‘You are in serious trouble,’ he told me. ‘You have not told us the truth about your life. You did not tell us about your daughter. Her name is Daisy. There are lots of things you have not told the Taliban and this is very bad news for you.
‘I want to help you but if you do not tell me the truth then I cannot help you. You refuse to talk about the two men who were arrested with you. Well, they are being beaten and tortured.’
I felt sick. I couldn’t trust Hamid and I certainly was not going to take him into my confidence. However, I remember saying, ‘You never asked me if I had a daughter. I said I was single and you moved straight down the form. I no longer live with Daisy’s father. Don’t you understand the concept of separation in this country?’
I explained further. ‘Her father is Palestinian. He is a Sunni Muslim and his name is Abu Hakim or Daoud Zaaroura. Have a look in your history books and you will find what a great warrior he was.’
I was unashamedly using his name to get me out of this hole. I felt sure that would secure my release, but he didn’t even look surprised when I mentioned David’s name. Something was going on and I didn’t know what. He asked me again about the two men and repeated that they were being beaten and tortured.
‘Do what you want with them,’ I said. ‘They’re nothing to me. If you get excitement from torturing innocent people, so be it. I shall have a good story to write when I get out. Tell that one to your Taliban friends.’
He looked shocked and disappeared. I was left alone for the rest of the day, and that was even worse, in some ways, than being interrogated. Maybe I had gone too far and now I was going to be hurt. It was like playing a game of snakes and ladders and, just as I felt I’d won one point, I went crashing down on another.
In the entry for 2 October, my diary begins to reveal the depth of my despair:
It is now 7 p.m. and I have been virtually ignored all day. There’s growing tension in the air and I think I must be doomed. No one can look me in the face when they come to bring and take back the food. I am confused, and very, very scared.
Something is in the air. It’s becoming quite obvious to me now that I am not going home. I wonder if they are going to kill me. I have to do something because I am now becoming very paranoid. There’s an old, rusty razor blade in the bathroom. Maybe I should take it and hide it in my soap. If I am going to die I want to decide on the method myself. But how can they be so nice to me if they are going to kill me? Where are Abdullah and Hamid?
I’ve just slipped out of my room and knocked on the director’s door opposite. I’ve woken up a grumpy man who dismissed me with a look of contempt and a wave of the hand. I’ve never seen him before but he gives me the creeps. I’ve told him I need to speak with the director.
What a night it has been. After I went to the director’s room Abdullah and Hamid came rushing in to see me saying they’d heard I was requesting a doctor. Their faces were full of concern and I said I was OK but I needed to talk to the director, not the doctor. I told Hamid that it had become obvious to me that I was not going to leave Afghanistan and that I needed a lawyer to sort out my final will and testament.
He looked at me strangely and then left the room. Half an hour later the director came in to see me with Hamid and asked me what I wanted.
I told him about the lawyer request and said it was a basic human right and he could not refuse me.
I choke every time I reach that passage. It’s because of the razor blade. I saw it on the side of the bath every day, but this day I took it. It was a Pakistani-made blade with the trademark name of Vejay. I felt I had to take it because it would give me an extra bit of control and it would give me the decision over if and when to take my life.
I am not a suicidal person but I think I would rather bleed to death than be stoned to death or tortured beyond pain. This probably sounds ridiculous now, in the cold light of day, now that I am home and safe. But look back a moment to 11 September. It is probably an unfair comparison to make, but some office workers at the World Trade Center preferred to leap to their deaths rather than be burned in that hell that had visited them so suddenly out of the blue sky. I also needed a choice, and so slipped the Vejay blade into the tablet of Turkish soap they had provided on my first day.
The next day was another roller-coaster day. It had started very well, when I was given new clothes. I had worn the orange dress and trousers day and night for nearly seven days, so you can imagine how sweaty and smelly I was. Forgetting cultural and religious differences, I gave Abdullah a big hug when he handed over the clothes, and he smiled, but looked a bit surprised at such an immodest gesture. One of the outfits was a brown and cream cotton dress with brown trousers, but the other seemed extremely elaborate for normal prison wear. I suspected it was a wedding dress – and my suspicions were to be confirmed later.
That day was also sad for me because it was Daisy’s ninth birthday. I sang to her, closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around myself and concentrated hard, trying to give her a hug. I could see her very well in my mind but I began to wonder whether I would ever touch her again. I also wondered how much she would remember of me, and whether she would ever recall our last conversation.
I had told her that whenever she needed me she just had to shut her eyes and I would be there for her mentally. The memory made me feel weepy and very sad, because nothing was really in my control – only negative and potentially damaging things such as the razor blade and the hunger strike. Something happened then that was best described in my diary entry for 3 October:
Absent-mindedly, I start fidgeting with a string of beads on my new cream and brown outfit bought for me by my captors. Suddenly I have a piece of string and three little baubles in my hand. I look down and I am reminded of the Holy Trinity – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. I’m not sure what prompts me but I say the Lord’s Prayer and ask for help.
Suddenly I feel all the fear slowly drain from my body and I feel incredibly strong. It is a deeply spiritual moment, although those who don’t know me will probably roll their eyes heavenwards.
