Under an Afghan Sky (27 page)

I shook my head. “No, Khalid, I could not kill you. I don’t want to kill you.”

“You my sister. You no kill me. I no kill you.”

It was my turn to laugh. “If I kill you, I could go back to Kabul tonight.”

Khalid laughed and asked me what I’d do then when Shafirgullah came down the hole. I said I’d shoot him too, and everyone else who tried to come in. Maybe it
was
my best chance of escape. I’d have plenty of ammunition to be able to shoot my way back to Kabul, should I be chased by Taliban or anyone else. But I would forever be haunted if I were to kill Khalid. The image of his head slumped over and dripping blood would stay with me for the rest of my life. After all, it wasn’t exactly self-defence after he had promised not to kill me.

My kidnapper was watching me carefully. He knew he was in no danger and wouldn’t have been even if the gun had been loaded. Something bonded us together at that moment. An understanding, perhaps, that we held each other’s lives in our hands. Me less so than him, perhaps, but he wasn’t invincible in that space. If we were both going to survive, I had to trust that he was going to keep his promise not to kill me, and he had to trust that I wasn’t going to kill him to try to escape. I stared straight into his eyes, as if daring him to shoot me, knowing that he wouldn’t. He held my gaze. I didn’t even realize that I was still holding the gun.

Khalid held out his hand and I gave it to him. He placed it back behind his pillow and put the magazine in his breast pocket. Then he reached for the package of cigarettes from his other pocket, took out a smoke, licked the ends, and lit it. He handed it to me and repeated the process with another cigarette. We both blew out streams of white smoke, which met in mid-air.

“You my sister, Mellissa. I no kill you. You no kill me.”

Shafirgullah was snoring—he was deep into a four-hour afternoon nap when I heard footsteps outside. I never knew what to expect when I heard the sounds above our heads. This time there were several sets of shoes stomping. And then I heard a voice.

“Shafirgullah! Mellissa!”

It was Abdulrahman. So he hadn’t yet gone to Pakistan as he told me he would, to join his wife and son. Was he waiting for my “case to finish” before crossing the border for the winter? Khalid had said his father expected him in Pakistan after my release, but he was hesitant because he didn’t want to be far away from Shogufa. He even told me he was considering kidnapping someone else to delay his return to the family home.

“Mellissa!” This time I thought the voice sounded like Khalid’s.

“Yes?” I called out, rousing Shafirgullah from his slumber. He sat up and looked at me. I pointed to the ceiling.

“Mellissa, it’s Abdulrahman. I am with Khalid.”

“Hello, Abdulrahman,” I said. I was now standing and speaking directly into the pipe.

“Mellissa, you play piano?”

“Piano?” The question startled me, It had been years since I’d played the piano. I barely remembered the scales, it had been so long since I last placed my fingers on a keyboard. Why was Abdulrahman asking me?

“Yes, I play piano,” I answered.

“What is name of your piano teacher?”

My piano teacher. My piano teacher. It felt like a trick question. Of course I knew her name, the answer was at the tip of my tongue, but why couldn’t I spit it out? It was the incongruity of recalling a childhood memory of home while in a place that couldn’t be farther away—it completely threw me.

I could picture her. Dark hair, very, very beautiful.

“What is her name?” Abdulrahman was getting impatient.

And then it came to me. “Suzanne!” I yelled. It took several minutes for him to get the spelling right—or, at least, until I was comfortable with his spelling.

“Where she from?” Abdulrahman asked.

“Vancouver,” I said.

“Okay,” Abdulrahman continued after a short pause. “What colour your school tie?”

“Maroon!” I yelled up the pipe.

After what felt like an eternity, we were both pretty sure he had all the answers spelled correctly. Abdulrahman thanked me and told me they were leaving.

“Wait, Abdulrahman! Where are you going? When will I get to go back to Kabul?”

“Soon, inshallah, soon,” he told me. “Goodbye now. We come later.” The men exchanged a few words in Pashto with Shafirgullah, and then their footsteps faded into the distance. I imagined they were going somewhere to call the negotiators and give them my answers.

