Under an Afghan Sky (13 page)

“Why Khalid go Kabul?” I repeated. Shafirgullah responded in Pashto, speaking very quickly, and I didn’t understand. I asked him what he was saying. He spoke in Pashto again and I shook my head. He looked at me and laughed.

“It’s not funny,” I said. “I want to go home. Don’t you understand? Of course you don’t. How would you know what it feels like to be a prisoner?”

He continued talking in Pashto and laughing. It began to feel like he was mocking me, and I was getting angry.

We fell into a long silence. I was tired of this. Tired of him, and tired of being stuck in a hole. I pulled the blanket over me and turned to the wall.

“You sleep?” he asked in English.

“Yes,” I lied.

“I sleep.” The Afghan lay down, and soon I could hear deep breathing.

I was a little relieved to be left alone, and I reached for my notebook and turned up the flame on the kerosene lamp, almost daring the smoke to fill the hole.

Hi again, dear P,

I miss you so much. I am so sorry for putting you through this, and I just want to come home. I don’t know how much longer I will last here. I’m writing to you by the light of a kerosene lamp and I’m surrounded by smelly black smoke. It’s dark and dank and I’m trying very hard not to feel sorry for myself and stay positive and think about the day I get to come home.

I hope that’s soon. I figure if I’m out by the weekend, I can still catch the Kam Air flight to Kandahar and be back to pick up my stuff and we’d still be on schedule to leave KAF on Wednesday.

Please try not to worry about me. I’m okay. They’re not beating me or anything. It’s just boredom I’m fighting and the hard part is watching the clock. I’ve never known time to move so slowly. It’s funny, because we’re always on a deadline, fighting the clock. Do you remember we were just talking the other day about how time flies when we’re together, even in the dustbowl of KAF. Now it seems like time is standing still, and not when I want it to.

I noticed that the lamp was fading, and I realized that the kerosene was running low. I reached for the plastic bag, where I knew there was a bottle of it. I blew out the flame and poured some more kerosene into the base, then lit a match.

I preferred the warm glow of this lamp to the harsh fluorescent light bulb of the day before. It reminded me of the fireplace at my best friend Kelly McClughan’s house on Chesterman Beach in Tofino, on the north end of Vancouver Island. We’d come in from an afternoon of surfing, put a fire on, pour a glass of single malt, and sit in front of the fire and talk about the big wave we missed or the big wipeout—or rather, my big wipeout.

I might be an avid surfer, but I wouldn’t say I’m a good one. I just get on my board, catch a wave from time to time, and feel transported. And it’s a great escape for me, really one of the few times when I’m focused on just one thing. I’m cursed with an overactive
mind, constantly thinking about one thing or another—but usually work related, whether it’s a story or a person or something I should be doing. So to get out on the water and surf for a few hours is freedom from all of that.

I love the feeling of standing on water, propelled by nothing but the power of the waves. I think it’s maybe because I was born on an island, Hong Kong, and grew up in Vancouver, next to the ocean, that I’ve always felt at home by the sea. It’s a romantic idea anyway.

My last trip to Tofino had been the summer before—with Kelly and my friend Kas. I spent my mornings out running on the path leading into town, and the afternoons playing in the surf. It was Kas’s first trip to Tofino, a small town populated by hippie environmentalists in the 1960s and 1970s but today a bit of a resort destination, drawing tourists from all over the world to fish in its salmon-rich waters and surf in its cold white waves. Despite this, the natural beauty of the place has not changed. Tall cedars, part of the old-growth forest, line the beaches and give grey owls a place to hide. Sometimes a thick fog blankets the beach, especially in the fall, and a heavy dampness settles in. Those are the days when you curl up by the fire and lose yourself in a book.

Kas told me how much she was blown away by the beauty of Tofino. One night, we took a walk on the beach after dinner with a few friends. The sand had a phosphorescent glow in the moonlight. It was a magical, happy place, and I desperately wanted to take Paul there. In my mind I could see us walking on the beach together, bundled up in big sweaters to shield us from the cold and the wind.

I opened my eyes and saw the dark mud wall in front of me. Fuck. I was as far away from my happy place as I could ever be. The lamp was flickering and black smoke was pouring out of it. I turned the knob down, and realized there was a draft blowing into the room from one of the pipes, and it was blowing the flame
around. I stood up and stared into the pipe. I couldn’t see much, as the opening was obscured by rocks. But there was definitely a draft.

The familiar ring of the Nokia phone woke Shafirgullah from his slumber. He answered and had a short conversation with someone in Pashto, then played with the phone for a while before looking over at me again.

“You, game?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, until he took the SIM card out of the phone and then handed the phone to me.

