Under an Afghan Sky (39 page)

We entered a wooded area outside the town. Someone said something in Pashto, and Khalid pushed my shoulder down. I sat down, along with everyone else, so that we were sitting in a circle on the ground. I could saw Abdulrahman rooting through my knapsack—for about the tenth time. He pulled out my notebooks and flipped through them. Someone lit a cigarette, and I asked for one as well. Khalid lit one and put it in my hand. I promised myself it would be the last cigarette that would touch my lips and then I took a deep breath and blew out a stream of smoke. Khalid was also smoking, and so was the guy with the lazy eye.

“I’m cold,” I told Khalid. “How much longer are we walking?”

He sighed. Maybe one hour, he said, maybe two. Khalid put a coat on me. It was a large green camouflage jacket, so big that the shoulders drooped over my arms. Still, it was better than nothing. The night was young, and it would only get colder.

Someone was talking on a cell phone just beyond the circle. He called out something and Khalid told me we had to get up. “We must go,” he said, yanking me to my feet. Shafirgullah followed, and I could feel the barrel of his gun in my back. I got up and allowed myself to be led, up and down and through more grape fields, walking at one point along a ledge of some sort with a shallow drop down to what looked like a field with a house in a distance.

We finally made our way to a paved path of some sort. I sensed that we had lost several of our entourage.

“We are angry,” Khalid said to me. “Tell me why we not kill you now?”

“Why would you want to kill me?” I was completely confused.

“Because! I am getting nothing from you!” Getting nothing for me? He wouldn’t release me for nothing. Was he trading me to someone else?

“What? You are lying,” I challenged him. “You are lying. You wouldn’t be letting me go without getting something for me.”

“We get nothing for you, do you hear me?” He was almost yelling now.

“I don’t understand. Then why are you letting me go?” I asked this mostly because I wanted confirmation that I was being released.

“I should not promise not to kill you,” he said bitterly. “I get nothing now.”

I still didn’t understand what was going on but decided it was probably better not to ask too many more questions.

After several minutes on the path we stopped, and they took off my blindfold, satisfied that we were far enough away from the hole that I would not be able to recognize the route back. Hell, I didn’t want to know how to get back, I was so happy to leave it.

It was a clear night, not as spectacular as that night up on the mountain, but the air was crisp and the moon was high. We were on a narrow path lined on the right with trees that had shed their leaves, and to the left were hills, quite a distance away. Ahead, I could see more hills and several spots of light—houses, I presumed, set into the slopes.

Khalid still held onto my elbow, even though I could see, and guided me as we continued walking. “Mellissa,” he said quietly after a little while. “You do not hate me, okay?”

“Hate you?” I asked.

“Do not hate us. Okay?”

“Why would I hate you?”

“Because we take you. We hurt you. I sorry you were here so long, Mellissa.”

“I don’t hate you, Khalid. You do what you do for whatever your reasons are. I’m just sorry for you. You live in this country that is torn apart by war.”

We kept walking, and he looked at me. “You not angry with me?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “I’m not angry. I forgive you.” The words came out of my mouth before I’d had a chance to think about them. But I realized I’d forgiven him a long time ago, almost from the first week. It was true. My kidnappers were just a gang of simple thieves, trying to survive the only way they knew how, caught between the Taliban and the police. It wasn’t right what they did, by any means, but it wouldn’t do me any good to hold a grudge, or to be angry, or forever resentful of what they had done to me.

“You not hate me?” he asked again.

“No, I forgive you,” I told him.

It was just the four of us now, walking this path through the Afghan countryside. Abdulrahman walked ahead, and Shafirgullah followed behind. We came upon a construction site where it looked like a road was being built. I thought it must be the one they had told me about the first week, being built by Chinese workers.

All of my kidnappers were armed, alert, and at the ready, should someone or something pop out and surprise us. Shafirgullah ran ahead and jumped into the construction site, looking around before waving us over. Abdulrahman said something in Pashto, and the two of them pointed to a house in the distance. It was lit, but far enough away that whoever might be inside would
not be able to make out four lonely figures making their way across the landscape.

We continued on. It was getting colder, and Khalid seemed concerned that I was becoming tired. We stopped for a while, and Abdulrahman made a call on his cell phone while Shafirgullah guarded the perimeter around us. Abdulrahman finished his call and gave us the signal to continue walking.

“Mellissa,” Khalid said. “When you go to Kabul, you not tell police about us, okay?”

“I’m probably not going to see any police,” I replied.

“They ask you who take you, you tell them—Khalid. Okay? No Abdulrahman, no Shafirgullah, okay? You say ‘Khalid,’” he instructed.