I hoped it all meant that they were making progress. I wasn’t really sure what to think. I looked up the pipe and saw a sliver of light through the rocks. Shafirgullah had sat back down and was stuffing cookies into his mouth. An early dinner, perhaps. I wasn’t hungry so I sat back and lit a cigarette, and allowed my memories to take me away
from where I was for a while. I flipped through my notebook and found my calendar. Today was October 28, day sixteen in the hole. It felt like an eternity had passed. Day sixteen. I wasn’t even counting that first half day. I heard chanting. Shafirgullah was singing the Koran again. He had a good voice, and I closed my eyes and tried to let the music lift me from the place. It worked until he stopped.

“You!”

I opened my eyes and saw that he was staring at me, his eyes dark and beady. It was my turn, he was telling me, my turn to sing again.

And back and forth, back and forth. I ran out of hymns, so I started singing other songs.

My voice cracked a bit on the last
brave,
but I sang it loud and proud, like I was a New York Yankees fan belting it out at the first game of the World Series. Shafirgullah clearly had no idea what the song was because he clapped and smiled and laughed.

“You,” I said, signalling that it was his turn.

He shook his head. “You, again.”

Again I sang the American national anthem. Louder this time, just in case there was someone above the hole. We couldn’t have been far from Bagram, where the Americans were based. Imagine if an American soldier from Bagram was in the area and heard the faint tones of his or her national anthem coming from somewhere underground. That would be a great way to get rescued. I raised my voice again—
And the rocket’s red glare!
Shafirgullah looked completely entranced. I’d sung “O Canada” earlier, but it hadn’t received this kind of reaction. I’m a proud Canadian, but I’ve always preferred the American anthem—I sing both at hockey games. “The Star Spangled Banner” seems to me to have more passion; of course it does—the poem from which its lyrics come was born out of a war. Shafirgullah was loving it. He clapped and clapped after I was done, before starting his Koran chanting again.

We took turns singing late into the night, until Shafirgullah was tired and fell asleep, to my great envy. I noticed that he had forgotten to put the Kalashnikov behind his pillow—it was lying between us, and I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands. The magazine wasn’t attached, so Shafirgullah was in no danger of being shot in the head while he slept, but again I imagined myself shooting my captor between the eyes. He wouldn’t even feel anything. After all, he was the one who had plunged a knife into my shoulder and hand. I put the gun down and examined the scab on my hand. It was black and hard, and I gingerly picked at it. I could see pink beneath, a sign that the skin
was healing. The wound no longer hurt, so I continued picking at the scab until it peeled off.

Then I tried to see the wound on my shoulder. As I had seen earlier, the pink toilet paper had become part of the scab. It was big and hard, and hurt when I picked gently at it. I decided to leave it alone for the time being. The last thing I wanted was for the wound to get infected, and my fingers weren’t exactly clean. My fingernails hadn’t been cut in more than two weeks, and a layer of dirt had formed under each nail. I reached for my backpack and took my nail clippers out of my makeup bag. One by one, I cut off my dirty nails, and that made me feel a little better. If only I could have a shower, I would feel a hundred times better. I couldn’t stand how I smelled. I don’t remember ever being so dirty in my life.

I took my hair out of its ponytail and shook out the dirt and dust. I tried to comb my hair out a bit with my fingers, but it was matted, and made my hands dirty, so I gave up, tied it up again, and rinsed my hands with water from the can.

My friends like to joke that I’m the messiest clean freak they know. Although my desk is typically covered in mountains of paper, I know where everything is. And despite the mess, the desk, and my computer and keyboard, is scrubbed and disinfected. And I always use hand sanitizer. In fact, I’d had a little bottle of it in my backpack. When I couldn’t find it, I assumed it was one of the things Abdulrahman had filched after I arrived at the abandoned white house.

I felt disgusting. Khalid had come in the other night reeking of garlic so badly that I could hardly breathe. I knew Afghans ate a lot of raw garlic, but in a small space, the odour was almost unbearable. I had to chain-smoke to mask the smell. The smell of the trash-can toilet was no better. My captors may have been emptying it out every other night, but they were not cleaning it, and I was
keeping it as far into the tunnel as I could, crawling up to bring it down when I had to go to the bathroom.

I opened my notebook again. There were maybe only three virgin pages left, but I scribbled on one anyway.

Dear P,

Do you think that if you had to, you could kill someone? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t—even if it was the only thing I could do to save my own life. Now, if you were the one in this hole, I would probably have no problem killing your captors, but for some reason, I can’t bring myself to shoot these guys. I guess I’m not as tough and hard-core as I like to think I am. Don’t tell anyone, okay? Fung’s a wuss.

