Under an Afghan Sky (19 page)

“But there is no war with Taliban,” Khalid replied. “Karzai bad. Afghan people no like Karzai.” This was hard to argue. Shokoor and I were to do a story on voter registration, and he had told me that many Afghans had come to see Hamid Karzai as no more than a puppet of George Bush. They were also tired of the rampant corruption in his government. His half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai—the most powerful politician in Kandahar province—had been accused of being a prominent dealer in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade, controlling much of the opium that was being produced in the south of the country. It was an allegation he had vehemently denied at a press conference I’d attended a little more
than a week before I went to Kabul. But whether it was true or not, his reputation, and that of his brother, had taken a big hit in recent years and re-election was not guaranteed.

I asked Khalid if he was going to vote next year. He shook his head and motioned with his hands as if he were holding a Kalashnikov.

“I not vote. I kill people who go vote.”

“What good would that do?” I challenged. “People should be able to go out and vote without fear of being killed.” Khalid was echoing the Taliban’s strategy the last time around. They’d threatened to blow up polling stations and intimidated hundreds of thousands of Afghans into staying away. I was pretty sure Khalid and his gang weren’t card-carrying Taliban, but it didn’t surprise me that they would subscribe to the same militant philosophies.

I studied the young Afghan closely. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

He took a cigarette out of the package and licked the end of it before lighting it. He took a few long drags, then turned to look me in the eye.

I repeated the question. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Yes, Mellissa. I kill some people. You think I am bad person?”

“Who did you kill?”

“Some people. I shoot,” he said, pointing his index finger like it was the barrel of a gun.

“Where they Afghans? Americans?”

“Americans. They shoot us.”

“Were they soldiers?”

“They not dress like soldiers, but they are.”

“How many of them were there?” I wasn’t sure if I believed him. I thought he was telling the truth about having killed before, but I didn’t believe he’d ever been in a gunfight with NATO soldiers.
I imagined he might have killed someone in the process of a robbery, or something like that, rather than in a firefight with foreign troops.

“Many. They shoot us. They kill my friend and take my other friend to Bagram. I shoot with my gun… and two fall. I shoot again. They are…” He made a motion with his hand to show they were lying flat on the ground. “They fall down. I shoot. Then my friend fall and I am go away.”

“You ran away and left your friend?”

“I had to. Or they shoot me. Or take me to Bagram. With my friend.”

“Is this the friend you promised to get freed? The friend you want them to release for me?”

He nodded. “He my good friend.”

“But you know, Khalid, that if you ask for him to be released, it will take a long time to finish my case. And we all want my case to finish as soon as possible. I have to go home. My parents are worried about me. They will get sick. It’s not fair to them. They will release your friend sometime soon, I’m sure. They released my friend Jojo, remember?” I was trying my best to reassure him that he could still get what he wanted by releasing me sooner rather than later, but even I wasn’t convinced that was true.

Khalid stroked his goatee with his hand and then spoke slowly.

“Mellissa, I want to finish your case soon. But my father! He will finish your case. You understand? A little, little?”

I nodded but told him it was very important to tell his father to finish it soon because I had to get home.

“Do you understand, Khalid?”

“Yes. I tell my father.”

Khalid took my right hand in his big dirty hands. I winced when he squeezed it because of the scab.

“It hurt?” he asked apologetically.

I nodded yes.

“Shafirgullah—he sorry,” he said.

“It will heal over and be okay. I’m not worried about it. It just hurts a lot right now, and I can’t feel my middle and index fingers. But I’m sure it will be fine once the scab comes off.”

Khalid stroked the back of my hand.

“Mellissa, I sorry you hurt. I tell my father. I tell him you sick. I tell him to finish.” He paused for a second.

We both lit cigarettes so we wouldn’t have to go down the same path again. How long does it take? Weeks. Months. What happened the last time? They released in two weeks. What if you’re asking for too much money? Not too much money. Your parents can afford. No, they can’t; I’m poor; my parents are poor.

It was a conversation we’d had a few times already, and it had barely been a week since we started on the hike from the mountain outside Kabul.

I took another cigarette and held out my hand for Khalid’s lighter. He reprimanded me for smoking too much but handed it over and took a smoke out of the package for himself. We both took long deliberate drags, and then he sat back.

