Under an Afghan Sky (11 page)

“As-Salaam Alaikum, Mellissa.” It was Shafirgullah. He had come down with two plastic bags.

“Shafirgullah, salaam,” I said.

“Hello, Mellissa. How are you?” Khalid was behind him and brushing off the dust from his black kameez.

“Khalid,” I said. “You came back.”

“I am back. I tell you I come. How are you?”

“I would be better if I was going to Kabul.”

“You will go.” He crawled back up to the entrance of the hole and handed Shafirgullah several things, including a kerosene lamp, a small bottle of kerosene, another white plastic bag, a small black pot, and a silver tin.

“Light,” he told me, pointing at the lamp. He pulled a match out of his pocket and lit the lamp. Shafirgullah was dismantling the light bulb and old battery.

“Yes, that is good,” I said. “There is no light down here.”

“How are you? I bring you food,” Shafirgullah said, pulling the covers off the black pot and silver tin. The pot was half full of what looked like a stew, and the tin was full of rice. I wasn’t sure I was hungry enough to risk eating their food, so I shook my head.

“Not hungry,” I said.

Khalid looked me in the eye and held my gaze for several seconds. “You must eat.”

“I am not hungry.”

“I bring for you. Food. It is good. You must eat.”

As if to prove to me that it was edible, he stuck a spoon in the stew and ate big chunks of meat, which I assumed must have been lamb or goat. I shook my head. “I do not want any.”

“Rice,” he said, pushing a spoon in my hand and the tin toward me. Several grains fell on my blanket. I picked them up and put them in an empty plastic bag.

“Please eat a little little,” Khalid said, digging my spoon into the rice. I truly had no appetite, but I figured white rice couldn’t
hurt. I brought a spoonful of rice to my lips and gingerly ate half of the rice that was on the spoon. It was flavoured with spices. And it didn’t taste too bad. I finished what was on the spoon and pushed the tin away from me.

“Enough,” I said. “I am not hungry.”

He sighed, frustrated, and reached into the plastic bag, pulling out a flat of Afghan bread.

“You like bread?”

I shook my head again. “Maybe later,” I said. “I am not hungry now.”

Khalid shook his head and said something in Pashto to Shafirgullah, who looked at me, ripped off a piece of bread, and held it out to me. I waved it away with my hand.

“No, thank you,” I said to him. He looked at Khalid, shrugged, and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing loudly and openly. Khalid sighed and ripped off more bread. He dipped it into the stew and within several minutes, he and Shafirgullah had finished most of the meat that was in the small pot. I was curious about the stew, so I ripped off a piece of bread and dipped a corner into the brown sauce at the bottom of the pot. It was cold and salty. I finished the piece of bread and sat back.

“I leave for you,” Khalid said, pushing the silver tin at me. “You eat. I go now.”

“Where are you going? I thought you were going to stay?”

“Shafirgullah stay. I come tomorrow.”

“No.” I realized that the only one I semi-trusted was Khalid. I did not want another repeat of what happened with Abdulrahman the night before.

“Why no?” Khalid must have read the fear in my voice. “Did my uncle touch you?”

I shook my head but did not answer.

“He touch you.”

“I was afraid of him,” I said quietly.

“You afraid from him,” Khalid repeated. I nodded.

“He stole from me. My bracelet and my ring.”

Shafirgullah looked at us, and Khalid put his hands on his head, translating our exchange for him. The two Afghans spoke in Pashto for a while. They seemed upset and angry, and Khalid sighed heavily several times. They were both shaking their heads and rubbing their temples with their hands.

Someone above us said something in Pashto. Khalid responded in kind, and soon we were joined by a third man I did not remember seeing before. He was wearing a white kameez and matching baggy pants. His head was wrapped in a white kaffiyeh, and I could see that he had a lazy left eye. The three Afghans sat in a circle next to me, speaking softly to one another, sometimes rubbing their heads with their hands, and often glancing furtively in my direction. I sat with my chin resting on my knees and my arms wrapped around my legs, wishing I could understand Pashto, since they were clearly discussing my situation.

After a few minutes, the third man left and Khalid and Shafirgullah turned to me.

“Mellissa,” Khalid said, “I stay tonight if you want, but I not stay all the nights. Shafirgullah stay tomorrow. Or he stay tonight and I stay tomorrow.”

