Under an Afghan Sky (40 page)

To my editor, Jim Gifford, whose patience and steady guidance helped me through a long and at times difficult writing process, my eternal gratitude. Your insight and talent are evident throughout these pages. And to my copy editor, Judy Phillips, for your critical eye and strong sense of story. Thank you for making me a better writer.

To Perry Zimel, my manager, my dear friend, who took care of so much for me when I returned, I cannot thank you enough. You are right. There is a reason for everything.

To family—my sister, Vanessa; and my parents, Joyce and Kellog—I am humbled by your strength and courage and love, and I cannot thank you enough for what you endured because of me.

To my amazing friends—in particular, Kelly McClughan, Jen Barr, Kas Roussy, Marie Morrissey, Angela Naus, Maureen Taylor, Jen and Brian Burke, Denelle Balfour, Stefani Langenegger, Coreen and Mal Moore, Shelley and Gerry Thue—you were my pillar of strength for four weeks, and you continue to be there for me. I am lucky to be surrounded by so much love.

To the “war room” at the CBC in Toronto, and everyone who worked tirelessly for my release, thank you for your dedication,
your long hours, and all those sleepless nights. A special thank you to Hubert Lacroix. Your generosity and caring toward my parents while I was gone will never be forgotten.

To Paul, who lifts me up and gives me so much, and who inspires me to be better every day, you have lived this story a thousand different ways. I would not be here, and this book would not have been written, without you.

And to the members of the Canadian Forces—those who’ve come home, those who haven’t, and those who continue the mission in Afghanistan—and their families, you are all the true heroes. You inspire and remind us every day that the world
can
be a better place. We cannot thank you enough for your sacrifice.

MELLISSA FUNG
has been a reporter for CBC Television since 2003. As a national correspondent, she has covered numerous topics on both Canadian and world affairs, including the Robert Pickton trial and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She was sent on assignment to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 and was abducted during her second tour. Fung divides her time between Toronto and Washington, D.C.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

“Richly detailed.”—
The Globe and Mail

“Engrossing…. What makes this book so affecting… is not any Hollywood-style drama or tension, but a rather unexpected and touching relationship she builds with one of her abductors.” —
Winnipeg Free Press

“It’s a powerful, warts-and-all study of how someone stays together in an unimaginable situation rife with incessant self-questioning and ‘what-if’ scenarios: Could she strangle her sleeping captor while he stores? Would she be able to get out of the whole under her own steam?… Fung invites us into her own worst nightmare, providing honest reflections on her own strengths and limitations…. [A] courageous contribution to the written history of the past decade.” —
Quill & Quire

“There’s a wonderful tension in
Under an Afghan Sky
between the wide-eyed curiosity, innocence, decency, resilience, and compassion of the narrator and the reader’s sense of peril in the suffocating confinement, the ever-present likelihood of murder, and the backdrop of a fundamentally irrational conflict. I came away feeling that anybody but Mellissa would probably have perished and that she survived because of the strength of her character, which certainly surprised some of her kidnappers. I was totally captivated.”—Linden MacIntyre, author of
The Bishop’s Man

“Grabbed at gunpoint, stabbed in the shoulder, knifed in the hand, thrown in an underground hole for twenty-eight days, and yet Mellissa Fung never stops being a reporter. Fung puts you in that awful, dark, rancid hole with her, and lets you listen in as she never stops confronting her kidnappers. Vivid in its detail, dramatic in its conversation,
Under an Afghan Sky
is riveting journalism, and guess what? There’s even an endearing love story that runs throughout the book.” —
Peter Mansbridge

“When I reached Mellissa Fung by telephone in Kabul, shortly after her release, we spoke at great length, like two sisters. The account she has written about the twenty-eight days of captivity is striking, because it gives us the full measure of her strength, which was put to the test, and her humanity.” —Michaëlle Jean

“Mellissa Fung’s vivid portrait of the soul of a journalist even in the most terrifying of circumstances is a recognition of the never-yielding human spirit. When we follow our calling it can save our lives. Her experience is an example of this.” —Sandra Oh

“In
Under an Afghan Sky,
Mellissa Fung touches on some difficult issues and does not divide the world into the two realms of good and evil. As she tells of the long days and nights she spent with her captors in a hole in the ground, we get to know them as the flawed human beings that they were, desperate individuals who had been pushed to the edge by war, poverty, and political and religious extremism. This is an important book that can lead the reader to a better understanding of a very complicated country.”
—Marina Nemat, author of
Prisoner of Tehran
and
After Tehran

Cover photo of landscape: Elisabet Zeilon/Glasshouse Images
Cover photo of Mellissa Fung: Paul Workman
Author photo: Paul Workman

Under an Afghan Sky
Copyright © 2011 by Mellissa Fung.
Excerpts from the diaries of Paul Workman © 2011 by Paul Workman.
Reproduced by permission of Paul Workman.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 978-1-443-40826-4

Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in a hardcover edition: 2011
This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2012

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8

www.harpercollins.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Fung, Mellissa
Under an Afghan sky : a memoir of captivity / Mellissa Fung.

ISBN 978-1-55468-681-0

1. Fung, Mellissa—Captivity, 2008. 2. Hostages—Afghanistan—Biography. 3. Hostages—Canada—Biography. 4. Journalists—Canada—Biography. 5. Afghan War, 2001– —Personal narratives, Canadian. I. Title.
DS371.43.F86A3 2012 958.104’7092 C2012-900726-9

RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1 Auckland,
New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com