“Sleep coming to me,” he said, pulling the blanket over his shoulders. “You must sleep, Mellissa.”

“Sleep is not coming to me,” I replied. “Good night.”

“Good night, Mellissa.”

I blew out the lamp and let the darkness swallow me up once more.

“Mellissa! Mellissa!”

I woke up with a start. Someone was calling me. I thought it was a dream at first. But I heard the voice again.

“Mellissa!”

It was coming from above.

“Mellissa! Shafirgullah!” And then some words in Pashto.

I sat up and shook Shafirgullah’s leg to wake him. He’d been sound asleep since he came down to replace Khalid the evening before. “Shafirgullah!” I whispered, pointing up to the ceiling. The Afghan rubbed his eyes. Voices were coming in through one of the pipes, yelled in Pashto.

Shafirgullah stood up and spoke into the pipe. Then he turned to me. “Abdulrahman,” he said.

“Mellissa,” the voice said again. I could tell now that it was the fat Afghan. I hoped he wasn’t coming back down to the cave. But my heart was racing. It was Sunday. A full week had passed. Maybe this was it. Maybe he and Khalid were coming to dig me out of the hole and take me back to Kabul.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Where are you from?” Abdulrahman asked.

“I’m from Vancouver,” I answered. I thought we had had this conversation before.

He asked me another question, but I couldn’t understand it.

“What? I can’t hear you,” I said loudly into the pipe, tiptoeing to get as close to it as I could.

“What elementary school you go?” he repeated.

Elementary school? I was confused for a second. Why did he want to know what elementary school I had gone to?

And then it dawned on me. Proof of life. These were the proof-of-life questions the negotiators needed the answers to as proof to everyone back home—and here in Afghanistan—that I was alive.

“Captain Cook,” I said.

“What?”

“Cap-tin Cook,”
I tried to enunciate. I normally do enunciate my words, a habit developed from reading scripts every day, but in this case, I was afraid that the language barrier might confuse the answers, and I didn’t want that to happen.

“What? Cap-tin
Cup
?” Abdulrahman repeated.

“CAP-TIN COOK!”

“Spell for me.”

“C-A-P-T-A-I…” I started.

“C-A-E-P,” he said back to me.

“C-A-P! P like
Paul
!” I yelled.

“C-A-P…” he repeated.

“Yes, C-A-P-T-A-I-N.”

“C-A-P-E—”

“
No!
Listen to me, Abdulrahman!”

It took at least another ten minutes before I was satisfied with his spelling of “Captain Cook.”

“Okay, Mellissa,” he yelled down the pipe. “Now—what is your father name?”

“Kellog,” I answered.

“What?” He clearly didn’t hear or understand.

I know my dad’s name is unusual—I used to tell people it was “Kellogg, like the cereal, but with only one ‘g.’” It was a made-up
English translation of his Chinese name, which is pronounced
Kay-luk.
But it wasn’t like Abdulrahman knew of the cereal, so that translation would be lost on him.

“Spell for me,” he called down.

“K-E-L-L-O-G,” I yelled.

“K-I-L-U-J,” he repeated.

“No, no, K-E. Eeeee!”

“E,” came the answer.

It took another ten minutes before I thought he had it right.

“Okay, thank you,” he yelled. “We go now.”

“Wait, wait! Abdulrahman, what is happening? Has the money been fixed?” I had so many questions. “Who are you talking to? Who is asking these questions?”

There was scuffling around. “We go now. Goodbye!” He said something to Shafirgullah, and then I could hear the pounding of footsteps loud over my head, before they faded into the distance.

Shafirgullah looked at me and shrugged.

“What was that about?” I asked him. “I’m going to Kabul, yes?”

He nodded. “Yes. Kabul. You.” He pointed at me. “I go Kabul. You Kabul.”

My mind started to race. They would relay the answers later this morning, if they weren’t already on the phone right now. The negotiators would be satisfied of my well-being. Then I would be released.
Maybe as soon as this afternoon. Or tonight.
I wondered how they would hand me over. Would it be the same way we came to this spot? I imagined myself riding on Khalid’s motorcycle, holding onto the sides, through the winding roads of the village, before getting onto a main road. Then his friend with the car would meet us, and we’d get in the back. It would be dark, and the lights would flash by occasionally as we made our way into the city.

