Under an Afghan Sky (32 page)

There is a running joke among my small group of friends. Kelly had an amazing couch in her westside Vancouver flat, a couch I’d slept on, eaten on, drunk Scotch on for years. It was a luxurious green sectional, and she’d told us before leaving on a round-the-world assignment aboard a tall ship that she’d left it to me in her will. So we’d started referring to it as my couch—to the chagrin of our friends Sudha and Alan, who both thought it should be passed on to them.

I would give anything to be sitting on my green couch with you right now. I’m really sorry for everything I’m putting you through. I promise, if I make it home in one piece, I’ll make it up to you.

I realized I was starting to sound a little fatalistic, but I couldn’t help it. It was possible that my kidnappers might not come back for whatever reason. Maybe they would be killed in a coalition air strike on their way to Pakistan. Maybe they would have to flee the country. Maybe they would be arrested and refuse to give up my location. Anything could happen, and I had to be prepared for the possibility.

I did have a will back in Canada, even though I didn’t have too many worldly possessions. What little money I did have in bonds and funds I’d left to my sister. The life insurance money was to be split between Vanessa and my parents, with a bit of it going to Kelly to pay for the scattering of my ashes—if there were any—on both ends of the continent. But I wished I’d left something to Paul. I flipped to an empty page and started scrawling again. I wanted to make sure a few things were not left in any doubt. Just in case.

Amendments to my last will and testament

To Paul Workman—my King James Bible.

Paul wasn’t religious, but he would appreciate that I had left him something that was important to me. I tried to think of what else needed to be left to others, and not just put in a box and given to the Salvation Army.

Rover is important to me. Years ago, when my parents moved my maternal grandmother into an elderly care home, I was racked with guilt. I had lived at home for a long time to look after her, after my grandfather passed away, but she had deteriorated to the point that not even with home-care nurses could the family meet her growing needs.

I had visited her every night after I got off work. On weekends I would take her lunch and a big bouquet of flowers, spending the afternoon with her and her roommates. She shared a room with three other women, all bedridden, and I started visiting with them and bringing them flowers too.

It was always hard to leave my grandmother there, by herself without family, and I wished I could leave her something, especially when I was away travelling, something I did quite a bit then. I was a political reporter and would be away for days at a time during an election campaign. On one campaign I was travelling with the premier of British Columbia. He made a stop at a care home not unlike the one my grandma was in. After the event, as we were all walking back to the campaign bus, we passed the gift shop. In the window was the cutest stuffed white puppy dog, staring out at me, almost begging me to adopt him. I stopped, holding up the bus and the premier’s campaign, while the woman minding the store searched for the key to the display window.

My grandma loved Rover. He went everywhere with her, tucked
beside her under the blanket that covered her skinny legs as she sat in her wheelchair. Then one day, not long before she passed away, she tugged my sleeve, and said, “I don’t think I can take care of Rover. He’s very naughty and has been biting the nurses’ ankles. Maybe he should stay with you. You can bring him when you come to see me.”

And so I took him home, but he lived in my bag so that my grandma would be able to see him whenever I went to visit. Weeks later, when she was hospitalized with pneumonia, I brought him to the hospital and tucked him in with her while she was sleeping. He was with her when they moved her back to the care home and when she died the next day.

So Rover became my “dog.” Because it’s so hard for me to have a real dog, given my job, the little white stuffed toy was a surrogate. He moved to Toronto with me and, later to Regina, where my friends embraced him as if he were a real puppy. He was especially popular with Henry, my friends Mal and Coreen’s two-year-old. And that’s where he was now, with Henry’s godmother, Stefani.

I thought about what else I had that was of any value. Abdulrahman had made off with my grandmother’s wedding ring. My other ring was the silver one from my sister. I hadn’t taken it off since Vanessa gave it to me, and it wasn’t something I thought I could give back to her.

