Kidnapped by the Taliban (7 page)
Where had he come from? Was it a coincidence, or had he been told to be in this exact spot at this exact time?
When the boy was close, Hopeless spoke to him. Without a word the boy handed over his load and quickly disappeared. It angered me that the Taliban had so much control over this child and his life. Yet it was an all-too-common story.
The father of the Taliban movement was a veteran of the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, a Pashtun and Muslim fundamentalist named Mohammed Omar. In 1994, following the withdrawal of Soviet troops after its failed occupation, Afghanistan had descended into lawlessness and civil war. One day Omar was stopped and robbed by armed bandits at five roadblocks on a twenty-five-mile road between his village and Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city.
Omar was outraged. He organized a
Jirga
, or tribal council, of more than fifty area religious leaders. These men formed a militia with the goal of eliminating one checkpoint. When their lightly armed party chased off the bandits without a shot being fired, they advanced to the next checkpoint. Within a week all the roadblocks between Omar’s village and Kandahar had been cleared. Omar used the Pashto word for “students of Islam” to name his group:
Taliban
.
Soon after, Omar reportedly led thirty men armed with sixteen rifles to free two teenage girls who had been kidnapped and raped by a warlord, hanging the local commander from the barrel of a tank gun. More incidents like these led to support from a population weary of chaos and random violence.
Then Omar claimed to have had a dream telling him that Allah had chosen him to bring peace to Afghanistan. He found a ready supply of recruits for his new movement in madrassas—Islamic religious schools. When millions of Afghans fled their homes during the war against the Soviet Union, many ended up in refugee camps along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The young students here were taught a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam. They faced monotony and filth daily, with little promise for change. By comparison, Omar and the Taliban appeared to offer a life of excitement, hope, and meaning.
If the boy I’d just seen and others like him joined the Taliban, however, what hope did they really have? The Taliban may have brought order to Afghanistan, but their strict interpretation of Sharia law, brutal treatment of women, and dependence on violence to achieve their aims hardly seemed life-giving. I imagined that new converts would live not a life of peace but one of continuing aggression and terrorism. I was a doctor, trying to better equip people to deal with their medical
issues. How did kidnapping or killing me foster anything that could be called peace?
After the boy left, Hopeless removed the checkered scarf that was wrapped like a turban around his head and spread it out on the trail. Haqqani placed the boy’s water kettle in the middle and motioned for us to sit around it on the edge of the scarf. At least, it appeared, I would not die hungry.
The three Taliban sat opposite Rafiq, Farzad, and me so we faced one another in a tight circle. Hopeless then removed the cloth that covered a still-warm loaf of naan, tore off a chunk, and passed it on. Each of us in turn tore off a piece.
After a couple minutes of chewing, Hopeless looks at me and says via Rafiq’s translation, “Isn’t this the best naan you’ve ever tasted? This naan is even better than what’s served in the best restaurants in Kabul.”
I sense that Hopeless isn’t just making conversation. There is almost a challenge in his voice.
“Oh, this is so good,” I say. “Thank you very much.”
It
was
good, and I was genuinely grateful to stop and eat after so much walking. I also did not want to disagree or say anything that might offend these men.
It was strange to be sitting so close to Taliban warriors in these remote mountains and having an almost-cordial conversation. There was no talk of violence or of how we might be killed. Our captors talked instead about their life in the mountains. It was almost as if a group of old and new friends had gathered to share a meal.
My experience has shown me that hospitality is important to us
humans. We will go to great lengths to make our guests feel welcome. When I was growing up in India—perhaps the same age as the boy who had carried the naan—my parents and I went to visit a family whose father was dying of a chronic illness. The family had little; they barely could keep their roof together. While some of her children greeted us at the door, the family’s mother dashed out a back door. Understanding what was happening, my parents rushed in and tried to stop the mother, but they were too late.
The mother returned a few minutes later with a package of biscuits she’d purchased. Though she clearly could not afford to do so, this poor woman felt a strong obligation to treat us well.