“Game,” he said.

I scrolled through the phone and saw that it was set to Pashto or Farsi. I clicked on settings, switched it to English, then found the games icon. There was a soccer game and a game called Snake Xenzia. Shafirgullah pointed to the snake game, so I clicked on it and a screen with a big dot and a snake figure appeared. I realized that by using the phone’s arrow buttons, I could control the snake. The goal is to “eat” as many of the balls as you can without running into the snake as it grows longer.

I played the game for a while, until I realized the phone battery was running low. I didn’t want to waste the battery playing a game, especially if Khalid was maybe going to call, so I handed the phone back to Shafirgullah.

“You no game?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Maybe later.”

He put the SIM card back in the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

“You, biscuit?” he asked, reaching for the cookies. I shook my head again. He shrugged and pulled out two juice boxes and another sleeve of cookies. He opened the package and started eating, and sucking juice noisily out of the box. He held out the package to me and I took two cookies, and then a juice box. I was trying not to
drink too much because it was a pain to have to use the garbage can as a toilet, but I was quite thirsty.

“Juice good.” Shafirgullah reached for another box and drank it until the box caved in on itself. I nodded and thanked him.

The afternoon must have passed because eventually I heard footsteps up above. Someone called down to Shafirgullah and soon I could hear digging. I wasn’t sure what was happening because I didn’t think Khalid was coming, since he was in Kabul. Shafirgullah put the wooden door over the entrance and shrouded it with his blanket to protect us from the dust that was about to fill the hole. Soon I could feel cool air coming through the entrance. Shafirgullah removed his blanket, set the wooden door to the side, and scrambled up the tunnel.

Darling M,

I woke up at four o’clock and had a sense you were awake too. I wasn’t restless, but couldn’t get back to sleep. My mind was preoccupied with all kinds of crazy thoughts. What will you be wearing when they release you? Who will pick you up and where? How will they handle the media? Then I dozed for a while and had a dream about you coming home. You were wearing black and walking toward me down the dim hallway of a hotel. But it wasn’t you, it was somebody short and heavier, somebody I seemed to know. I kept shouting, “Where’s Mellissa? Where’s Mellissa?”

There was a small earth tremor around 5:30 that I’m sure you felt as well. That was my first thought! “Did Mellissa feel it?” I think I dozed off again, but it was fitful, and I finally got up around 7:30.

The first thing I do now is throw on pants and go to the kitchen for a pot of tea. They know me well, and we always smile and shake hands. There’s a young waiter named Jawad, who calls me “Mr. Paul.” The cook makes croissants and fresh bread every morning, and it makes me think of you. Everything makes me think of you. I keep telling myself I cannot lose you now, I will not lose you.

XX

I like to eavesdrop. I think it’s part of being a curious reporter, but I’m probably just a very nosy person. I remember as a kid trying to listen in on my parents’ conversations, whether they were talking between themselves, or to their friends at family gatherings. We used to have big get-togethers, with our family of six, including my grandparents, and two or three other families, friends of my parents’ from Hong Kong who had also made the move to Canada. Six or seven of us kids would play hide-and-seek through the house, while our parents drank and smoked and yakked until the wee hours of the morning.

I remember hiding in the pantry once, waiting to be found; but more to the point, I could hear the grown-ups sitting around the table in the kitchen—with drinks, of course—saying lots of things that seemed amazing to a seven-year-old. I learned a lot about what their lives were like before they moved to Canada, before they had children. They talked about the places they used to frequent as young adults in Hong Kong, their travels throughout Asia, the great adventures they had before kids came along. It was fascinating to think that my parents had a whole other life, one I couldn’t possibly imagine, before I was born and before we moved to Vancouver.

As a journalist, I rather perfected the art of eavesdropping when I was assigned as the provincial political reporter for my former network, Global Television. Our office was just below the premier’s at the legislature in Victoria, hidden behind the press theatre.
I headed up the stairs one day and overheard a conversation, loud and clear, between the premier and his press secretary about how they planned to handle a scandal that was about to hit the front pages. They had no idea I was listening.

I also learned how to stand behind politicians and their aides, just far away enough so as not to attract attention, while they were talking on their cell phones. I listened as I tapped away on my own phone to make myself look busy.

Now, I could hear voices outside the hole. The entrance to the tunnel was still unblocked. I crawled into the tunnel and strained to listen. Shafirgullah was speaking with one, maybe two other people. I think I heard three male voices in total. I knew they were smoking. I could hear the click of a lighter and then the sound of puffing on cigarettes. I heard the tones of dialing on a cell phone, and then the familiar greeting, “As-Salaam Alaikum.”

