Under an Afghan Sky (28 page)

“Khalid,” he answered, nodding. “Hezbollah.”

It figures, I thought, that Khalid wasn’t his real name. Neither could Hezbollah be his name. Although it seemed kind of fitting that a would-be terrorist like Khalid would take the same name as the Lebanese militia organization. It’s true what they say about one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter. Fortunately for me, my kidnappers were neither. They were a young band of crude criminals who used fundamentalist Islamist ideology as an excuse to commit petty crimes. Well, kidnapping may not be such a petty crime, but I might have had more respect for them if they were truly willing to die for their beliefs. However, it seemed that for them, religion was simply an excuse to indulge in thuggery.

Of course, I would be in serious trouble if they were truly Al Qaeda or Taliban because then I would be a political prisoner, and they’d not hesitate to behead me in front of a flag. And that I definitely didn’t want. I thought about Daniel Pearl, the
Wall Street Journal
reporter who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda militants and then brutally beheaded—on tape—after several other videotapes were made of him denouncing the United States. Just the memory of what happened to him sent chills up and down my spine. I said a quiet thank you to God that my kidnappers were just a gang of petty thieves.

Shafirgullah seemed to have gotten over his earlier apprehension. With the footsteps now long gone, his appetite returned. He opened a box of chocolate cookies and ate every crumb, then half of another box. And then he picked at some dry bread a few days old. All washed down with two boxes of cherry juice.

I wondered if he was right, or telling the truth, that I would be released on Sunday. The thought had me excited, and as much as I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I let my mind go crazy for a while. How would I be let go? I hoped they wouldn’t just dump me
off at the village, to find my own way back to Kabul. I had no cell phone—it was doubtful mine would be returned to me—no way to contact anyone, and God forbid I should be kidnapped again as I was trying to get back to the capital.

No, Khalid had told me before that they always dropped off their hostages at the place from where they were taken. So that would mean the refugee camp. I imagined riding back to Kabul on the back of the motorcycle, or even riding halfway back before the long-haired Afghan drove us the rest of the way in his beat-up blue car. We’d get to the camp and then what? Would they just leave me at the gates? Would someone be there looking for me? Would the ANP be lying in wait, ready to pounce on my kidnappers as soon as I was safe? I imagined Khalid resisting arrest, and being gunned down in a hail of bullets by Afghan officers trying to make a show of force. No, I thought, it was more likely he would let me walk back to the camp on my own, let me walk off into the night, making sure I was okay from the safe confines of the car.

I tried not to get too excited, but hope was all I had. Earlier, I had barely been able to imagine staying in the hole another day, but suddenly, four more days didn’t seem so bad. I’d already been there for sixteen. What’s another four? There would just be a little more dirt to scrub off at the end of it all. And boy, did I need a good scrub.

I flipped through the pages of my notebook to my calendar. Today was October 29. Sunday would be November 2, two days before the US election. Good, that meant I would be able to watch results somewhere. It was going to be such a historic night, and I didn’t want to miss it. Barack Obama was most probably going to be elected the first black president in American history. I wanted to witness it, even from faraway Afghanistan, the place that would likely define his foreign policy for the next four years.

So this was good. I figured if I was released on Sunday night, Monday would be full of official obligations—after being reunited with Paul, I would likely have to speak with the Canadian ambassador, and meet with the Afghan police to debrief them. Then maybe Paul and I could get a military flight on Tuesday back to Kandahar, where I could collect my belongings, and we’d be on a flight back to Dubai on Wednesday, two weeks later than scheduled.

Methodically, I went through the dates. I probably wouldn’t get back to Canada until the week of the tenth, and I’d go through Vancouver to see my parents and reassure them I was okay. I’d spend a week with them, before heading to Regina to start the moving process. That would put me into the last week of November. I then had to get to Toronto and find a place to live, but it was definitely doable.

