Under an Afghan Sky (23 page)

“My stomach hurts,” I told him. “It’s been hurting for days. It will only get worse, and I will need to see a doctor soon.”

He stared at me for a while. “You must eat. You not eating.”

“I ate a little. You see—I had some chips. But I am not hungry. You cannot eat if you are not hungry,” I told him.

He broke off a piece of bread and handed it to me. I shook my head no. He took my hand and shoved it into my palm. “Eat a little, little,” he said. “Please.”

I took a small bite. It was cold and chewy and hard, and I shook my head again. “I cannot eat. My stomach is not good.”

“You have pain?”

“Yes. Pain. How to say it in Pashto?”

“Dard,”
he told me.

“I have
dard,
” I repeated. “You must help me get out of this place soon, Khalid. My pain will get worse, and I will need to see a doctor.” He looked at me like he wasn’t sure what to say and whether he believed me. So I told him about my operation earlier in the year. And then I lifted up my shirt to show him the scar on my stomach. His eyes widened.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It’s where they operated on me. A few months ago. I had a big tumour.” I was pretty sure he wouldn’t know what the word meant, so I made a ball with my hands.

“A tumour, in my stomach.” I pointed at my belly. “That is why I have
dard
here now. I will need to see a doctor if my pain does not go away.

Khalid sighed and put his head in his hands.

“Why you no tell me?” he asked. I could tell that he didn’t like
the idea of having a sick hostage on his hands. I hoped it would help expedite the process, lend a new and different sense of urgency to “finishing my case” and getting me off his hands.

“When was I going to tell you? Would it have made a difference? You already took me,” I argued. “You didn’t know I was sick.”

“Eat,” he told me. It was all he could think of to say. “Maybe we find doctor.”

“A doctor? Here? They wouldn’t know how to treat me. I need special medicines and only the doctors back home in Canada know what to do. It’s a special case. I had a major operation.”

I knew it wouldn’t be possible for them to get a doctor to see me. I was a hostage, and they would be afraid of any doctor giving them up. But I knew from the look on Khalid’s face that this was something he hadn’t counted on, and he was at a loss as to what to do about me, especially if I got worse.

“Shogufa,” he said, “is a little little
dard.
”

“Shogufa is sick?” I asked. “What is wrong with her?”

“She have
nas
—stomach—pain.
Dard.
Like you.”

“Has she seen a doctor? She should see a doctor or she will end up like me, with a tumour that needs to be taken out.” I wasn’t just saying that to scare him. After my tumour scare, I’d been warning all my friends to make sure they see a doctor if they felt even the least bit of abnormal pain. I had ignored the pain in my belly for months, and it had cost me an ovary.

“You must tell her to see a doctor, Khalid. You don’t want her to have what I had.” He nodded yes, he would make her see someone.

“Do it soon, Khalid,” I insisted. “Do you love her?”

He nodded again. “Yes. I love her. We get married.”

“Well, if you really love her, you’ll make sure she sees a doctor.”

He took his cell phone out of his pocket and put the SIM card
back in. It kept sliding out, and he reached back into his pocket and pulled out a piece of a toothpick, which he then tucked into the back of the phone to hold the SIM card in place. He punched in some numbers, and I could hear the phone ringing on the other end. A woman’s voice answered.

“Salaam,” Khalid said. His voice was deep and serious, but the conversation, which lasted several minutes, was punctuated by a few laughs.

He hung up and turned to me. “I tell her. Doctor. Okay?”

“You just called her to tell her that?” I asked.

“I tell her what you say.”

It was quite amazing, I thought, that my kidnapper, in the midst of dealing with his hostage, would call his girlfriend to tell her to see a doctor for the pain in her stomach. There was something about it that was endearing, and it made me believe that deep down, beneath the bravado of being at best a bandit and at worst a Taliban sympathizer, this was a young man who could be human and thoughtful and kind. The same one who would think to bring me french fries that he asked his girlfriend to make. The same one who took my hand on that first day and told me not to be afraid.

“Good, I’m glad,” I told him. “It’s important. You don’t want her to be sick, like me.”