I couldn’t understand any of the conversation, since it was all in Pashto, but I assumed it was about me. What else could they all be talking about as they stood over a hole where they were holding me? I suppose they could just have been shooting the breeze about the weather, or what they had for dinner, but the conversation sounded serious and was not punctuated by laughter. So, I had to believe it was about me, and what they were going to do with me, and maybe what, if any, conversations they’d had with Paul, or the AKE person I assumed was by this time en route to Kabul.

Or maybe they were talking about my release, having realized they’d made a mistake, since I wasn’t a European who worked for a company willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for my freedom, or better still, an American whom they could keep out of a sense of moral and religious righteousness. I was a mistake, damn it! A Canadian working for a public broadcaster that had no money! And now they were wondering how they’d get me back to
Kabul before morning. Or at least that’s what I desperately hoped they were talking about.

The crinkle of a plastic bag brought me back to the harsh reality of where I was. I knew instinctively that it held more supplies for the night—and the next day. There would be no freedom tonight.

I crawled back into the room and tried to brush myself off, but looking around, I wasn’t sure why I bothered. Everything was coated in a thick film of dust. My knapsack and camera bag, my red velvet pillow, my notepad. I noticed that Shafirgullah had put his skullcap over the watering can, so at least we didn’t have to worry that our water was getting contaminated, although I wasn’t drinking water from that can anyway. I was at least glad for the fresh air coming through the opening of the shaft and down the tunnel. It also gave the black smoke from the lamp a place to escape.

I picked up the package of cigarettes from where Shafirgullah had left them, took one out, and lit it with the flame of the lamp. Then I heard footsteps, and a loud thud. Probably Shafirgullah making his way back to the hole with new supplies. But when I looked up, it was someone I didn’t recognize.

“Hello, Mellissa, I am Abdullah.”

Abdullah looked almost exactly like Shafirgullah, but he was a little bigger.

“I am brother Shafirgullah.” Of course he was. He stuck his hand out.

“Hello, Abdullah,” I said, and we shook hands, something not common between men and women in Muslim culture. I had never shook the hand of an Afghan man—except for Shokoor, who is more familiar with my Western customs.

“How are you, Mellissa?” Abdullah’s English seemed to be a little better than his brother’s.

“I am okay. I want to go to Kabul. I want to go home.”

He laughed. “Yes, yes, you go Kabul.”

When, I wanted to know.

“Soon, inshallah, soon.”

I heard another thud and then Shafirgullah’s voice in the tunnel, calling out to his brother. Abdullah turned away from me and handed him the plastic water bottle that was now full of urine, and the black garbage can. Soon, they were both returned, emptied. Then Abdullah gathered up the empty juice boxes and cookie packages, and a hunk of now-hardened Afghan bread. He put them into a plastic bag and handed it to Shafirgullah, who handed it to someone else, then crawled into the room with a fresh can of water and a bulging plastic bag.

“You, cigarette?” he asked. I had just had one, so I shook my head. He reached into the bag and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes. The brothers each lit one and puffed away, speaking in Pashto to each other. Now and then Abdullah would look over at me and smile. He was a nice-looking young man with a wide smile and good white teeth. He had dark eyes, set wider than Shafirgullah’s, which made him seem friendlier, whereas his brother’s smile could easily be seen as slightly menacing.

They spoke for a while, and then Abdullah turned to me. “Goodbye, Mellissa.” He waved. “I see you again.” He crawled up the tunnel and disappeared. Shafirgullah put the wooden door over the entrance, covered it with his blanket, and we braced ourselves for the avalanche of dirt. When it was over, we once again dusted ourselves off.

“You, biscuit?” he asked. I shook my head. He reached into the dust-covered plastic bag and pulled out a new sheet of Afghan bread and a silver pouch of juice, not in boxes this time. I peered into the bag and saw that the chocolate cookies had been replaced
mainly with the cheaper fruit-flavoured creme-filled kind. There were six pouches of juice: cherry, apple, pomegranate. I took out a pomegranate pouch. It was tart yet sweet, and cold. Shafirgullah offered me some nan-i-Afghani. I tore a corner off and chewed. I wished I had something to dip it in—some dal, or hummus, or curry, anything with a little protein and a little more flavour. I loved Afghan bread, but eating it cold and plain, I realized it was because I loved everything else that usually came with it.

A few days before I left the base, a group of us had gone into Kandahar City to arrange my flight to Kabul. Paul was there, with his wonderful cameraman, Al; and their fixer, Jojo; and Sameem, who was the CBC’s local driver and cameraman. I liked these trips to the city, since it was a chance to get off the base and talk to ordinary Afghans. And a chance to eat real food, which was always preferable to the bland stuff served in the cafeterias at the base, where we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner almost every day. I suppose it was risky, but Jojo had arranged lunch in a local restaurant where he knew we’d be safe.

