Mullah Dadullah considers himself invincible. He is arrogant, contemptuous. He sends a video to al-Jazeera and thus plays his final card. He wants to put the governments of Afghanistan and Italy in a difficult position. He wants to divide us, wound us, exasperate the relationships between our two countries. He has already lied once by not upholding his side of the agreement with Gino Strada. He makes an announcement: “Ajmal is in our hands.” And then he raises the stakes: “Karzai must free a further six prisoners.” Then comes the sentence: “If our requests are not met we will kill him.”
A chill creeps over everything and everyone.
I try to understand what might have happened. I see the final scenes of the movie frame by frame. Our liberation, the chains being broken with blows from stones and awls, our embrace, the tears that wet our stricken faces, the promise to see each other again in Kabul, Rome, London. I see his smile as he leaves in a convoy of pickups and cars, his hands raised as he waves to me and heads off in the opposite direction.
It was mere theatrics. The same things happened many times during our captivity. With Sayed, for example, when they took him away to be tortured and told us he had been freed. The celebration turns into a drama. Then there is anguish, and finally mourning. I think back to the arrest of Rahmatullah Hanefi. I now interpret it as a form of retaliation, a vendetta being played out between the twin souls of the Afghan secret services. The mediator in exchange for the nephew of a high-ranking member of the Kabul police force. The orchestrator of our abduction makes things very clear. He has uncovered what Ajmal managed to keep hidden for fifteen days, and the fact that Ajmal is related to a police officer is an aggravating factor. He is a dangerous and inconvenient witness.
I concentrate on his liberation. I work day and night, constantly on the phone to Kabul, talking with the local BBC journalists. I write, then record an appeal that I address to his captors. I mobilize local newspapers, participate in the campaign organized by La Repubblica, talk to the Afghan ambassador in Italy. But the sentence has already been handed down. The trap has become a vise that is growing tighter and tighter, inexorable and unstoppable. It is Easter, April 8, 2007. The news reaches me and strikes me brutally like a knife to the stomach. I vomit the few pieces of roasted baby goat that I have eaten with my family in celebration of a day that is sad and full of anguish as it is. Ajmal has been decapitated in some deserted stretch of land. I’ve lost a colleague with whom I shared five years of my life and two weeks of terrible imprisonment. I’ve lost a co-worker, someone with whom I spent entire evenings dreaming, fantasizing about an infinite number of projects and plans.
Two years have passed. It seems more like ten. Time mends the soul’s wounds and attenuates the pain associated with the loss of two collaborators, people who depend on you and to whom, in theatres of war, you entrust your life. This kind of relationship creates an indissoluble bond that no controversy, above all the kind that results from opportunism, can break. What remains is regret at not having been able to save them. They were unwittingly part of a game that was much, much bigger than they were.
You have the chance to reflect on what happened, calmly, coolly, free of the inevitable sense of guilt, and to reflect on how and how much things have changed. In Afghanistan, Italy, America, the world. You reflect on the ways of keeping up with world events, of being a journalist, has changed as a consequence of the increased speed of information delivery and the quantity of information delivered.
I often think about Ajmal and Sayed. I know that their families are doing well nowadays. They received support thanks to an appeal organized by Italian journalists. My interpreter’s young wife went back home and found work as a nurse. They tell me that she has big plans, and that she showed strength and dignity during the period of her mourning. Sayed’s wife, meanwhile, was able to buy a store and a house with the money collected in Italy, and she still lives in Lashkar Gah with the five children her husband left her. She is part of a great tribe that protects her and makes sure she has everything she needs. Ajmal’s brothers are scattered around the world, studying and working.
After three months in jail and the complete dismissal of all charges against him, including the accusation that he orchestrated our abduction, Rahmatullah Hanefi returned to direct the Emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah. Then he left his position and moved to Europe. The men who were released from prison in exchange for our liberty were killed in battle or were arrested again some time later. The man who did orchestrate our kidnapping, the man we were supposed to interview but who instead played with our lives in order to shift the balance of power in the Supreme Shura in his favor, Mullah Dadullah, is dead as well.
Many consider this episode merely a terrible and bloody story. I prefer to remember it as an experience that cast me down into the depths of my soul, that made me stronger, more convinced of the vital importance of many things: my relationships with loved ones, life’s small everyday moments, basic human values, my profession. To have left this story prey to the memories and phantoms that have haunted me for such a long time would have been selfish. Sayed and Ajmal would have wanted me to tell the world our incredible story. I owed it to them. It was something I promised I would do.
Two years later, I have kept my promise.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniele Mastrogiacomo has covered national and international affairs for the Italian daily La Repubblica since 1980. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in some of the world’s most dangerous places: Kabul, Tehran, Palestine, Baghdad, and Mogadishu. In 2006 he reported on the war in Lebanon between Israel and the Hezbollah. He lives in Rome.
Notes:
[1] Surgeon, author, and founder of the humanitarian aid organization Emergency [Trans.]
Days of Fear Page 17