Under an Afghan Sky (3 page)

Khalid interrupted. “Say goodbye. Now.”

“I have to go now. Bye, P. I’m okay. They’re treating me well.”

“Thank them for me, for taking care of you.”

“I’m sorry about everything. All the trouble I’ve caused everybody,” I said.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he replied.

“Bye. Love you.”

“I love you, M.”

Dearest M,

This is the only way I can keep in touch with you, writing letters, even if they won’t get answered. I just hope that one day you’ll be able to read them. I wanted you to have a record of what went on. I’m at the Gandamack Lodge on day three of our nightmare. I woke up before seven, waiting anxiously for the phone to ring. I have imagined every horrible scenario and I shake with fear. I cannot begin to understand what you are going through. The simplest of things: what they’ve made you wear, how they’ve transported you around the countryside, what you’re eating, drinking, how you’re going to the bathroom.

It’s now been twenty-seven hours since your last call, and I look at my phone every minute to make sure it’s on. I wonder if I made mistakes when I spoke to you, and that I wasn’t reassuring enough, or didn’t give you enough information. Everybody says it’s very unusual that you were allowed to contact me directly, and that gives us a huge deal of hope that we’re dealing with guys who are merely criminals, looking to make money, and not the Taliban.

I was on the way to the PRT when Shokoor called to say four armed men had grabbed you and taken you away. He was very distraught. That was about ten minutes after it happened. He said they roughed him up and threatened to kill him. At first I didn’t believe or couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying, and then it hit me. Al was sitting in the front seat, and immediately knew something awful had happened.

Al and I immediately went back to the Airfield, not really sure what to
do, but already I was thinking about trying to get to Kabul as soon as possible. Shokoor said the kidnappers did not look like Taliban, and that gave me an initial sense of hope.

Your first call came at about 1645, I think, and my hand was shaking as I answered. You can’t believe the relief when I heard you say, “I’m okay, don’t worry, I’m okay.” I think I asked if you knew where you were and if they were listening, and you said “yes.” That’s when you handed the phone over to this guy Khalid and the line went dead.

I was back inside the work tent when your second call came through. I couldn’t believe they would let you call again, but I have to say, M, your first words scared the hell out of me. “I just phoned to say goodbye.” I thought,
Oh my God, they’re going to kill her.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Waiting,” he responded, and lit another cigarette. Shafirgullah and I each took one as well. I puffed hard and blew out long streams of smoke.

Suddenly, I heard the rumble of an engine in the distance. The two Afghans stood up and looked into the valley below. The noise got louder and louder, and soon I could see a figure on a red motorcycle approaching us, a cloud of dust trailing behind. The vehicle stopped, and an Afghan man got off. He greeted Khalid with a kiss on both cheeks and shook Shafirgullah’s hand. They spoke for a few minutes, and then Khalid came back to where I was still sitting.

“Put this on,” he ordered, unrolling a pair of light brown “man jams,” as Western journalists called them. In Pashto they are called “salwar kameez”—a long, uncollared tunic with baggy pyjama-like pants. This pair must have been made for an overweight Afghan man. I stepped into the pants and was swallowed up by one leg.

“No,” Khalid said. He made me take out my left leg and put it through the right way. The pants fell off immediately. He laughed and cinched the drawstring tightly around my waist. “Now this,” he said as he put the kameez over my head. It smelled rank—as if the Afghan it belonged to hadn’t washed it for a year. I wrinkled my nose.

“It stinks.” My protest fell on deaf ears. They wrapped a kaffiyeh around my head and put a pair of sunglasses on my face. Khalid
got on the motorcycle first. He motioned for me to get on behind him, and I climbed onto the banana seat. Shafirgullah climbed on behind me and the man who had driven the bike up waved us off. I wondered if I would ever again see my knapsack, which we had left behind.

The road was rocky and hard to navigate, especially with three people sitting on the one seat. Khalid slowly steered the bike over rocks, but he sped up as soon as the path straightened out. It was bumpy, and I hung onto the sides of the seat as we sped down the hill. Shafirgullah kept reaching over to make sure my scarf and sunglasses were secure on my head.

