Under an Afghan Sky (35 page)

I could make out three people walking to the base of the mountain across the valley. From where we were, it looked like they were taking pictures of each other with a camera as they made their way up the mountain.

“Get back,” Khalid told me, obviously concerned that we’d be spotted. Again I wondered what would happen if I yelled out. Would the people be able to hear me? They were quite far off in the distance, at least three kilometres, and I figured it wouldn’t do me much good to call for help from here, especially standing next to my two armed captors.

I did as I was told. I sat back down on the rocks and waited. To distract myself, I stuck a straw into the top of a juice box and sipped. It was apple juice, which I was getting sick of, but it was still better than the sickly sweet, thick mango juice or the deep red pomegranate and cherry juices, which I feared would stain my teeth.

Shafirgullah stepped back as well, and ripped into a hunk of bread. He offered me a chunk and I took it. It was cold and chewy,
but at least it wasn’t sweet. I wasn’t at all hungry, which was strange, given that we’d hiked so long to get to this spot, but I thought it best to eat something to keep my energy level up, particularly if we were going to make the journey to Kabul later that day.

“How far is it from here to Kabul?” I asked. I assumed it was in the direction that the people we had seen were walking, but I really didn’t know.

Khalid scratched his goatee. “Maybe few hours.”

“Is it over there? Over that mountain?” I pointed to the peak on the other side, over which the man earlier had disappeared.

Khalid shrugged and smiled. “Maybe.” Of course he wasn’t going to tell me. He was afraid I’d start heading that way myself.

“When do we go?”

“We wait here. Abdulrahman call us. Then we go.”

I thought about what that implied. Would Abdulrahman give the go-ahead for Khalid and Shafirgullah to drop me off somewhere, once they got what they wanted? Maybe that was supposed to happen today. It made sense. Once Khalid’s father, or friend, or whoever he was in Pakistan was satisfied with whatever he got on his end, he’d send word to the people holding me that they could release me.

Did I trust them to release me? Who was to say that they wouldn’t sell me to another group after they got what they wanted? Or that they wouldn’t just kill me, because now I knew them; I could recognize them, and tell the police where they were holding me. Khalid had promised he wouldn’t kill me, but could I really trust him not to? Was I being entirely naive about his real intentions? He had a commodity, and greed could easily overcome any sense of duty or promise he’d made to me. There were no laws here, no rules by which he had to abide. This was anarchy in its most primitive form. Khalid owed me nothing, despite his assurance that
he wouldn’t shoot me, and his promises to email me when I got back to Canada.

There was also Shafirgullah to contend with. I knew by now that Khalid could be influenced by his friend, and Shafirgullah struck me as the greedy one. I didn’t trust him at all. His dark little eyes always seemed to be glaring at me. He was the one who had sunk the knife into me on that first day. The cut on my right hand was deliberate. He wasn’t as kind as Khalid could be. He was simpler, not as smart, much less tolerant than his friend, and more likely to resort to violence, at least in my mind.

I was relieved that we couldn’t really communicate, since it was getting harder for me to hide my dislike of him. And I had already sensed that he was getting a little sick of me, which didn’t auger well if he had any say in the decision to release me.

I watched as he opened a package of cookies and started popping them into his mouth one after another. He threw the wrapper to the side and the shiny metallic paper caught the sun’s light. Khalid chased after it and reprimanded Shafirgullah, pointing up at the sky. Then he turned to me and tried to translate. “This paper,” he said, holding the foil wrapper in his hand. “It is… how you say…”

“Shiny?” I offered.

“Yes.” He nodded, pointing up at the sky. “Airplane—they may see from sky.” As if on cue, the sound of an airplane rumbled overhead.

“Get down!” Khalid ordered. I was already sitting, and he pushed my head down a bit farther. The plane’s engines could be heard for a while. Not a fighter jet, but a commercial plane, probably one of the Afghan airlines flying out of Kabul’s airport.

Khalid didn’t want to take any chances, and wouldn’t even let Shafirgullah stand until the plane was long gone.

“Khalid, they can’t see us,” I argued after the plane had passed. From ten thousand feet up, we couldn’t be more than specks hidden in the landscape. It was just an extension of his paranoia that someone would find us.