From that moment on I decide I am going to be the prisoner from hell and withdraw all cooperation and refuse to answer any more questions. At 7 p.m. I am told I am going home tomorrow and I will be flying out with a group of Christians who have previously been charged with trying to convert Muslims.
My spirits lift and I thank God for answering my prayer.
The following day I was up at 5.30 a.m. I know because Hamid had lent me his watch. I was really excited and I couldn’t believe God had answered my prayers so swiftly. I had felt a little guilty because I’d messed up the ending of the Lord’s Prayer and couldn’t remember the ‘deliver us from evil’ bit, which should have had a special significance bearing in mind my dire circumstances.
Hamid and Abdullah came in and gleefully showed me a Pashtun newspaper, which I referred to as the Taliban Bugle. There, on the front page, were two pictures of me. One was the head shot that the Sunday Express had sent to the world’s media, and another one was of me standing in front of that NO FOREIGNERS BEYOND THIS POINT sign at the head of the Khyber Pass. Apparently, one of the Taliban’s rules is that no photos of women should appear in newspapers or books. Obviously I was the exception to that rule.
‘Everyone knows who you are. You are famous. Your face is everywhere in Jalalabad,’ said Hamid. I asked him what the headline said and he began laughing.
‘It says, “Yvonne Ridley is very happy”,’ he grinned. I remember having to laugh because it was so funny and obviously the doctor or someone speaking to the doctor about my blood pressure had leaked the story to the press. Perhaps the Taliban thought a story about me being ‘very happy’ with their hospitality would generate some positive local publicity – who knows!
Abdullah said he would drive me up to Kabul Airport and I asked Hamid if was joining us, but he said not. I agreed to eat a piece of bread, which made my two unlikely friends happy, and I bundled my po
ssessions into a plastic bag. As I got up to go, Hamid looked down at my feet and realised I had no shoes.
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not problem,’ I said. But he went out, and I realised that my journey to the airport was going to be delayed until they found a pair of shoes for me to wear. He came back and took an imprint of my foot and went away for about half an hour. The wait was excruciating and I began to become nervous.
The intelligence people had played quite a few mental games with me and had kept telling me I was going home and then had tricked me. They’d said I was a spy, which I knew would mean the death penalty, no questions asked. They had a file on me but they would not hand it over.
In the end I said they obviously had nothing on me and that I was a journalist. Even they had said that Express Newspapers had sent a ‘high director’ to negotiate my release. It all flurried around in my mind at the time but – what the hell! – I was convinced I was going home.
Hamid returned with a pair of flip-flop sandals with a logo on saying ‘London’. I smiled and told him they fitted perfectly and he said, ‘Congratulations!’ He then told me to sit down and wait, and once again he left the room.
What happened next made my blood run cold and is best explained in my diary entry:
Hamid knocked on the door and said someone had come to see me. I think he said he was a Maulana [someone who is learned in Persian or Arabic] and I could tell by the expression on his face all was not well. A tall, slender cleric with flawless skin and narrow brown eyes entered the room and, counting his worry beads in a calculated fashion, he asked me what was my religion and what did I think of Islam. My mouth went dry as I told him I was a Christian but he wanted to know what sort and so I replied Protestant.
He smiled in such a sinister way I felt I was being led into a trap. I then continued that I thought Islam was a fascinating religion and admired the way its followers held such great passions and belief. I added that I would make it my business to look into the religion further on my return to London. Another smile followed and then he asked me if I wanted to convert then and there.
I panicked thinking if I said ‘yes’ he would think I was fickle and order that I be stoned. On the other hand I could risk execution just by saying ‘no’. I thanked him for the offer but said I could not make such an important life-changing decision while I was in such turmoil and confusion. I thanked him again and waited for his next question. He responded with another smile and got up and left.
I was shaking when Hamid returned and I asked him if everything was OK. He said to me very abruptly that I could go, and ordered me to put on the burka before I left. The order brought tears to my eyes as I begged him not to make me wear it. He looked for guidance from one of the intelligence officials, who gave a nod.
As I walked past Hamid he threw a sheet at me and shouted, ‘Put that on, then. Cover yourself.’ I could not understand why he was being so nasty towards me but I didn’t care anyway, because I was going home.
To get to the pickup truck there was a motley guard of honour consisting of about forty Talibs. Most of them smiled and I smiled back at all of them as I walked by. I then noticed the two men who had been arrested with me and studiously ignored them. I felt bad. They were clamped in irons and the little girl was sitting in the back, too.
I stepped up and into the front seat of the pickup truck with two armed Taliban guards and the scholastic-looking intelligence officer. It was a deeply emotional moment but I managed to hold back my tears. Abdullah even spoke his first English when he shouted, ‘Goodbye!’ I wondered if he knew English all along. I looked back at the ‘house of tricks’, as I called it, and as we pulled away the tears freely flowed down my cheeks.
‘Mam,’ I said to myself, ‘I’m coming home.’