They would be waiting for me at the refugee camp. Black SUVs, security people with guns. Maybe Paul would be in one of the vehicles. Or maybe they wouldn’t let him come out. I wouldn’t want him there anyway. It might be dangerous, some sort of standoff. Both sides would have guns, waiting for the other to make the first, perhaps fatal, move, hedging their bets in a game of cat and mouse that could end with both parties getting what they came for, or leaving with less than they started with.

But I could see Paul as soon as tonight!
This thought kept me going for a while. I was excited, looking forward to being reunited. I’d show him my scars, and tell him I was okay, and we’d go back to the Serena, where I could have a hot shower, and then we’d go to the Asian restaurant at the hotel and talk about everything over dinner.

“Mellissa. Kabul.” Shafirgullah was almost taunting me.

He sat up, as though he had just realized he’d been awakened from his sleep, and motioned for me to turn around.

“Bathroom,” he said.

I turned around and let him finish with his ablutions. The routine was the same every day: He washed with some of the water from the watering can, then brushed his teeth with the stick-and-string contraption. Then he opened a package of chocolate sandwich cookies, washing them down with two pouches of juice. My juice package was still half full. I’d been trying not to eat or drink too much, to limit the number of times I needed to use the trash-can toilet. That was something I could never get used to: the lack of privacy in such a small space. It was suffocating. I’ve always guarded my privacy carefully, and as a woman, I was agonizingly aware that I was sharing the space with a man. How ironic, I thought, that in a Muslim country I’d be stuck in close quarters with a man monitoring my most private moments, and watching over my every move. It felt wrong and strange, like the world was upside down.

I took a sip of juice. It was still cool, and an indication that the temperature was dropping a little more every day. It was late October, and things cooled down considerably in the evenings. If I were back at the base, I would be putting on my Vancouver Canucks fleece sweater to walk from the work tent to the sleep tent at night. It wouldn’t be long, I thought, before this hole would become a cooler, buried deep down somewhere in northern Afghanistan.

A chill ran through my body, even though it was still relatively warm in the hole. Abdulrahman must have kicked over one of the rocks that covered the opening to the pipe outside because a big beam of daylight was streaming into the cave, hitting the wall above Shafirgullah’s pillow. I held my hand up to the light and made hand shadows—a duck’s head, a bat—like my sister and I used to do when we were little, in the light that came into our bedroom from the hallway, when the grown-ups were still up but it was past our bedtime.

Shafirgullah laughed at my hand shadows and held his hand in front of the light as well. He turned his thumb and index finger into the shape of a handgun, which was pointed at the shadow my head made on the wall. He laughed again.

“That is not funny, Shafirgullah,” I said, shaking my head at him. He threw his head back and laughed some more. I turned my back to him and closed my eyes, trying to drown out his laugh by reciting the rosary in my head.

Then I heard a chanting. Shafirgullah’s eyes were closed and he was kneeling, his head bowed. He was praying again, reciting passages from the Koran. I was starting to feel assaulted by the prayers. Every morning before dawn, I could hear the call to prayer somewhere in the distance. And then again around noon and again in the evening. This must be what non-Christians feel in North America, I thought, when they hear church bells ringing. Still, I
heeded the imam’s calls, praying instead in my own way, eyes closed, head down, to my own God, hoping that He would hear me.

Shafirgullah’s chanting was getting louder, though, and I was starting to get annoyed that I couldn’t even pray in peace. So I started singing my Hail Marys out loud.

Hail Mary, fu-ll of graaace. The Looord is with yoooou. Blessed are you among wo-men, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jeee-eee-sus.

Shafirgullah looked up at me. He smiled, and waved for me to continue.

Holy Mar-ee, mother of God, pray for us si-i-in-ners, now and at the hour of death. A-men.

He clapped and smiled. “Very nice.”

I motioned for him to keep chanting. He did, and although I didn’t understand a word, I thought he carried a note quite well, and I started to get lulled into the rhythm of the prayer. I thought I could hear the words “Afghanistan” and “Allah,” but I wasn’t entirely sure.