But I had to give my sister something. I would have given her grandma’s ring, but I no longer had it. But I did have something else of my grandmother’s that was, to me, even more special: her original Good Housekeeping cookbook, published in 1966. It was tattered and the spine was tearing, but I loved it because it was full
of her writings, little notes on the sides, with recipes she’d culled from other sources and scribbled in the margins.

My grandma was an amazing woman. She had grown up without very much, the hated stepdaughter of her father’s second wife. Working hard her entire life, she and my grandfather raised an only child—Joyce, my mother—and eventually moved with our family when we immigrated to Canada. With both of our parents working, she focused on her grandchildren, and our lives were the richer for it. She helped us with our homework, reading the classics again when we did at school, working through long algebra equations with us, walking us to and from school and to all those after-school lessons we were signed up for. But best of all, she baked.

She taught herself by following recipes, until she eventually started creating her own beautiful cakes and tortes. The best apple pie in the world, with homemade ice cream, which she cranked out from an old-fashioned salt and ice–powered ice cream maker. Cinnamon buns, with big fat raisins peeking out from a cream cheese glaze. Cookies and meringues and buttercream. My favourite was a maple walnut torte she made with layers of walnut meringue and chiffon cake, with a perfect maple buttercream. Her Black Forest cake, which I’ve tried to replicate but just can’t make taste quite the way hers did. A chocolate–Grand Marnier torte, with layers of rich and moist dark chocolate cake with orange liqueur mousse, topped with chocolate ganache and ribbons of shaved chocolate.

I watched and learned, and she would let me help. My job was measuring ingredients and holding the electric mixer—and, of course, tasting the finished product. Then she’d make notes in her little blue cookbook.

Years later, I saved it from the garbage bin when my parents were renovating the house.

I didn’t really have anything else of value. My friends were already looking after my possessions, as I’d been away from home for months before going to Afghanistan. My KitchenAid stand mixer, probably my favourite kitchen appliance, was at Coreen’s house in Regina, where I knew she was putting it to good use.

I’d already left all my good Scotch and wine with my friends Gerry and Shelley Thue in Regina. I kept several single malts in my liquor drawer, and because another reporter would be staying in my apartment while I was gone, I moved the liquor to the Thues. Gerry was a single malt aficionado.

My prized Canucks jersey was my going-away present from the Vancouver newsroom when I left to take a job as a national reporter in Toronto. It had been signed by the entire hockey team, and I barely ever took it out of the clear resealable bag it had come in. I didn’t even wear it to games, afraid that I’d slop mustard or ketchup or spill beer on it. There was only one person who would appreciate it and look after it the way I did.

That was pretty much it. All my worldly possessions. Not
much to show for thirty-six years on this earth. I flipped to the earlier note I had written to Paul and added to it.

I know I just asked you to pray for me, but in the event that those prayers don’t work, and you find yourself reading this notebook at some point without me, I left you something that might help with praying in the future. I wish I could have given you so much more—but I need you to be okay if I don’t come home.

Promise me, okay?

xox

I must have passed out sometime in the early evening. I woke up to the sound of footsteps above. I froze. Was it one of my kidnappers or someone looking for me?

“Mellissa!” It sounded like Abdulrahman.

“Yes!” I called up, struggling to stand. I shuffled over in my chain to the opening of the pipe and with my left hand took the fabric pieces out of it so that I could call up.

“You are Khalid! Not Mellissa!” Oh, right. I had forgotten that I’d been instructed not to answer to my own name.

“Mellissa!” he called down again. I didn’t answer.

“Khalid!” was the next call.

“Yes?” I responded.

“Good. It is Abdulrahman. Do you need anything?”

“Yes, more batteries for the
tsiragh.
And more cigarettes.”

“Battery and cigarettes,” he repeated. He pronounced “cigarette” without the “a” so it sounded like “cigrette.”

“Yes. When do I go to Kabul, Abdulrahman? What is going on? How is Khalid?”

“Inshallah, in a few days,” he answered. “We will take you. Goodbye!”