“Yes, they see,” he insisted.

I sighed. There was no arguing with him.

We waited all morning for the phone to ring. At one point, both Khalid and Shafirgullah took the batteries out of their phones and put them back in, to make sure they were working.

“Why don’t you call him,” I suggested. It was close to noon, and there was still no phone call.

“We wait,” Khalid said, frowning. “Abdulrahman will call us.”

The sun had moved directly in front of our spot, and it felt warm on my face. I shielded my eyes from it and looked down across the valley. Two people were walking up the other side. I could tell they were the same people who had been heading up the hill earlier by the colour of their kameezes. Except there were now only two of them instead of three. They were stopped, and it looked as if they were sitting on a plateau. They sat for what seemed like a very long time, and then one got up and walked off. The other person walked back down the hill. Again, I wondered who they were and what they were doing.

Shafirgullah was praying again, except this time he had a pocket Koran and was chanting directly out of it. It made me wonder if all those times in the hole he was just chanting the same thing over and over. I lit another cigarette and smoked half before stubbing it out and leaving the remainder on the rock beside me to smoke later.

Khalid was getting anxious. He kept looking at the alarm clock and then at his cell phone.

“Why don’t you call him?” I prodded again. He sat for a while, then punched a number into the phone.

“Salaam,” Khalid said. He spoke for a few minutes and then hung up.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Nothing. He wait for phone call too.”

I wondered if something had gone wrong. I surprised myself thinking this way. In the past, I had believed we shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers because it would just encourage them to continue their criminal activities. Easy to say when you’re not being held hostage. Still, whatever Khalid and his gang thought was going to happen today, it hadn’t happened yet.

“How long will we stay here to wait?” I asked.

“Maybe one day. But we cannot stay here long.”

“Why not? This is a better place than the hole.”

“It is not safe. Someone may find us.”

Shafirgullah had finished praying. He washed his hands with the last of the water in the jug. He said something to Khalid in Pashto and started walking down the hill with the empty container.

“He’s going to get more water?” I asked. Khalid nodded.

I felt a rumble in my tummy, and a wave of nausea washed over me. I held my stomach, hoping it would pass. It didn’t. It got worse and worse, and when I stood up, my head was spinning. I was sweating a cold sweat and my body started to shake. I barely made it around the corner of the boulder before I heaved and everything came out. I caught my breath just in time to retch again. I didn’t even notice that Khalid had come behind me and had put his hand on my back. “Mellissa, you are sick.”

I heaved again but nothing came out this time. Khalid was clearly worried. He led me back to the alcove in the rocks and we sat down. He patted my back. “You are sick, Mellissa.”

I nodded. I really didn’t feel well, and I could barely talk. Throwing up is a rarity for me. Something dirty had surely gotten
into my system. A steady diet of packaged cookies and packaged juice wasn’t all that risky, but the conditions around me were. Sanitation hadn’t exactly been a concern for my kidnappers.

Khalid’s hand was still on my back.

“I have to go home soon,” I said weakly.

His thick brow furrowed and he rubbed his temples with his fingers.

“I’ve missed an important doctor’s appointment already. I will only get sicker and you will not be able to find a doctor here who can help me.”

He sighed and turned to look at me. Eye to eye. The Khalid I’d known for the last three weeks seemed to be back. “What you want me to do? It is not my choice,” he said, somewhat apologetically.

“Tell me how to walk to Kabul from here. And just let me go. Please.”

Silence greeted that request.

I pressed on. “If I get sicker and die, you will not get what you want—and your father or friend in Pakistan will just be angry. You can let me walk away and tell him that I died. It won’t be your fault. And you know that letting me go home is the right thing to do. You don’t want to keep me here for much longer. You know it’s not right. You know I need to go home.”

He was deep in thought. He knew that as my captor, he could also be my liberator. It was up to him whether I remained caged or whether I got to fly free. “If…” he started. “
If
I let you walk to Kabul, what will I tell my friend in Pakistan?” he said, ignoring my suggestion. “He will be angry with me.”

“He is not your boss. You can make your own decisions. You’re the one who took me, Khalid. You took me. Not him. It’s not his choice. It’s yours. You know the right thing to do is to let me go to Kabul. You know this.”

