The Road Between Us (25 page)

As we drove that day I remember staring at a goatherd walking towards his flock and feeling sorry for the Afghan people. They didn’t deserve the Taliban …

Permission had been granted for our visit with reluctance, only after a representative from
the US
the Great Satan, a Harvard professor, was replaced with an apparatchik from the Arab League, a Jordanian. The multinational UNESCO team now included an expert on Buddhist antiquities from India, a French academic and a Dutch diplomat.

My wife Frejya hadn’t wanted me to go, but I had told her I had no choice. It wasn’t a complete lie. I had had my arm twisted by my friend and Foreign Office colleague Niall Campbell, who can be very persuasive. He had told me that the Foreign Secretary was taking a personal interest in the visit.
and that my participation would not go unrewarded. I took the job out of ambition, then, more fool

I remember I removed my tie at some point, wound down the window and breathed in the clean, incense smell of the desert. All around us was a rocky scrubland
devoid of trees and plants
. The only features were chunks of jagged stone that clinked against the bottom of the vehicle when dislodged. In the distance the mountains seemed higher now, their sharp edges fringed with what looked like pouches of snow.

I took from my wallet a photograph of myself with Frejya and Hannah, my nine-year-old daughter. We were sitting in a hollow on top of the cliffs at Doyden Point, our favourite place in Cornwall. For some reason, instead of putting it back in my wallet I slipped it into the pocket of my trousers. I was to have it with me for the duration of my captivity, though I could not see it.

As I had left the house that morning I had written ‘I love you’ on a sheet of paper and folded it repeatedly until it was a tight ball. ‘Don’t open it until I’m gone,’ I had said, handing it to Hannah. Frejya had looked almost disappointed that I hadn’t given her a note too, but her love message was waiting for her on our bed, written in items of clothing three feet long across the duvet.

I thought too of the

As we began to ascend, the road became bumpier, the Land-Cruisers swerving to avoid potholes. We were spiralling again, this time upwards towards the clouds. As we came out of each bend, we met a rising wall of red dust we had created going into it below. Occasionally the vehicle bellied with a crunching metal sound.

Twenty minutes later we crested the hill, and, for a second, I thought the ball of fire I could see in front of the convoy was the sun, but a compression of the air made clear it was an explosion. As the shock wave reached me, I watched the Land Cruiser at the head of the convoy lift several feet off the ground. Time seemed to slow and, when I saw a flash from the top of a gorge, I tracked, almost in a detached way, the RPG swerving towards us, trailing white smoke. A noise louder than sound seemed to fill the world to its edges, smothering the sun.

I don’t know how many hours passed before I came round, but when I did there was nothing to see. I widened my eyes until they ached in their sockets, but the blackness crowding me delivered no shapes.

I could feel the ground I was lying on. It was solid and cold and, like a blind man
groping
feeling with his hands, I groped for its contours, but there weren’t many and I remained staring into the dark, feeling disorientated and nauseous. Fear was scraping its claw down my back.

Feeling helpless, the helplessness of a trapped
fox
animal, I touched my own face and realized my cheeks were wet
with tears
. There was a ringing in my ears like tinnitus (sp?) and it took me some time before I noticed a dripping sound. I tried to sit up and focus on where it was coming from, but a pain in my right hip prevented me.

Remembering my watch – I thought its luminous face would give me a bearing – I felt for my wrist. But the strap was not there. I ran my right hand down over my left and felt for where my wedding ring should be. This had gone, too. I became aware of the coldness of my left foot and felt for that. I was missing a shoe. My trousers were ripped. About this time I realized I no longer had my jacket, wallet and mobile phone.

My head was burning and I felt dehydrated. Recalling the dripping sound, I concentrated on it in order to orientate myself, but it was hard to locate because of the echo. I was in some sort of light-locked chamber. A cave? I dragged myself towards the dripping and, as I did this, I realized my hip was injured, possibly dislocated.

Feeling a splash on my forehead, I held out my tongue and tasted the water. It had a metallic flavour, but it partially
quenched
relieved my thirst. I felt with my hand until I reached a vertical surface, a slimy wet rock face
worn smooth by the drips of water
. I rested my back against it and, feeling breathless, filled my lungs with air.

The dripping sounded too loud now, almost sinister. And the black silence between the drips seemed claustrophobic and close, like a pressure on my inner ear. I felt panic rising inside me, my intestines becoming a string of beads counted by icy fingers. I think I might have said ‘Hello?’ out loud a few times, as much as anything to hear a
human
voice.

Several hours passed, possibly a day, before the screaming started. Opening my eyes, I could see only the same thick, fleshy blackness as before, and then I realized the screams were coming from me. I had been asleep and the silence that was now pouring into the hole left by my own noise terrified me.

It was cold and the air was salty. I could feel panic mounting again as my eyes strained to penetrate the dark.
Then I could hear Pashto voices. I looked up, my heart
thumping
palpitating. They were coming from above me, which meant I was underground. My own voice began tentatively again, but soon I was shouting, asking who was there.

Then came the crunch of rock against rock. About twenty feet above me I could see a shaft of fuzzy light growing bigger to reveal a ragged opening in the ceiling, twice the size of a manhole. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes. The hole looked manmade, and didn’t open out on to daylight but rather on to something that looked like another chamber. A smell of kerosene suggested the light was coming from oil lamps, though I thought I could hear a generator somewhere in the distance.