“Why can’t you just leave me here on my own?” I asked. “Why does someone have to stay all the time?”

“My father say,” he answered. “You are girl. If you not a girl, you stay alone. You are man, you stay alone. We come only to bring food.”

“I can stay alone,” I said. I would rather be alone than stuck in a hole with a disgusting man like Abdulrahman. It was a small space anyway—barely enough room for one.

Khalid shook his head. “You no stay alone. Shafirgullah stay tonight. He no hurt you,” he said, trying to reassure me. He looked over at his friend, and Shafirgullah nodded and smiled at me. “You no afraid from Shafirgullah. He no touch you. You are my sister. Okay, Mellissa? You my sister. We no touch you. You no afraid from us.”

Shafirgullah nodded again and smiled as if also to reassure me. I looked warily at both of them and sighed. I didn’t have a choice.

“Okay,” I conceded. “Shafirgullah stay then.”

“He touch you, I will kill him,” Khalid said. “I kill him he touch my sister.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “When you coming back?”

“I come tomorrow or next day. We go outside maybe. For walk. You like yes?”

“Yes, I would like to be outside.”

“Okay. Everything okay, Mellissa.”

“Everything okay, Khalid. Except I want to go back to Kabul.”

“Yes, inshallah. You will go.” He took my right hand as if to shake it, but just held it for a while and examined the back of it where Shafirgullah’s knife had ruptured the skin.

“It is hurt?” he asked.

“Yes, still hurting,” I answered. This was no lie. The wound hurt, though I had no feeling around the base of my middle and index fingers.

“Tsk,” he said, looking at his friend.

“I sorry,” Shafirgullah said, probably using two of the few English words he knew. “I sorry, Mellissa.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s no longer bleeding.”

Khalid translated for him and Shafirgullah nodded. The two men spoke in Pashto quickly and then Khalid got up.

“I go now,” he said. He was on his way out when he turned around. “My brother—Zahir—he touch you?”

“No,” I replied. “Zahir was very nice.” Khalid seemed pleased to hear this and nodded.

“Yes. Zahir good. Abdulrahman is bad man,” he repeated. He must have said the same thing in Pashto because Shafirgullah shook his head and echoed him, “Abdulrahman bad. Bad, bad, bad.”

“Abdulrahman no come anymore,” Khalid told me.

“You promise,” I said.

“Yes, he no come again.”

“Okay.”

“I go now, Mellissa. I see you tomorrow or next day.”

“Okay.”

“What else I bring? What you want? You are cold?” I said I was, and he promised to bring me another blanket. After saying a few words to Shafirgullah in Pashto, he crawled up the tunnel.

Shafirgullah reached for the wooden door and took his kaffiyeh off, using it to seal the edges. We both covered our faces as dirt and dust filled the hole. I could hear footsteps fading into the distance over our heads.

Dearest M,

I just looked at my watch and it’s after four o’clock already, which means we’ll soon be heading into darkness again and your fifth night with those bastards. I have a vision of you chained up to a wall and it scares the hell out of me. Between all the anxiety and the phone calls, the day passes very slowly.

It’s now 10:15 p.m., darling, and I’m going to bed feeling distraught and grumpy. I’m having a lot of trouble getting through the nights. We went down to the bar before dinner—remember it?—and had a beer, but I couldn’t stay. It was too painful being there without you. The place has been given a fresh coat of paint, but it will never, ever be the same.

Shafirgullah spent the night teaching me how to say various words in Pashto, which helped to pass the long hours. I’d learned how to count to ten, and the words for door, ceiling, blanket, hands, eyes, nose—and most other body parts we could point at. By the time he blew out the kerosene lamp, I could see from the alarm clock that it was almost midnight.

Shafirgullah slept soundly. I could hear snoring before too long, and once again, I was in the darkness alone. It was hard to get comfortable. The thin blanket that covered the dirt floor couldn’t stop the hard ground from pushing into my back. Every way I shifted it felt like a piece of rock was pressing against some part of my body. I could hear Shafirgullah’s steady rumbling.
If only I could sleep half as well as my captors,
I thought,
then maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to pass the time.