I could see a farmer herding a flock of sheep next to the road. It was getting dark, and I could make out the shadow of what might have been his home a few metres away. It looked like a shack, and there were sheep everywhere. We zoomed past him as we continued down the bumpy road. Ahead, I could see what appeared to be a village. Few lights in the area indicated that there was probably little or no electricity. A slightly wider road led toward the village, and I could make out the headlights of a few cars. We sped down a dirt road, past mud walls and houses. It was a clear night. I could see stars above and a new moon, a bright little crescent that hung high, lighting up the branches of the trees below.

The road narrowed; we were now in the village. I saw a woman in a burka walking with her boy, a bag in her hand. We flew past parked cars. I saw the red tail lights of a minivan, about to back out onto the road.
What if I just jumped off the bike and started yelling?
My kidnappers would have no choice but to leave me or risk arrest. I turned my head and peeked over the dark sunglasses as we turned a corner where several women in burkas were gathered. As if he were reading my mind, Shafirgullah pushed my head down and forward, and repositioned my sunglasses to try to block my view. I kept
my head down but tried to look over the glasses. I could see more people walking down the road: men and women and children. They looked at us as the motorcycle sped past them.

Soon, it seemed, we’d left the centre of the town, and there were fewer people on the road.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Where is your house?”

“Just maybe ten minutes more,” Khalid answered.

We drove over a mud bridge, ducking to avoid some low-hanging branches. There were more trees than houses now, and the road seemed desolate in the dark. We drove up to what looked like an abandoned white house, and Khalid parked the motorcycle across the road from it.

Two men came out of the house and approached us. They both had Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. They greeted Khalid and Shafirgullah with kisses on both cheeks and then they spoke rapidly among themselves in Pashto. I heard Khalid say my name a couple times.

One of the men came up to me. “Hello, Mellissa. I am Zahir,” he said.

This was strange. It was as if I were being introduced to someone I was interviewing—in Afghanistan or anywhere else. “Hi, Amir (or Mike or Don or anyone else), I’m Mellissa, and it’s nice to meet you.” Except it wasn’t so nice. I was meeting my kidnappers, the men who had just taken me from everything I’d known, who had taken away my freedom. “Hello, Zahir,” I replied.

“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand.

He led me across the road where the motorcycle was parked and into the house, the three other men following. Zahir had to guide me over the threshold in the darkness. We entered an empty room with a dusty dirt floor. There were windows facing the road, and windows on the side. It wasn’t quite the “house” I’d imagined
when Khalid said he was taking me “home.” I sat down cross-legged on the wide ledge of the window facing the road. Out of the window, I could see the crescent moon, which was casting an iridescent glow over everything beneath it: the trees, the tall grass, the dirt road, and the red motorcycle. It seemed impossible that a bit of light could illuminate so much. I tried to take in as much as I could through the window. We were definitely on the outskirts of whatever town we had just driven through.

“Cigarette?” Shafirgullah offered his package and a lighter. I accepted and watched as he licked the end of his and lit it. As the flame illuminated the room for a brief second, I noticed the walls were riddled with bullet holes. I inhaled and watched as the four Afghans checked their rifles and conversed in Pashto. Khalid came over to me with the fourth man, whom I hadn’t yet been introduced to. He was a shortish, fat man, and all I could make out from the light coming through the window was that he had curly hair and a beard.

“This my uncle, Abdulrahman,” Khalid said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“We are not going to hurt you,” Abdulrahman said, as if to assure me. His English was better than Khalid’s. His breath reeked of garlic and onions.

“You want money,” I replied, “just tell my friends how much.”

“Once the money comes,” he said, “you go. Back to Kabul.”

“How soon?” I asked.

“If the money comes tomorrow, you go tomorrow.”

“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I have to go home.”

“Where are you from, Canada?” he asked me. “I have been to Canada.”

“You have? Where in Canada?” This was a surprise to me. How was it possible that this Afghan, dressed in man jams and armed
with a Kalashnikov, could ever have been to Canada? As what? A tourist?