“Khalid isn’t your real name, is it?” I asked. He didn’t respond, but I knew he wouldn’t say it was okay to tell the police I was with “Khalid” if that were his name. “What’s your real name? Hezbollah?” I pressed.

“You just say ‘Khalid.’ You understand?”

“Okay. No Abdulrahman. No Shafirgullah. Just Khalid.”

We were now walking up a small hill on the paved road. I could see the faint outlines of a house on our right, a dim light the only other hint of its presence in the dark. I wondered if there was electricity out here, or if it was just a candle. I wasn’t sure if there was even electricity in the town we had come from.

“Are you really going to email me?” I asked Khalid. He turned and looked at me. The man who had taken me from the refugee camp four weeks earlier suddenly looked like a young boy.

“I will not forget you, Mellissa,” he said.

I felt a strange sense of calm as we continued walking. I wasn’t sure where we were going or who we would be meeting, but Khalid’s earlier instructions suggested that they were taking me somewhere
where I might come into contact with the police. Maybe today really was freedom day after all. I still didn’t want to get my hopes up, just in case I was being handed over to some other group, but either way, I felt at peace. If, at the end of the walk, I would be handed over to someone else, I knew in my heart I was ready for it. If I was being released, I was more than ready to go home.

I wondered, though, if the authorities would try to arrest my kidnappers. Wouldn’t they be afraid of turning me in if the police were involved? Would there be a confrontation? A shootout? No, impossible! They knew what they were doing. They would not let me go if they were afraid of walking into a trap.

I was just wondering how this was going to work when Shafirgullah cocked his gun and motioned for us all to get down. Khalid pushed me to the ground, and then forced me to crouch behind a bush.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered. He put his finger to his lips. What were my kidnappers afraid of running into? If I was being handed over for release, they would be wary of running into other groups, like the Taliban.

I watched from my spot behind the bush as Shafirgullah and Abdulrahman checked the area around us, their guns cocked and ready. A few minutes later, Abdulrahman gave the all-clear and we resumed our trek.

In the far distance—kilometres away, I could make out what looked like a city. I wondered if it was Kabul. It was impossible to tell because it just looked like a glowing speck off in the distance. Although our pace had slowed, Khalid was still holding my arm. Shafirgullah was now walking behind us, Abdulrahman in front.

The path that we were walking on had morphed into a road wide enough for vehicles, with an embankment on one side. Through the darkness, I could make out a black SUV. And then
I saw them. Lined up on the embankment, dark figures—men in black with guns—two, three, four, five, six—I stopped counting.

Abdulrahman came to a standstill. Two men stood in front of the SUV. One wore a turban, the other a dark suit. The fat Afghan cocked his gun, and one of the men waved him away.

To my surprise, Abdulrahman then greeted the men with a hug. “Salaam,” he said.

“Salaam,” they answered.

The men exchanged a few words, then the one in the suit gestured toward me. Abdulrahman turned to Khalid and me and motioned for us to come to him. Again to my surprise, Khalid let go of my arm and pushed me forward.

“Go! Goodbye!” he said.

I couldn’t move. I tried holding onto Khalid’s hand, but he pushed me away toward Abdulrahman.

“Goodbye, Mellissa! Go!”

I took a tentative step forward. Abdulrahman was still waving me over. I took another step. Impatiently, my captor stepped back and grabbed my arm, hauling me toward him and the two men.

“Hello,” the man in the suit said to me.

“Hello,” I replied. “Who are you?”

His English wasn’t good. Abdulrahman answered that his name was Haji Janan. “He is an important person,” the fat Afghan said in English, and then translated that into Pashto for the others. They laughed, and Haji Janan took my hand. “We go,” he said, leading me to the waiting black SUV.

I looked at Abdulrahman and then to Khalid, who had stepped farther back.

“You go,” Abdulrahman said. “Kabul!”

Haji Janan opened the passenger door to the SUV. I climbed in, and he followed. The man in the turban got in the other side, so that
I was sitting between them. The driver started the engine. I could still see all those figures, standing on the embankment, dressed in black and holding rifles, poised and ready to shoot. And as we drove down the hill, I saw that there were dozens of them lining the road—for at least a kilometre or two. Plus about a dozen other SUVs on the side of the road, which, as we drove past them, pulled out and followed us.

I turned to the man in the suit. “Where are we going?” I asked.

He didn’t seem to understand.

“Are we going to Kabul?” I tried again.

This time, he recognized the word “Kabul” and nodded. “Yes! Kabul!”

It was what I had been waiting for. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The two Afghans on either side of me were speaking to each other and laughing. The man in the turban pulled out his cell phone and started making calls, speaking in loud, excited Pashto.

I suddenly realized I had to call someone. I asked Haji Janan if I could borrow his cell phone. He happily handed it to me. His screensaver was a drawing of a red rose.