Hospitality is equally important, if not more so, in Afghan culture—even, it seemed, among the Taliban. Nearly all Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns. The Pashtun people adhere to a code of conduct known as
Pashtunwali
. According to the code, it is a matter of honor to take care of one’s guests. Custom dictates that even an enemy, if he comes to your door and asks for refuge, must be protected as if he is a member of the family. An Afghan proverb states, “Honor the guest, O son. Even though he be an infidel, open the door.”
Rafiq, Farzad, and I now benefited from this practice. Though we were prisoners and though I, as an American, represented the “enemy,” they still were expected to sit down and break bread with us. It was a bit of comfort at a time when any positive sign was welcome. When no one was looking, I stuffed a piece of naan into my pocket. If I survived this ordeal, I wanted a token to remember this moment, a small piece of evidence that I had been treated well.
The naan helped fill my stomach, but I was desperately thirsty. Had I known we would be hiking for so long, I certainly would have made an effort at our first stop to screen out any nasty parasites and
drunk heartily from the pool. While we ate, I eagerly kept my eye on the boy’s water kettle.
Soon each of the three Taliban picked up the kettle in turn and took a long gulp from the wide opening on top. When Ahmed offered it to me, I gratefully and carefully lifted the kettle above my head and poured water into my mouth from the spout. I didn’t want to miss a drop and, still concerned about parasites, also wanted to avoid putting my mouth on the kettle itself.
I was startled by a burst of laughter and comments from all three of my captors. Apparently the sight of this foreigner and his strange method of drinking water amused them greatly. A little sheepishly, I grinned back at them. It was embarrassing to be the butt of a joke but also encouraging. For those few seconds, at least, I felt they weren’t looking at me as an enemy or a piece of property. We’d made another unexpected human connection.
Though it seemed unlikely, I desperately hoped that these men would allow me to also connect again with the people I cared about most.
9:10
A.M
., W
EDNESDAY
C
OLORADO
S
PRINGS
, C
OLORADO
AFGHANISTAN IS ELEVEN AND A HALF HOURS AHEAD OF Mountain Standard Time. At nearly the same moment I was drinking from a water kettle in front of my three Taliban captors, my boss, Daniel, was at his desk in his second-floor office at Morning Star in Colorado Springs. He jotted down a few notes, items he planned to bring up at the staff meeting later that morning.
The phone rang. It was Roy, Morning Star’s director of operations in Kabul.
“Daniel, I need to let you know that Grace and I were supposed to have dinner with Dilip at five tonight,” Roy said. “We hadn’t heard anything from Dilip or Rafiq and had been trying to reach them for over two hours. Then, a few minutes ago, a cousin of Rafiq’s came to the door. He just left. He says his family received word from someone in Pul-i-assim that Dilip, Rafiq, and Farzad were kidnapped by the Taliban.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“None of that is official,” Roy said. “I haven’t been contacted by
the Taliban or anyone else. It’s still possible that they’ve been detained by someone, and this is just a misunderstanding. I don’t know any more than that at this point.”
“Okay,” Daniel said. “I’m about to go into a meeting. Let’s plan to talk after I’m out about how we can respond and about setting up a crisis management team.”
After hanging up the phone, Daniel stared out his window, seeing but not seeing his view of undeveloped hills and, in the distance, upscale homes set amid a thick green growth of Ponderosa Pines.
Okay, what does this mean? That their vehicle broke down somewhere and they don’t have cell phone coverage. Or that they’ve been temporarily detained.
Or that they really have been kidnapped.
There weren’t many other options.
Daniel wondered if he should alert his staff at the meeting in a few minutes.
No
, he decided.
We don’t have enough information yet. There’s no reason to get the rumor mill started.
He sighed as he got up from his desk. He’d always believed that if anything like this were to happen to someone at Morning Star, it would happen to him. To hear that colleagues and friends might be in mortal danger was a terrible feeling.