His footsteps faded away, I was alone again. As much as I
despised Abdulrahman, his short visit made me feel a little better. At least my kidnappers hadn’t forgotten about me. But of course they wouldn’t. I was worth more to them alive than dead, and they had invested enough time in my kidnapping.

One way or another, I was getting out of here, and I would get out alive. I sat back down and opened my notebook.

Don’t worry, P. I’m coming home. It will all be okay. We’ll see each other soon. But keep praying, if you can. I need all the help I can get. Love you. xox

Dearest M,

I got a note from Kas last night who says she and the girls are drinking a lot to ease their fear and frustration (but what else is new!). She also says Jen Barr won a Gemini this week and dedicated it to you. Erin Boudreau in London also won and sent this note:

“But I must say, the golden hue of a Gemini doesn’t feel right under these circumstances. I think about Mellissa all the time—when I eat breakfast, when I brush my teeth, when I try to concentrate at work. I hope you are hanging in there…”

I am just sorry, darling, that you will have to spend more nights in your hell. I know you have tremendous faith, and prayer will help you get through the worst of it, but still I worry. I’ve taken out that photograph of us from the harbour in Hong Kong and put it on the desk. I look at it and just know that we will go back there together.

Good night, M. I’m with you.

xx

I’d spent about forty-eight hours alone in the hole with my thoughts, my rosary, and my notebook, and was just lighting a cigarette when I heard footsteps again. But no one called down to me, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Was I being released? Could it be the police? Maybe it was someone else.

Then I heard digging. I wasn’t sure I was hearing right at first. But the sound became unmistakable. It had been a few days since I’d heard it.

“Khalid!” A voice from above. My heart slowed. It was my kidnappers after all. I ducked under the duvet to shield myself from the dust shower and waited. I heard the cover being taken off the opening of the hole, and then a thump. It was the real Khalid, and I watched as he crawled down the tunnel toward me.

“Khalid, what’s going on?” I asked.

“We go now!” he replied, looking a little flustered. He started unlocking the padlocks on the chain that held my ankles together. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. He was struggling with the lock on my wrist, twice trying all three keys, but none of them fit.

“Quick, we go,” he told me. “Your shoes.” He reached for my runners and I scrambled to put them on, without even untying the laces.

“Quick!”

“Wait,” I said. “I need to bring my things. My notebook. My backpack.” If I was being released, I wanted to be able to bring my possessions with me.

Khalid gave me an empty white plastic bag. “Put here,” he ordered.

I emptied the contents of my backpack into the plastic: my wallet, my makeup bag, and both notebooks.

“Quick! Go!” He gave me a push into the tunnel and I crawled up. I still had the chain on my wrist, and it was dragging behind me. I got to the end of the tunnel and stood up.

“Mellissa!” It was Abdulrahman from above. Khalid had come up the tunnel and was now standing behind me. He wrapped his hands around my legs and lifted me up. “Lift your arms!” I heard Abdulrahman bark. I lifted my arms and felt two sets of hands on either side lifting me onto solid ground. I breathed the fresh air deeply. It was dark and I could barely make out the abandoned house to the left.

“Do not look!” Khalid shouted from the shaft as he scrambled to the top with my plastic bag. “Sit down!”

I obeyed. He took my black scarf and wrapped it around my eyes, so crudely that the scarf was restricting my ability to breathe.

“Ow!” I yelled. “Not so tight!” He loosened it and asked if I could see. I said no and was ordered to stand up.

“Walk.”

“Walk where?” I asked. “I cannot see.”

“Up!” Someone shoved the barrel of a gun into my back. I felt a cold rush of fear. Was I about to be executed? Where were we going? Khalid—at least, I thought it was Khalid—shoved the handles of the bag into my hand. We started walking, Khalid leading me by the elbow. Shafirgullah walked on my other side, and Abdulrahman was behind us. They led me through the village, and I stumbled several times over steps and the uneven ground.