“Call anybody!” he told me.

I punched in the numbers for Paul’s Afghan cell phone.

No answer. How could that be?

I tried again. Maybe I had dialed the numbers wrong. Still no answer. Maybe he’d left the country.

I tried a third time. No answer. Where was he? I had to call someone, had to let someone know that I was free and alive.

Haji Janan took the phone back and made a quick call. I could hear a man’s voice on the other end of the line. He handed the phone back to me when he was done.

“Can I dial long distance?” I asked.

“Call, call!”

I punched in the numbers most familiar to me—the ones I’d been dialing for more than thirty years. I could hear faint ringing, and I tried to adjust the volume. After three rings, I heard a voice.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

There was a pause.

“Mui?” he asked, using my Cantonese nickname.

“Hi, Dad, it’s me. I’m okay. I’m so sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. I’m okay. I’m on my way home.”

It’s been months since that night in Kabul, and I’m back in my happy place in Kelly’s condo in Tofino. I’ve been back at work as a journalist for the CBC for a while, and I’ve been surfing and savouring my freedom, but the memories of my time in the hole are still vivid and sometimes haunt my dreams. Which is one of the reasons why I decided to write this story.

I was taken that night to the office of the head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh, who greeted me by telling me that not a penny had been given to my kidnappers in exchange for my freedom.

We spoke at length in his office, surrounded by his aides, as we waited for the Canadian ambassador to come and get me. He asked me to describe my kidnappers, and where I had been held (as it turns out, the village was Maidan, in Wardak province). He nodded knowingly as I spoke, and I could tell he knew who they were. I later found out that he had arrested the mother, the brother, and the sister-in-law of Khalid’s “friend” or father in Peshawar, as they were trying to cross the border into Pakistan. They were thrown in jail the day that Khalid came to put the chains on me. It was a straight trade: my kidnappers released me in exchange for
the authorities’ guarantee that the mother would be released from prison simultaneously.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, called me while I was in Saleh’s office to tell me how happy he was that I had been released. Like Saleh, he reiterated that not a cent had been paid for my release. Prime Minister Stephen Harper also called me later that night. I don’t remember much of that conversation, but I do remember congratulating him on his election victory.

To my great dismay, I was told that Shokoor and his brother had been arrested and jailed, the only suspects the Afghan police could come up with in my disappearance. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard, that our trusted colleague was a suspect, especially after I’d been so afraid that my kidnappers would hunt him down while I was in captivity. The Canadian ambassador at the time, the wonderful Ron Hoffmann, was trying to negotiate Shokoor’s release, and I didn’t want to leave the country until I knew that he was okay, but his freedom didn’t come until two weeks after mine.

The ambassador opened up the embassy to me—and to Paul, who was still in Kabul waiting for my release. He met me at the embassy that night. It turned out that the negotiators wouldn’t let him answer his phone that last day. Even though the Afghan authorities had agreed to release the mother of Khalid’s “friend” or father, the people who were holding me were still trying to squeeze the negotiators for money. They called several times, threatening to kill me unless they got it.

I learned that the CBC had set up a negotiating team in a local guest house. Jamie Purdon, my immediate boss, flew in from Toronto, as did Margaret Evans, the talented and experienced CBC correspondent from Jerusalem. There was a team from our security firm, AKE, and the CBC had brought in a second security company
as well—the British-based Control Risks, who specialize in kidnapping and ransom. The group in Kabul communicated on a constant basis with a team at CBC headquarters in Toronto, who were set up in a boardroom dubbed the “war room,” which was staffed twenty-four hours a day for the twenty-eight days I was gone.

Paul and I spent three days at the embassy, trying to decompress. Ron’s cook, Linus, made me cheeseburgers and taught me how to make mantu, the delicious meat-filled Afghan dumplings, which I ate hungrily.

There was a contingent from the RCMP to meet me as well. The kindly Al McCambridge had the difficult job of debriefing me about my experience, and then escorted us out of the country on a Pamir flight to Dubai days later. My sister and Kelly flew to Dubai to meet me and take me back to North America, where I would be reunited with my parents. I’m still amazed at how strong they were through their ordeal.

My last image of Afghanistan was through that airplane window. I remember looking down at the mountains as we flew south, wondering if that was the peak where we had hiked to that night, and what my kidnappers were doing at that moment, where they were. As the plane climbed higher, I thought about the soldiers down there who were still fighting the war, still trying to make a difference. I wondered what had happened to the little girl in the pink and black scarf I’d met outside the PRT in Kandahar.

And I hoped I would be able to come back someday, to what might be a better, safer place, not just for me, but more importantly, for children like her.