I’m just really tired today. They came and asked me a couple more proof-of-life questions, so I hope that my answers will make you feel a little better that I’m still alive and hanging in there. I can’t imagine what you must be going through, and I’m really, really sorry. I’m trying hard to think positive, and I know these things take time, and I know everyone is trying really hard to get me home. I just hope it happens soon.

I’m with you, P. I’m coming back. I promise.

Love you,

xox

My blue pen was running out of ink, but I wasn’t concerned—I had a few more in my knapsack. I had bought a bunch at the PX—the post exchange—in Kandahar before going to Kabul. I always travelled with lots of pens and pencils so that I could hand them out to Afghan children, which I had done at the refugee camp the day I was kidnapped. Soldiers and aid workers had told me time and time again that it was the best thing, maybe the only thing, I could do for the Afghan children I met while on assignment. Pens and paper were precious commodities in this war-ravaged country,
and I still remembered the smiles on their faces upon receiving a simple pen from a stranger.

I took the rosary out of my pocket and stared at the cross. I traced it on my notepad underneath my last note to Paul and then made a pattern on it, colouring in the shapes I’d drawn. I was pleased with it—it looked like a Celtic cross. I drew a few more crosses with different designs, until my pen died. Then I turned off the lamp and prayed the rosary until I fell asleep.

Dearest M,

I’m worried that your kidnapping will bring a real change in your life, M, one of those events that will mark you forever. I long to hear your voice tonight, just a few words like, “I’m okay, really, I’m okay.” That’s all I need, and I can’t imagine what your parents and Vanessa are going through.

Good night, dear M, and I dread to think of you sleeping in a dark, cold room, probably with your feet tied and perhaps even your hands. I know you will wake up a lot, and I know you will be praying a lot, and I suspect you’ve already forgiven the people who are doing this to you. Come back.

xx

No one came the next day, and Shafirgullah made several phone calls after dark to try to find out what was going on. He turned to me at one point and said, “You. Kabul. Sunday.” This was not the first time he had told me my release was imminent. He had a bad habit of saying “two days” or “three days, inshallah” and nothing would happen, so I had learned not to believe him. He was a proven liar. But this was the first time he mentioned a specific day.

“Sunday,” I said. “Today is Wednesday. So four more days.”

“No, five days,” he argued.

“No, today is Wednesday. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.”

He counted the days with his hands and then nodded. “Four day.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told him. “I think you are lying. You always tell me I go soon, but it never happens.”

“Sunday, Sunday!” he sang. “Sunday. You! Kabul!” It sounded more like a taunt than a promise, and I knew better than to get my hopes up, even though he was now pinpointing a day.

“Where is Khalid?” I asked. “I don’t believe you. I want to talk to him.”

“Khalid Kabul” came the pat answer.

“What is Khalid doing in Kabul?” I asked.

Shafirgullah shrugged and kept singing to himself. Sometimes I thought he was perhaps a little mentally disordered. In North
America, he would probably be diagnosed with a mild retardation. There was something off about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He wasn’t manic or psychotic, but he was someone who would probably require therapy or some sort of treatment in any other, sane part of the world.

I was always disappointed when Khalid didn’t show up because another twenty-four hours with Shafirgullah would be exhausting and monotonous, with little conversation to make time move along.

Suddenly, Shafirgullah stopped singing. I looked up and realized what had interrupted him. Footsteps. And then
thump, thump, thump.
Then the same sound we’d heard before:
tap, tap, tap,
as if someone was using a stick to poke the ground, looking for an opening. Shafirgullah put his finger to his lips, motioning for me not to speak. He grabbed his rifle and inserted the magazine. What did he think he could do with it? Shoot anyone who tried to come in? It would be a zero-sum game, and I would never survive a shootout here. Not one between my captors and the ANP or the Taliban, anyway.

Shafirgullah was worried. He held the rifle tightly and gave me a look indicating he didn’t know who it was. The tapping went on for a while longer, and then several sets of footsteps faded into the distance.

Shafirgullah waited a while longer before taking his cell phone out and putting the SIM card in. He punched in a number and hit send. I could hear a male voice through the receiver. “As-Salaam Alaikum.” It sounded like Khalid. The men spoke in hushed tones for several minutes.

“Taliban,” Shafirgullah announced when he hung up the phone.

“Is that what Khalid said?” I asked.

“Yes. Khalid. Hezbollah.”

“Hezbollah?” I asked.