“No, sick bad,” he said. I rubbed my stomach again and reached for the package of cigarettes.

“You no smoke,” Khalid objected. “You smoke too much.”

“It doesn’t make me sick. It’s okay.” I held out my hand for his lighter, but he took the pack of smokes out of my hand.

“Khalid! Let me have one. Please.”

He looked at me carefully, as if studying me, and then took a cigarette out of the package, licked the ends, lit it, and handed it to me.

“Why do you lick the ends?” I asked, making a licking motion in case he didn’t know the word.

“So this… how do I say…” He pointed at the end of my cigarette.

“The ash?” I asked.

“Yes. So it not go everywhere.” It was true. The wetness at the end of the cigarette held the ash together in one long cylinder, which I was able to flick into the trash can. We smoked another cigarette after that, and continued smoking until the package was empty and my head was heavy with smoke.

“No more,” Khalid said. “Sleep come to me.” He lay back and stretched his legs out. “Sleep no come to you? You must sleep,” he told me, his eyes already closed. “You sick. You must sleep, Mellissa.”

“I will try, Khalid. Good night.”

I heard his breathing deepen after a few minutes. I wished that sleep could come to me as easily, but I was not the least bit tired, so I decided to keep the lamp on for a while longer and flipped open my notebook. There were only a few pages left, and I remembered the prayer I had said the other day.
Please God, please don’t let me run out of pages before I am freed. Please help me out of this hole before I have no more space to write.
I wrote those exact words on one of the few precious pages I had left. And then I continued.

Please, God, please help me. Please help me out of here. Please help my family and my friends back home. Let them know, if you can, that I’m okay. They are suffering more than me, and it’s not fair to them. Please help them get through this. They’re suffering a lot, I know, and they need you. More than I do. Please, give them some comfort and tell them I will be all right.

Please, please, please. Help me, God. Help me.

I put the pen down and noticed that one of the “p”s of “please” had smudged. A teardrop had fallen out of my eye and onto the page. I wiped my eyes with my dirt-stained hands. I had refused to allow myself to break down, but in the simple act of writing a desperate prayer to God, I had let down all of my defences.

I put the notebook down, turned off the lamp, and allowed the sobs to rock me to sleep.

Dearest M,

It’s just after noon and I’m trying to picture where you are and what you’re doing. And I just can’t. Have you been able to wash your hair, do you even have a brush, are you looking after yourself, what are you wearing? Do you remember that we were supposed to be heading for Dubai this afternoon? We’ll get there, M.

xx

Khalid was agitated. He had woken early and turned on his cell phone, which rang almost immediately. Two quick conversations followed, the second one more urgent sounding than the first. I didn’t understand any of it, but he seemed to be asking lots of questions. After the calls, he was silent for a while, then sighed deeply several times.

He got up and went to relieve himself in the plastic bottle. When he sat back down, he buried his face in his hands. I asked him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell me. The phone rang again. He answered, listened to the speaker on the other end, and then hung up. I picked up the cigarettes and lit one, blowing smoke in a little stream.

“No smoke!” he hushed me, putting his fingers to his lips and grabbing the cigarette out of my mouth.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, annoyed.

“No talking,” he ordered.

I glared at him for a second, then turned my back to him, flipping open my notebook. I reread the prayer I had written the night before.
Amen,
I thought.
Please help me get out of this godforsaken place.
He was on the phone again, speaking in staccato tones. Questions were asked and presumably answered. He dialed another number. Maybe the negotiations were bearing fruit, and freedom was imminent. It had been four days since Abdulrahman asked the proof-of-life questions and surely by now the AKE people had the answers and were satisfied that I was indeed alive.

It actually wasn’t until that moment that it occurred to me that my friends and family feared I might be dead. Because I was alive and living every second of this nightmare, I assumed that everyone else knew that as well. My friends almost always knew where I was and what I was doing. Now, the only thing they knew for certain was that I had been taken by some Afghans, and the worst-case scenario for them would certainly be that my kidnappers had killed me.

