Under an Afghan Sky (5 page)

And then I’d been invited to the Canadian embassy for Thanksgiving dinner. And I was to fly back to Kandahar on Tuesday—in time to watch the Canadian elections back home. We had sent video of soldiers voting in advance polls the week before, and Canada’s mission in Afghanistan was somewhat of an election issue. And then… and then… and then…

I struggled with the pillow and tried to lie on my side, but felt a rock in my back. I started to think about my family. Who would tell them? I had put down my sister as my emergency contact on the forms for the military embedding program I had filled out before I’d set off for Afghanistan. It was very early Sunday morning Pacific time, and I didn’t want to think about my sister getting a call from someone in the middle of the night. The thought of my family and my friends being woken up to find out that I had gone missing made me feel sick to my stomach. As a journalist, I had interviewed countless family members of people who had gone missing—from the missing women of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, to hikers who had taken a wrong turn, to snowboarders who had gone out of bounds. The families always suffer tremendously when something bad happens, and I didn’t even want to think about mine back home in Canada, wondering where I was in this strange and dangerous country that had drawn me and so many other journalists, with its beautiful landscapes, stunning people, and always imminent dangers.

I had called my father from Kandahar just the night before. When he asked if it was safe, I told him, “Yes, Dad, though Kabul has always been safer than here in the south. Don’t worry. It will be okay. I’ll only be away for three days.” Now someone was going to have to call him and tell him I’d been kidnapped. I felt guilty, sad, and worried. I know it may sound strange to say I was worried about my parents being worried about me, but I couldn’t help it. The last thing they needed at their age was stress and anxiety about one of their kids.

My parents immigrated to Canada in 1976 when I was four and my sister was barely two. We settled in East Vancouver in the spring of 1977, and my father started his own business, the first travel agency in Chinatown, with his former colleague Joe Pong, from Hong Kong. He worked six days a week. My mother continued working with Qantas, the Australian airline, as a ticket agent in its Vancouver office. It was essentially the same job she had been doing in Hong Kong, where my sister and I were born. I remember how hard they both worked. They left early in the morning and came home late in the evening, while my mother’s parents—my beloved grandparents—took on the job of raising small children for the second time in their lives. We already had family in Canada, as my father’s brothers and sisters had all moved to Ontario for school and were now living in Mississauga and working in Toronto, but after spending six months out east, my father decided to settle on the West Coast.

We were renting a house near Southeast Marine Drive, and I went to kindergarten at a school close by. My parents love to tell me the story of their first parent–teacher meeting. My kindergarten teacher, a kind woman by the name of Mrs. Dirksen, feared that she had a mute child in her class. For the first three months there, I didn’t speak a word. Not one. I didn’t respond to questions; I just
stared at her and the other children and studied their interaction. Mrs. Dirksen told my parents, Kellog and Joyce, that if they didn’t start speaking to their daughter in English at home, I would never learn the language and my development in school could be delayed irreversibly.

Now, I’d already been to kindergarten in Hong Kong, where children start school at the age of three. I’d learned how to add and subtract and I knew my times tables in Cantonese, my first language, which I still use when I’m doing math in my head. My parents figured that I would learn English on my own, but they were afraid I’d lose my Chinese, so they continued to speak to me in Cantonese.

I continued to be mute in kindergarten for the next couple of months, and then one day I bravely found my English tongue. I raised my hand. “Can I please go to the bathroom, Mrs. Dirksen?” She couldn’t believe her ears when I started speaking in complete sentences, in unaccented English, asking questions about everything and anything. I suppose that’s how it started, my constant asking of questions, and my mother says I’ve never stopped.

My parents brought us up with an expectation that we would go to university, since neither of them did, and they stressed academics above anything else. Like many parents, they dreamed their daughters would grow up to be doctors or lawyers, or in my father’s case, accountants. “It’s the most reliable profession,” he used to tell me. “Everyone needs an accountant, whether they’re getting rich or going broke, and so you’ll always have work”

They got a lawyer out of my sister, but I don’t think they ever dreamed their eldest would become a journalist, covering a war in a crazy and dangerous place half a world away. And now the profession I’d chosen, and the job I loved, was about to shatter their comfortable world.

Lying in the darkness, I blinked back tears and tried hard to convince myself that they would be okay. My parents are pretty strong people; they had, after all, moved their young family to a foreign country, where they were forced to speak a language that was not their mother tongue, to meet new people, and raise their children in a different culture. They knew that I was strong and stubborn and a survivor.

I pulled out my rosary, which was buried deep in the pocket of my hiking pants.

I closed my eyes and repeated the Hail Mary nine times, running my fingers over each of the beads.

And then I repeated the rosary again and again and again. It was the only thing I could think of to do and the only thing I thought might help. It gave me something to focus on. I turned those beads over and over and over in my hand. My mother raised us Catholic (my father would probably call himself an atheist). She had even gone to the archbishop of Vancouver to get me admitted to an allgirls’ Catholic high school, after I failed the admissions exam—on purpose—by not writing the final essay. I was determined to go to the public high school with my friends, where I could play hockey
and travel with the orchestra (I’d been taking violin lessons for years). But it was not to be. My mother’s plea to the archbishop was successful, and gave me entrance to a high school education guided by nuns and a few great teachers who inspired me to achieve and pursue my dream to be a journalist.