He was still thinking, and lit a cigarette to highlight his pensiveness. I relit the half cigarette I’d left on the rock earlier.

“I take you. Yes. But my friend… he will be angry. With me. If you go, he might kill me.”

“He won’t kill you if you tell him I died. I was sick, and he didn’t finish my case soon enough. It is his fault.” I had to try to convince Khalid that he was in charge, not the man on the other end of the line in Pakistan.

“But—he will know you are not dying. You will tell police. You will tell about me. About Shafirgullah. And the newspaper will find out. And then my friend—he kill me.”
This is probably true,
I thought. Nevertheless, I had to convince him that no one would find out.

“I promise you,” I said earnestly. “I will not go to police. I will not tell police about you or Shafirgullah. I will just go to Kabul and then go to Canada. I will not talk to anyone. Not any reporters. No one. No one will know that you let me go.”

Khalid scratched his goatee. I knew he was thinking about it. I reached out and took his hand.

“Please, Khalid. Please. It is the right thing to do. I am your sister. You cannot keep me here longer if I am sick. You know it is the best thing for me. I promise I won’t go to police or tell anyone about you.” He looked long and hard at me. “Please—just tell me how to get to Kabul and I will start walking. You know it is the right thing to do. I know you, Khalid. You know I need to go home. You know this has been too long.”

I was pleading now, and he was listening. He looked torn—between his duty to his friend or father in Pakistan and meeting their criminal goals and his responsibility to his hostage.

“I need to go home to Canada, Khalid. My family, and my friends. They are so worried about me. They’re suffering a lot too. Think about if Shogufa was in my place. You would want her home
too, wouldn’t you? You would be thankful for the person who freed her. Please, Khalid. Please help me. I need to go.”

He took my hand and examined my scar.

“It is still hurt?” he asked. I nodded. He sighed. “I am sorry for you, Mellissa. I am sorry I take you.”

“Then let me go, Khalid. Please, let me go.”

He held my hand a little tighter and rubbed the back of it. He shook his head and sighed.

Shafirgullah, who was trudging back up the hill with a full jug of water, interrupted. He stopped short of where Khalid and I were sitting, aware, perhaps, that something serious was going on. Then he rushed over to us, speaking to Khalid in Pashto even before he reached us, gesturing frantically at something down below.

And in that instant, opportunity vanished. The two became engaged in deep conversation, Khalid was back into his role as head kidnapper, discussing something with his subordinate, and I was again his hostage, not someone he felt a tinge of guilt about. I bit my lip and tried hard not to cry. The phone call from Abdulrahman might still come, but the sun was starting to fade, and so were my hopes of being in Kabul by the end of the day. Khalid and Shafirgullah took a few steps away from me and continued their serious discussion, Shafirgullah looking back at me several times. I figured Khalid was telling him about our conversation. Shafirgullah kept shaking his head and glancing at me. Finally, Khalid walked back and sat next to me. I knew what he was going to say even before the words came out of his mouth.

“I am sorry. You cannot go to Kabul without me. I am sorry for you.”

That fucker Shafirgullah had talked him out of it. I looked down at the little Afghan and glared at him. His beady eyes were mocking me again. I wanted to run over and push him off the
cliff. Khalid had been thinking about just letting me go. I knew he had—I felt it—until Shafirgullah came back.

I sat there in stony silence. Khalid tried to reassure me. “Mellissa, I cannot let you go. You know—my friend will kill me. He will kill me if you are go.” I didn’t respond, just reached for the package of cigarettes and lit one. “I will call Abdulrahman. I call him now. Maybe I go to Kabul with you tonight.”

I calmly told him not to bother. I knew nothing was going to happen that night, and all I wanted to know was whether we were going to sleep out in the mountains for a second night. He didn’t know the answer.

For the next hour, we sat and waited. The afternoon was getting old. The days were getting shorter, and the sun would be setting soon. Across the valley, I could make out a figure walking slowly down the mountain. I kept looking and realized it was the same man I’d seen at dawn. He was carrying something on his back, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Perhaps it was a basket, and I imagined that he had walked to Kabul or some other town on the other side of the mountain and was now bringing home food to feed his family for the next week.