But now they had proof of life. Answers to several questions only I would know. I hoped that would set their minds at ease for a little while.
I’m alive!
I wanted to yell.
I’m okay, don’t worry about me, I’ll be home soon!
I just wished there was some way I could tell everyone I was okay. I wondered if Khalid’s father had sent the phone video that Abdulrahman had taken on my second day in captivity. On the one hand, I hoped they had, so that everyone at home could see that I was alive. But on the other, I worried that it would scare them even more to see a grainy image of me at some undisclosed location, kind of like the way we’re used to seeing videos of hostages on TV, flanked by masked men and reading a prepared statement they hadn’t written. I was running out of pages in my notebook, but I defiantly flipped to an empty page and began to write.

Dear P,

Another day, and another day of hoping and praying that I’ll see you soon. Every day, my kidnappers tell me that it will only be two or three more days, and then the day passes and nothing happens. I hope you know that I’m okay, darling.

The most frustrating thing is that I can’t tell you. I know you’re probably sick with worry, as is everyone else back home, and that upsets me more than anything.

I know we were supposed to be in Dubai now, but I promise you we’ll get there. I’m not sure where you are, maybe at KAF or maybe you’re up here in Kabul. Please just wait for me. I’m coming back, and I can’t wait to see you.

I think something is going on, and maybe you know more than I do, because
Khalid seems agitated this morning and he’s been on the phone non-stop. It makes me wonder if the negotiations are nearing an end. I know you’re in contact with them, because he told me that they keep calling your number. By now, I’m sure the AKE people have made you surrender your phone. It’s better off, P. I wouldn’t want you to have to deal with the stress of talking to these losers.

I hope you’re okay. And wherever you are this morning, please know that I’m thinking about you and wishing that we’d just come back from running the flight line to a cappuccino at the Green Bean. I miss you so much. Soon, P, soon.

xox

I had mastered the art of balancing the hand-held lamp on my knees, with the bulb turned down toward my notepad, so that I could see what I was writing.

“Off the light,” Khalid suddenly ordered.

“Why?” I asked. “I’m still writing. And I like having the light on.” Even though it was artificial light, I needed to have it on during the day; in some way, it helped me to deal with the slow passage of time in this place.

“Off the light.”

“Tell me why and I’ll turn it off.” I held the lamp between my legs, and the fluorescent beam bounced off the wall behind his head.

“Off it. I tell you.”

I sighed and turned it off. “Okay,” I said in the darkness. “What is happening?”

“Taliban are all around” came the answer out of the darkness.

“What do you mean?”

“Taliban. They looking for us.” I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not—part of me thought that their saying the Taliban wanted to “buy” me was a ploy to keep me from calling out whenever I heard people overhead.

“They know we have you.”

I decided to play devil’s advocate. “So why don’t you just take their money and give me to them?” No answer. I pressed him. The darkness somehow made it easier to challenge him. “It’s the same money, so why don’t you just take it and give me to them? Then you don’t have to wait.”

“It is my father. He talk to them,” he replied. Khalid’s phone rang and he jumped. I could see the silhouette of his bearded chin against the bright light of the phone.

“As-Salaam Alaikum,” he said softly. The conversation didn’t last long. He was back to me in a matter of seconds.

“Tsiragh,”
he said. I handed him the lamp. He turned it on and promptly lit a cigarette. I surmised that if there were Taliban looking for us, they were gone. Shafirgullah or someone else must have called to let him know. They were probably watching the area from afar. I reached for a cigarette as well.

“What if it’s not the Taliban?” I asked. “What if it’s the police?”

“No police,” Khalid replied. I was pretty sure he was right. There was no way the police would be able to find me. And the Afghan National Police were a sorry lot. I had done a story about them the summer before, when I was out at the forward operating base (FOB) at Ma’sum Ghar and attached to Major Dave Quick’s battle group unit. It was a Sunday afternoon and the unit had received a call. My cameraman, Sat, and I were in the media tent, chain-smoking, waiting for something to happen, when Quick came in and told us to be ready in five minutes.