs on me, afraid that I might suffer some kind of collapse, that I will not respond well to all this. He’s right: I’m struggling to understand what has happened to me, where I am, where I’m going to. I’m still inside a kind of bubble. I don’t know anything about anything. My only sensation is this feeling of being tossed from one situation to another, as if I were watching a film about myself. It is an instinctive reaction, a protective mechanism. My mind is beginning to play strange and terrible tricks on me and I’m surprised that I still manage to resist. My approach is similar to that of my mother. I have inherited these maternal genes: when faced with immense pain, intense stress, tragedies, she keeps an emotional distance from things, which protects her and saves her. She conserves her strength so that she can react like a lioness when the decisive moment arrives. She reared five children and trailed after her husband, following him to every godforsaken corner of the world.

  “Gino is waiting for you,” says Rahmatullah. “He has to talk with you. He wants to explain lots of things.” I turn to my right and my heart stops again for a fraction of a second: I recognize the collection of mud and straw houses we’re passing. It’s where they stopped us and abducted us. I point it out to the man who saved me. “Are you sure?” he asks. I look over at the houses again. Now they look like all the others. I recognize some crossroads, I think I don’t know: the landscape around here is all the same. No, I’m not sure. I ask how long until we reach Lashkar Gah and the mediator answers a dozen kilometers or so. He explains that we were abducted elsewhere, not far from here, but in another zone. Our driver, Sayed, was well-known around here, his brother Mohammed Daoud was the first to raise the alarm when Sayed did not return on March 5. Our abduction was reconstructed in detail, and this is not where it took place.

  A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

  We’re in front of the gate to the headquarters of Emergency. It opens and we enter. As I get out of the car I see Gino Strada with his whitish beard and his long hair. His eyes are bloodshot, showing the signs of many sleepless days and nights, and stress. He has, as always, a ci­garette dangling from his fingers. We run towards each other and I wrap him in a long, intense embrace. I repeat the same words over and over: “Thank you. Thank you. You saved my life. I’m alive. I can touch you.” He holds me tight and says, “It was hard, very hard.” He says he had to throw all his weight against those who were blocking the way to a successful negotiation, that he had to raise his voice; he threatened, gave in, f
ound the strength to continue. He fought for us. “I really had to struggle to make them keep the knife in its sheath,” he adds. He is lauding the efforts he and Emergency made and the re­sults they obtained. But he deserves this moment of triumph: it is a way of releasing the tension that has built up inside him. There is nothing quarrelsome or manipulative about his words.

  The telephones are ringing off the hook. The entire staff greets me. There must be twenty or more young men and wo­men: doctors, nurses, specialists, paramedics, and technicians. Slaps on the back, handshakes, hugs, warm greetings, a quick toast in front of a table covered in delicacies, the kind I dream­ed of at night in my cell. Gina, Strada’s collaborator, gives me a quick checkup. She examines the injury on my head and checks my eyes. My entire body is shaking and I can do nothing to stop the tremors. They decide to give me ten drops of some kind of sedative to calm my nerves, I’m sure, but the only thing I taste is the fresh, cool water into which the drops have been dissolved. I start smoking, a lot, too much.

  The few telephones that still work are white hot. The calls arrive one after the other without a moment’s respite and grow even more frequent as the minutes pass. I talk to many people, mostly colleagues. I know their work well and I understand what they’re going through right now: they must contact me at any cost. I first speak with the editor-in-chief of the newspaper I work for, Ezio Mauro. He says a quick hello and hands the phone to my wife, Luisella. Her voice wraps itself around my heart and squeezes it tight, then descends into my stomach, turning it inside out like a glove; from there it moves into my breast where it falls back into place like a veil coming finally to rest.