The journey to Kabul was hellish and took more than six hours. I saw beautiful green planes, rivers and reservoirs, dramatic landscapes, magnificent mountains and literally hundreds of foxholes and caves. I believed that President Bush’s threat to ‘smoke them out’ was highly unrealistic.
The landscape changed to barren wastelands of rubble and scorched earth. In parts it looked like that last place on God’s earth. We stopped several times so the men could pray and carry out their toilet needs. No one bothered to ask if I needed a break, and once again I realised that women in Afghanistan are not even considered. ‘I obviously don’t need to pee because it’s not yet dusk,’ I said to myself.
I was allowed to smoke and, although the Afghan cigarettes they had bought me were really strong, I was grateful. As with most nicotine addicts, it was a case of ‘any port in a storm’ and they did the job. During the journey the driver stopped and bought a bundle of sugar cane and some pomegranates.
The sugar cane was refreshing but was soon gone. Then one of the Talibs peeled the fruit and emptied the juicy bits into a large paper bag. I remembered how, when I was a child, Mum used to give us a pin and half a pomegranate and it would keep us occupied for hours, picking out and eating the little juice-filled gems. But this was a far more satisfactory way of eating the fruit. When I told them the name ‘pomegranate’ they burst out laughing. I didn’t think it that funny and wondered where the name originated. The driver offered me some chewing gum, which I gladly accepted.
So there I was smoking my fags and chewing gum – my mum would have been horrified. Halfway through the journey the driver stuck his gum on the dash and left it there in the baking heat while he crammed his mouth full of the pomegranate fruit. About half an hour later he popped the gum back in his mouth but it had become so sticky that part of it wrapped around the steering wheel before it reached his lips and the trail stuck to his beard. Within two minutes I was roaring with laughter at this spectacle because he had the stuff all over the place – on his hands, hair, beard, everywhere.
He stopped the vehicle, cursing deeply, and everyone else laughed. I gave him the sheet that Hamid had thrown at me and let him use it. After all, I had no more use for it because I was going home – or so I thought.
We continued our journey on the road to Kabul after the chewing-gum incident, but each metre brought pain and discomfort because we were driving through rubble, with deep, spine-jarring potholes caused by past bombings and sheer neglect. Children sat by the dusty roadside and tried to fill in the potholes with their bare hands and trowels in the hope of earning a few Afghani notes. Where the kids came from or where they lived was not clear.
We passed several villages of single-storey, mud-lined bricks. The scenes reminded me of one of those illustrated in the children’s bible that was given to me when I was ten. Other villages were completely empty and looked half bombed and deserted from previous ages. I felt as though I were travelling back in time and I remembered a companion once telling me that the Taliban’s aim was to create a country reminiscent of when Allah walked the earth.
Their brutal and ruthless drive to create the ‘perfect Muslim state’ seemed like madness to someone like me, who was brought up with television, telephones, running hot and cold water, music, dancing and singing.
About an hour into our journey the vehicle stopped and one of the soldiers got out and unclamped Jan, who then sat in the back next to the scholastic-looking intelligence officer. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry. You will get a fair trial.’
I turned around and spat, ‘I don’t know who you are and I wish you would leave me alone.’ Minutes later, from the corner of my eye I saw the officer nudge Jan and he tapped me on the shoulder again: ‘How is your daughter? Do you have a picture you keep of her?’
I had shown Jan a picture of Daisy but that was left with all my valuables with Pasha. Sensing a trick I replied, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now please leave me alone.’
We continued the journey in silence and then Jan was nudged again after some furtive whispering. ‘You must not be afraid. We are all your friends.’
That was it. I threw my hands up and said, ‘Stop this bloody tru
ck. I’ll bloody well walk to Kabul on my own if I have to.’
After half an hour they stopped the truck and Jan was returned to the back and clamped in irons again. I felt bad but we had a story to stick to and the only way I could move on was by maintaining that story. For all I knew they might have confessed to everything, but at the same time I could not be sure.
Afghanistan is like its people, I reflected, as we passed more dramatic landscapes. It is a country of contrasts and its people too swing from being generous and kind one minute to being hard and brutal the next.
By the time we reached Kabul it was evening and I could hardly distinguish anything. It certainly was not like a capital city. I was looking hard for the airport and we swung into a grand-looking building, which turned out to be some sort of government structure. The intelligence officer went inside. He returned after about ten minutes and said something to the driver.
We travelled about another five minutes and then entered a fortress-type building, which turned out to be the terrorist wing of Kabul Prison. There were many low points during my time with the Taliban and this was one of the most grim, but the gallows humour was, as ever, present.
I was taken through this rickety gate and into a courtyard. It was dark and I was led down a grimy corridor leading into a large – but just as bleak – corridor. In front of me was a metal door about a metre and a half (or roughly 5 foot 4 inches) high and this man wearing a black turban, who turned out to be the prison governor, pushed it open.
I peered inside out of curiosity and there were two Afghan women sitting down cross-legged on the floor with a screaming, undernourished-looking child. I looked back at the governor and the intelligence officer, and they motioned me to go in. I looked aghast and unfurled the most abusive tongue-lashing I’d dished out so far.
In the Hands of the Taliban Page 14