The restaurant was on a main road in the centre of Kandahar City. The facade of the building looked too rundown for me to imagine that it was a place that served food. I was wearing my headscarf, as I always did on these trips, and we hustled in, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Our Afghan fixers spoke to the managers and we were led into a small room at the back of the restaurant, empty except for pillows scattered throughout. Two waiters spread a tablecloth on the floor, and we sat down against the pillows. They brought us yogurt drinks and distributed a flat of bread for each of us, along with many dishes: radishes and peppers, a spicy and saucy meat stew, and rice. The stew was served on the bread. It was so delicious—the sauce subtly flavoured and the meat tender. Any concerns I had about cleanliness or getting sick soon disappeared.

Then the lights went out and my heart stopped. What the hell was going on? Nobody said a word, but we were all thinking the same thing, conscious—as always—that we were foreigners out in a city that wasn’t safe. Just as suddenly as the lights had gone out, they came back on. I looked at Paul. He looked at me. Al continued to eat. It was just a brownout, typical in this part of the world, and especially this country, but for a few seconds, my heart had skipped a few beats.

Now, I was eating bread in virtual darkness again, except this time I had no stew to dip it in, and no friends to share it with. I felt trapped. This was not a restaurant in Kandahar. It was a cell. A hole in the ground. And I was a hostage.

I took a sip of juice and chewed on the bread. The arms of the alarm clock showed that it was just after seven. It would be another long night, and I wasn’t sure—again—how we’d pass the time.

Shafirgullah had a solution. He reached into the bottom of the plastic bag and pulled out a book. He handed it to me. It was a school textbook, probably used to teach English to young Afghans in school.

I flipped through the pages and saw they were filled with short stories, followed by questions about the stories. An example: Salim and Abdul went to the store together on a sunny morning. They wanted to buy some ice cream. Salim wanted to have chocolate and Abdul decided on strawberry. They paid the store clerk ten afghanis and left to go home.

The questions that followed were along the lines of “What did Salim and Abdul want to buy?” “What kind of ice cream did Salim buy?” “What kind of ice cream did Abdul have?” “How much did they pay the clerk?”

There were about two dozen of these exercises in the book, and I read through them all in half an hour and handed it back to
Shafirgullah. He opened it and started reading out loud, pointing at words he didn’t know how to pronounce. I was pretty sure he didn’t know most of the words, or had no idea at all what they meant. After several words, he grew frustrated and pulled another book out of the bag. It was an English–Farsi phrase book.

“This is not Pashto,” I said to Shafirgullah.

“No, Farsi,” he replied. “Me, Pashto.” I took that to mean that Pashto was his first language and that he had a limited knowledge of the other.

I was right. As he started reading phrases, he stumbled on many of the Farsi phrases, almost as much as he had stumbled on the English ones. But this was good. This was a way we could communicate.

“You are my friend,” he read from the book. I pointed to the Farsi translation, and he read it out to me. I repeated the phrase.

We went on for a while longer, reading phrases out of the book—”I am hungry.” “What is the time?” “I am angry.” “Where do you live?”

We barely noticed that the flame in the kerosene lamp was fading until Shafirgullah started to cough. The smoke from the lamp was bothering him, and he removed the wooden door to allow the fumes to escape up the shaft.

“You sleep?” he asked. I looked at the clock and saw that it was close to nine. We had whiled away three hours with the books. That was good. But I wasn’t sleepy yet, so I shook my head no.

“Cigarette?” he offered as he lit one for himself.

“Tashakor,”
I said, thanking him in Pashto. I don’t know where I got the idea that smoking would help pass the time. A cigarette takes about five or ten minutes to smoke, depending on how many drags you take of it, so it’s not as though it helps pass
that much
time. We finished and flicked our cigarette butts out to the tunnel.

“Me sleep,” Shafirgullah announced.

“Good night,” I said to him, glad to be left alone again. I picked up my notepad.

Hi darling,

I was thinking about our last meal in Kandahar City today. Do you remember the little room and the lights going out? I wish we were back there again. I almost wished today I hadn’t come to Kabul, that I had just stayed at KAF and done some stories out of the PRT and the city. But we both know why I wanted to come. This was an important story I was working on, the refugees. And it’s one I haven’t seen in the media back home. My captors are treating me well, for the most part. I’m just so tired of being here, and I feel horrible about the pain and suffering I’m causing you and everyone at home.