I’ve never really had trouble sleeping. But I usually need only about five or six hours a night. My routine at home, and even on the military base in Kandahar, with all the noise from trucks and airplanes, usually had me going to bed around midnight and getting up very early in the morning to hit the gym or go for a run, depending on the weather. I rarely had trouble falling asleep, but now, after three days of lying here wide awake, I was feeling weary. I closed my eyes and hoped I would drift off.

I clutched the rosary in my right hand.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
I figured if I just said it over and over again, I would eventually lose consciousness.

Then I heard a loud boom. And another. It sounded like rockets landing, a sound I’d heard before but one I’d never get used to. In the last few weeks, there had been several rocket attacks at KAF—Kandahar Airfield—including one that seemed so close that we dove for the floor under our desks in the work tent, and another one that prompted the military to make us wear our body armour, even helmets, while working inside. None of us in the media tents wanted to, of course. The gear is heavy and hugely uncomfortable, but we had no choice.

BOOM. BOOM.
Now it sounded very close. And then
tick, tick… tick, tick… tick, tick, tick.
Automatic gunfire, also not foreign to my ears, or to those of anyone who’s ever lived through a war or travelled with soldiers fighting one.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
And the sound of more explosions. The noise went on for about an hour, and I didn’t know what to think. I felt safe and afraid at the same time. Then the noises seemed to fade a bit, moving farther away from us. There were periods of silence, before they picked up again.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, BOOM!
Shafirgullah did not move, snoring softly.

This was simply the routine sound of night in Afghanistan. Who was shooting? And who were they shooting at? Were NATO soldiers close by? Were my kidnappers involved?

The rhythm of my prayers couldn’t put me to sleep, but the rhythm of war finally did. It was past six when I woke up. I had slept for more than four hours, which for me was a small victory. I ran the beads of my little rosary through my fingers once again, a prayer for each bead, five times around. Day three. How many more would there be?

I stood up and stretched. If I had stood on my toes, my head would have bumped the ceiling. A small beam of light again shone through the pipe. I held my leg up behind me—left leg, right hand; right leg, left hand—until I could feel the stretch in my quads. I
squatted and stood several times to try to exercise the muscles in legs that were used to getting a workout every morning. I kicked my right leg out to the side in the first of a set of side tae kwon do kicks, which I had learned years ago when working on getting my brown belt. Then the left leg. Then a few roundhouse kicks with my right, and then again with the left.

Finally, I sat down. It was almost seven, and I had managed to distract myself for an hour. Shafirgullah was still sleeping. He had stirred while I was doing my exercises but was now a snoring lump on the other side of the room. I stared at him for a while, wondering what would happen if I nailed the side of his head with one of my roundhouse kicks. I’d certainly knock him out. Perhaps I could take my scarf and tie it around his neck, cutting off the flow of oxygen and choking him to death. The idea of killing someone was a strange one. I wondered if I could. After all, people do it all the time, especially in this part of the world, where life and death are connected by barely a thread, where the value of a human life is often measured in afghanis and dollars.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to kill someone with my bare hands. It was difficult. There was a part of me that was tempted to, but I don’t think I possessed either the courage or the anger to actually do it. Besides, I’d strangle him, and then what? Would I be able to climb out of the hole on my own? I knew what was covering it. Dirt, and a board of some sort, and maybe a rock. But what if someone came by? What if someone was watching? Would he then shoot me for trying to escape? And what would happen if I couldn’t get out? Khalid and his gang would come back by nightfall and they would find me alone, with Shafirgullah’s dead body.

I realized that I was making a fist with my left hand, and the cross on the rosary was digging into my palm, a gentle reminder,
perhaps, that I was entertaining some very un-Christian thoughts. I smiled at the absurdity of it, pressed the cross to my lips, and started to pray again.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven…

Then, instead of moving on to the first Hail Mary, I kept my fingers on the crucifix, and said the Lord’s Prayer again, this time stopping at
“as we forgive those who trespass against us, and deliver us from evil.”
One moment I wanted to kill, and the next I was thinking about forgiveness and my own desperation.
Please, Lord,
I begged,
I forgive these kidnappers. They’re only doing what they’ve been told. But please deliver me from this. Please deliver me home to the people who are waiting for me. They must be so worried, Lord. Please.