Still, I try to go to church every Sunday, and it was only a week before that I had attended Mass with the soldiers in a small makeshift chapel at Kandahar Airfield. Canadian priests led the service every Saturday night, and I had been invited to go by Lieutenant Colonel Alain Blondin, the public affairs officer who worked with the Canadian journalists on the base. It was the first time I’d ever been in a church where people brought their guns and laid them at their feet while singing hymns and listening to scripture. I wouldn’t call myself a devout Catholic, but rather a person who has faith and believes in God, and going to church was my way of spending some quiet time with God once a week. Now, as I lay awake on the cold, hard ground, I realized that if I were ever going to get out of this hole alive, and see my family again, I would probably need a miracle. And I had better start praying.

Dearest M,

A few more details about what happened in the hours after you were taken. I’ve had a lot of calls and messages from your friends, and I spoke to your parents and your sister late on Sunday night. They were upset, but in control. We’re trying to keep this as quiet as possible, but we work for TV networks, and secrets spread furiously. I had a late call from [your girlfriend] Jen, who was almost hysterical. There was little I could do to calm her down. Everybody is very worried.

I spent what seemed like hours on the phone with people from CBC and CTV as the military started making plans to get us to Kabul. This was Sunday night. At first they said there was no chance of a military flight, but then a couple of hours later, we were told to pack up and be ready to go at nine.

As the night wore on, the flight kept being delayed. First it was nine o’clock, then eleven o’clock, and finally we were told we would be leaving at 2 a.m. We were getting frustrated, but too worried and anxious to feel tired. Al and I went back to the sleep tent to pack our clothes and I grabbed a few things of yours as well. It’s all with me now, and I’m waiting to give it to you, M. Please don’t disappoint me.

We finally loaded up the vehicle around 2 a.m. and drove to the other side of the airfield, where a Canadian Hercules was waiting, just off the road where we used to run in the mornings. I thought of that as we were pulling into the loading zone. I knew it would be a while before we would run around the base again. If ever. And that made me incredibly sad.

There were a lot of soldiers on the tarmac, all loading big knapsacks onto the back of the plane. I saw one of them putting on what looked like a portable ladder, and I began to think of them scaling walls to rescue you. Al and I were the only civilians on board, and just before we took off, one of the soldiers introduced himself and pulled a couple of sheets of paper out of his pocket. “Can you tell me if there’s anything missing from this,” he asked. On one sheet was a printed copy of your biography, and on the other, a couple of photographs downloaded from your Facebook page.

There was a spot of light on the wall behind Zahir’s head. I turned to see where it was coming from. There was a small opening—a pipe leading up to the ground to let air through, and a trickle of light. The opening on the outside was, I presumed, covered with rocks to hide it. Clever, I thought. Then I noticed a second pipe on the opposite side of the ceiling.

It was just after seven in the morning. I must have dozed off after all. I suddenly remembered that I had been holding my rosary. I felt around for it and found it underneath my leg. Breathing a sigh of relief, I tucked it back into my right pants pocket.

“You sleep?” Zahir was already awake.

“Maybe a little, yes,” I answered.

Zahir rubbed his back and grimaced. “Hard to sleep. Not good floor.” He sat up and reattached the wires to the battery. The light bulb buzzed and a dim glow illuminated the room.

I nodded. “When is Khalid coming back?” I asked. “He said he would come today.”

“They come—around twelve o’clock,” he answered. “They come, and then I go.”

“Zahir,” I pleaded, “I cannot stay here. You must help me. You must tell your father to call Canada and ask for the money soon. I cannot stay here. Please, Zahir, you must help me.” I must have sounded slightly hysterical. I could certainly feel myself becoming hysterical.

Zahir adjusted his skullcap and reached for the watering can by the wooden door. He poured some water onto his hands and washed his face, then motioned for me to do the same, which I did. When we were finished, he readjusted his position on the blanket and stared at me with his dark eyes.

“Yes. I will help you, Mellissa,” he said, “but my father is the boss.”

“Is he a nice man?” I asked.

Zahir shook his head. “He is… how you say… boss. We afraid of him.”

They were afraid of their father.
This does not bode well for me,
I thought. The mastermind in charge of this criminal operation, and the person who would ultimately be responsible for my release, for my life, was probably a mean and nasty person. I was not surprised, but I still felt slightly deflated.

“Two weeks here is even too long.” It was my turn to stare at the Afghan. Zahir held my gaze.

“I know, Mellissa. I am sorry for the trouble. I will ask my father. I will tell him to do this soon.”

“As soon as possible. I cannot stay here,” I pleaded again. “You must promise me.”

“Let me see,” he said, pointing at my shoulder. I nodded and he shuffled over to my side of the hole, then gingerly lifted my scarf and pulled away the collar of my bloodstained shirt to check the toilet-paper bandage he had put on my wound the night before.

“You have pain?” he asked, gently touching the tissue with his index finger.

“A little,” I said. The pink toilet paper was now hardened with dried blood. “Still bleeding?” I asked.

Zahir patted the wound. “We leave this,” he said, as if to say that it was okay.

I nodded, not even thinking about the risk of infection, and he sat back on his blanket. He reached for the plastic bag at his feet—beside my pillow—pulled out a box of chocolate sandwich cookies and offered it to me. I shook my head and watched as he opened the box, unwrapped the package, and took out four cookies for himself.

“Your English is very good, Zahir,” I said. “Where did you learn?”

“I went to school in Pakistan.”

“In Peshawar?”

“No, in the south, when we were younger. We learn Pashto, and Farsi, and English. You no understand Farsi?”

Farsi, the dominant language in Iran, is Persian and similar to Dari, the language most prevalent in the northern part of Afghanistan, while Pashto—the language of the Pashtuns—is more commonly spoken in the south. Most Afghans understand both. If my kidnappers were from the northern part of Afghanistan, running back and forth between here and Pakistan, it made sense that they would speak Dari as well.

I shook my head no in answer to his question.

“You speak English only?”