His mind was already racing ahead to potential responses. Without any word from the missing staff members or the supposed kidnappers, however, there was little he could do.
I hope they’re okay
, Daniel thought.
I just hope they’re okay.
10:00
P.M
., W
EDNESDAY
M
OUNTAIN
R
ANGE
E
AST OF
K
ABUL
, A
FGHANISTAN
I COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT AFTER NEARLY SEVEN HOURS WE were still walking. My legs were so heavy, on the verge of pain. I’d noticed Rafiq struggling to catch his breath during our rare two-minute breaks, and I could even hear Haqqani breathing hard behind me. At least my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight, making it easier to avoid tripping on the trail.
Among our trio of captives only Farzad seemed unaffected by the strenuous pace. He was clearly the most fit of the three of us. He had fought with the Afghan National Army during the early years of the Soviet intervention and apparently had kept up with his physical training. I knew Farzad was a brave man. Would he attempt to escape? Only later did I learn that he was indeed watching for an opportunity to turn the tables on our kidnappers. He hoped that if he found a way to immobilize two of them, Rafiq and I would take the initiative to subdue the third.
A half hour before, another dark structure had come into view. I’d wondered if someone really lived here in the middle of nowhere.
I scanned it closely for any sign of light or life but saw nothing. Our captors ignored it.
I can’t believe we’re passing another opportunity to stop
, I thought.
Why are we still walking? Where are they taking us?
I’d made my peace with God, but the endless hike and the uncertainty over our fate were wearing me down physically and emotionally.
Now I fought to keep up with the relentless pace. Suddenly the landscape ahead of us flattened for about a hundred yards. As we stepped into this new terrain, however, I realized it was anything but even. It had furrows—a farmer had plowed this barren land and planted crops.
Someone had gone to considerable effort to bring life to this place. I remembered my conversation about
Zakah
with Rafiq. It was a shame that this farmer, whoever he was, likely had to give up a good portion of his profit to fundamentalists. I wondered what crop lay beneath my feet. I’d heard that in some cases, the Taliban didn’t allow rural Afghans to grow crops at all unless they were poppies. The heroin trade was far more lucrative than wheat.
The temperature in the mountains had dropped into what felt like the midtwenties. Puffs of white floated up from my mouth with each breath. Even so, I wasn’t particularly cold. Each of us, captives and kidnappers, wore the traditional
salwar kameez
, which by itself wouldn’t be much protection in this weather. But I also had long johns on my legs and a black insulated jacket with a hood.
If only my legs could hold up. How long would this go on? How long would it be before Rafiq or I collapsed from exhaustion?
Another hour passed, then most of another. It must have been close to midnight when the line ahead of me suddenly halted. Rafiq, Farzad, and I sat down immediately, along with Ahmed. Hopeless,
meanwhile, walked forward another thirty feet to a ledge that overlooked a valley below.
“Wallakah!” he cried. Haqqani, near me, joined in with a shout of his own. Exhausted, I closed my eyes.
Crack!
After hours of near silence the gunshot seemed deafening. Startled, I looked up at Hopeless standing on the ledge with his Kalashnikov raised in the air.
Crack!
“Wallakah!”
The shots and shouts of that one word by Hopeless and Haqqani went on for ten minutes. Clearly they were trying to signal someone. Was it one person? A gang of Taliban? An entire village? What was the plan?
Both the shouts of the Taliban and my questions went unanswered. But I was grateful for the chance to rest my weary legs. I was too tired to worry about what would happen next.
All too soon, our captors gave up on making contact with anyone. The long hike continued. We’d now been walking for nearly nine hours.
Under different circumstances the sight of soft, white moonlight blanketing these rolling hills would have conveyed a sense of serenity. My legs, however, felt anything but serene. The sensation was closer to a blaze that had ignited in the bottom of my feet and was steadily spreading to the rest of my body. I desperately yearned for a place to rest for the night.