I looked around and got more of a sense, through the gloom, of the dimensions I had until now only been able to guess at. I
was
in a cave, and it had sloping walls that met above me, where the hole was. There were
more
voices again, and a painful jab of torchlight in my face.

I said something I had learned in Pashto.
‘Salam? … Sho Ismak?’
Instead of answering, one of them directed the torch at a basket that was being lowered on a rope by the other. As my eyes adjusted again, I could see that both men were wearing black lungees (sp??) on their heads, which meant they were Taliban. The one holding the torch had a beard and a Kalashnikov hanging from his shoulder. He was wearing my watch. The other man had his face covered with a black and white
keffiyeh
(sp?) scarf. This, I remember thinking, might be a good sign. The man would not have bothered to cover his face if he was there to perform an execution.

I considered telling them my name, but already I was making
calculations
calibrations: perhaps they weren’t the Taliban and they didn’t know I was a British diplomat; perhaps I would be in less danger if it stayed that way.

I asked them what they wanted. This time there was a clinking sound followed by radio static and then some excited chatter on a walkie-talkie. I could now see a third, taller man looking down. His lank, bearded face
was uncovered
wasn’t covered
either
. He had calm and neutral eyes. Full lips. He was wearing a camouflage jacket.

The basket had reached the
cave floor
floor of the cave. Adopting an unthreatening posture, I edged towards it and saw it contained a chunk of unleavened bread, a bowl of rice, a spoon and a plastic bottle of water. I reached for it and, as soon as I’d taken the items out, the basket was pulled back up. The torch was shone across to the corner of the cave
. ‘Hammam,’
one of the men said. It means
loo
lavatory. My eyes followed its beam and took in two planks across a raised rock formation. I heard the scraping sound overhead again, and, as I looked up, saw the boulder was being rolled back over the hole.

The cave seemed even darker than it did before. Colder, too, and I found myself trembling. Only after I had been swearing for a few minutes to give myself courage did I regain my nerve and realize what I was doing.
I stopped and ground my teeth instead.
I remembered from the Foreign Office ‘Hostile Environment’ course (check name??)
I had been required to attend,
that it was important to remain calm. I also recalled that it was essential to retain your dignity. If your captors respect you, they will find it harder to kill you. Do not grovel, beg, or become hysterical. Try to establish a rapport. Make them humanize you.

I tried to work out how long I had been down there, but there were no markers. The only way I could calculate the passage of time was through my hunger. I remembered the food and, feeling for the pitta bread, took a bite. It was stale. The fullness of my bladder also gave me an indication of how much time had passed.

I groped in the direction of the two planks they had shown me, then moved on my hands and knees. I couldn’t find them at first. When I did, my hands could feel that there was a gap between them. The updraft of air meant a drop below. I stood to relieve myself and the length of time before the
piss
liquid splashed against a surface indicated that the pit was several yards deep. For a moment I wondered if this might offer a means of escape, but it seemed to be nothing more than a crack in the ground that led nowhere.

Feeling my stress levels beginning to rise again,
I tried to order my thoughts. I had been kidnapped. The Foreign Office would know I had been kidnapped. They would be having a Cobra meeting in Whitehall to consider their options.
Niall My friend and colleague Niall Campbell would be making a big fuss on my behalf.
In all probability they would have an SAS squad on standby to helicopter themselves in. My job was to stay calm and try and keep out of the crossfire when they came.

But then doubts crept in. How were the SAS going to find me? There were caves all over Afghanistan and I could be anywhere. In the north. The south. I could even have crossed the border into
Waziristan
Pakistan. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious for; it could have been days.

My thoughts returned to Frejya. She would have received the ‘next-of-kin’ phone call from the
FCO
Foreign Office. This would have set off a cycle of speculation and uncertainty for her. At least I knew what was happening to me, even if I wished I didn’t. Frejya would not have the same consolation. She would be wondering if I was dead, or being tortured, or if I was going to be executed. The thought of her facing these questions on her own filled me with guilt and anger.

(Should maybe have a section here about Frejya’s campaign in London … Niall to write??? Or get him to talk me through it??)

Not long after this I remember waking to a warm rain on my face. I looked up and saw the silhouette of a man urinating on me. I got out of the way and saw that he looked more like a boy of about
eleven
ten. As I spluttered and wiped my face, he laughed and shouted:
‘Haraam!’
It means ‘unclean’. But at least the boy had spoken to me.
At least I had had some human contact.

‘My name is Edward,’ I said. ‘What’s yours?’

The boy frowned.

‘Namey shoma chiyst?’
I tried instead.

Seeing the boy was wearing a football shirt – it looked like
Man U
Manchester United – I said: ‘David Beckham?’

The boy laughed, threw down some food, and then, as an afterthought, ran a finger across his neck. Another guard appeared, there was an argument and then the boy was cuffed across his head. Seemingly on his own, the man
guard
then pushed the boulder back over the hole and I had a sudden feeling of compression. Enveloped in darkness once more, I began shouting.

The image of the boy running his finger across his neck came back to me
and I started crying shaking again
. I knew that was how they killed infidels there, slitting their throats like sheep. I had once watched a man perform such Halal butchery behind a restaurant in Algeria, binding three legs together before feeling for the carotid (sp??) artery and drawing the knife across the ewe’s throat in one quick movement. As blood spurted out, the ewe took jerky breaths, eyes closed, its deflated chest trying to heave. Then it lay still for a minute before its free leg started to shudder violently.