“I was there a long time ago. Before I was in New York. You know New York? I have friends there. I was with them.”

Did I know New York? Of course I did. I’d gone to graduate school there and had returned at least once a year since graduating. It was only my favourite city in the world. I felt a pang in my stomach. New York was as far away from where I was now as you could possibly get.

“I’ve been to New York,” I told the fat Afghan.

“I learn English there,” he said proudly. “My English better than Khalid. I learn in America. Khalid learn from here.”

I leaned back toward the window as I caught another whiff of rancid garlic. “Where are you from?” I asked.

“Here, Afghanistan,” Abdulrahman answered.

“Where in Afghanistan?”

“Close to here.”

“Where? Kabul?”

“Close by.”

I figured he wasn’t going to give me anything more, so I changed the subject and asked him if this was where we were spending the night.

“No, somewhere else,” he answered. “A better place. You will like it.”

“What’s wrong with being here?” I asked.

“It is not safe here. The windows, people will see you. There are a lot of Taliban in this area,” Abdulrahman said. I’d thought these men were Taliban, and showed my surprise.

“We are Taliban, but we not all together. You don’t want other Taliban find us. We waiting here while other place getting ready,” he said. “Very close to here.” He then walked off to speak with
Khalid. I noticed two other men were now in the room, but no one bothered to introduce them to me.

“Cigarette,” I said out loud to the room. Khalid came over with his package.

“You should not smoke much,” he told me. “Cigarette bad.” I pointed out that both he and Shafirgullah were also smoking.

“It is bad—smoking,” he said as he took out a cigarette and lit it. He handed it to me and lit one for himself after licking the end.

Abdulrahman came over. “The house is ready. Come.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, Mellissa,” Khalid said. “I will stay with you tonight.”

“I have to go to bathroom,” I said.

“You go bathroom first. I take you.” He took my hand and led me out of the house and around a corner to what looked like a large open room with mud walls and some kind of corrugated roof over it. “In there,” Abdulrahman motioned. “Go there.” I went into the corner of the room. The hard ground smelled like dung. I undid the drawstring of my pants and squatted in the dark.

“You finished?” Abdulrahman asked from outside.

“Yes.”

“Come. Hurry.”

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he said, not answering my question. “We are friends now.”

“Friends?” I said, the anger rising like bile in my throat. “Friends don’t kidnap each other.”

He laughed. “We are not going to hurt you. We are all friends. Mellissa and Abdulrahman are friends.” He took my arm and led me around the back of the house, up a small hill, and around a mud wall.

“Sit here,” he ordered. We sat in a corner, with mud walls on either side. I could make out what looked like another abandoned house to the left of us, a few metres away. Was that where we were headed? I heard a noise coming from the ground. It was Zahir. His head popped out of a hole next to where we were sitting. The opening was about the size of a manhole cover, maybe slightly smaller. He had a flashlight and he spoke briefly to Abdulrahman in Pashto before disappearing back into the hole.

“Okay, it is ready,” Abdulrahman said to me. He pointed into the ground from where Zahir had appeared. “That is your room.”

I looked down at the hole. It was dark, except for a little glow from Zahir’s flashlight. My heart stopped for a moment, and for only the second time that day, I felt afraid. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that was quickly making its way up to my throat.

“Go,” Abdulrahman ordered, taking my arm and pushing me toward the hole.

I looked down into the darkness again. “No,” I said, “I am not going down there.”

I have never been afraid of the dark. When I was a little girl and played hide and seek with my sister, Vanessa, and our friends, my favourite hiding place was the crawlspace in the basement of our house, in East Vancouver. It was a pretty large storage space, about four feet high, with my mother’s shoes scattered on the floor. My father stored boxes of oranges in the crawlspace because the temperature was much cooler there than anywhere else in the house.

I would always crawl through the shoes and into the darkest corner of that dark little room, underneath the stairs. It was the best place to hide because everyone else was scared to go there. I was almost inevitably the last one to be “found.”