Then it would be December. And Christmas was just around the corner. I had missed my friend Kas’s Christmas party the year before, and I was thinking perhaps I could persuade her to have another one this year. A cocktail party, and I would do all the cooking. Yes, that would be the perfect way to celebrate my freedom—surrounded by my family and friends.

I started planning in my head, making a menu and drawing up the guest list. But I’d better let Kas know first. I flipped to the second-to-last empty page in my notebook and started writing.

Hey dude,

It’s about eleven at night here in my little space, and I need to run something by you. First of all, I’m okay. I know you and the girls are probably really worried about me, but please try not to be. I hope you are having lots of drinks for me back home. I’m still moving to Toronto, inshallah, in time for Christmas—and I’m making some plans for us. You know your Christmas party last year? The one I missed? I’m hoping we can do it again—at your loft—and I’ll cater it.

We’ll do all your favourite things, turkey meatballs, but we’ll do them as hors d’oeuvres, with toothpicks. Then we’ll do a brie, wild mushroom, and caramelized onion pizza, cut into wedges. And then I’ll make those little crab cakes I made at Moe’s. Oh, and maybe those little spinach and feta pies. I can do those in advance with puff pastry and freeze them, and we’ll bake them in your kitchen. And green onion cake, the ones I get in Chinatown, but I’ll top them with a dill crème fraîche and smoked salmon. And mini chocolate cupcakes for dessert.

What do you think? We could invite everyone. It will be a big Christmas party—because you know the CBC doesn’t have one anymore. Your place is big enough to hold, what, forty or fifty people? And we won’t have to worry about the air conditioning this time!

I really miss you, dude—all of you guys, and I can’t wait to get home and see you. We’ll have our own private party—with just us girls—first. Okay?

Take care and say hi to everyone. I’ll see you soon, I hope.

It was nearing midnight, and Toronto was nine and a half hours behind. I figured my friends were all probably at work, and Kas assigned a story for that night’s newscast. I hoped she didn’t have to report on me. That was one thing I really didn’t want to think about, that I must be a story back home, and a big one—I couldn’t remember any other Canadian being kidnapped in Afghanistan. I hoped other reporters were respecting my parents’ and friends’ privacy. I dreaded that my family was being constantly harassed by reporters who needed to file their stories. Journalists are sometimes asked to “get” someone: a grieving parent, an angry sibling, anyone who could lend emotion to a story. It’s the part of the job I hate the most. I would make the phone call, but if the person didn’t want to talk, I would leave my phone number and then leave them alone.

Sometimes things worked out. Years ago, while a local reporter covering the ongoing story of the missing women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, I was able to get close to several family members
of the missing women. But I was always respectful of their wishes. If they didn’t want to talk, I left them alone. If they needed someone to talk to, I would spend hours on the phone, just listening. In the end, I know that the families were satisfied with our coverage, and their participation in it, and I was proud of my colleagues for treating such a story—one with the potential to be so sensational—with restraint and respect.

But I know that not all reporters exercise the same restraint. Sometimes the thrill of getting the “get” overrides one’s sense of what’s right and how far to go. I said a silent prayer to God that my colleagues in the business would treat my family and friends with respect. I felt horribly guilty for exposing them to the glare of the spotlight, and I prayed that they would find the strength to deal with it.

Dearest M,

The news embargo has been holding, but we got a call that Reuters is agitating and wants to publish a story unless CBC gives them a good reason not to. Then we get a call from Valma in London saying that Turkish television in Kabul is offering clients the story of the missing Canadian journalist, including pictures from the camp and interviews with eyewitnesses. Margaret quickly got on the phone and persuaded the local bureau chief to call the story down. All of this was being done in the garden while we were having lunch. Surreal or what?

xx

Khalid brought me a brand new notebook with a shiny blue cover. It was not as thick as my notepad, but every page was a blank canvas, waiting for me to fill in the grey lines. He’d known for a while that I was running out of pages, and while I thanked him for his gift, I was secretly disappointed that my hope of being freed before running out of pages in my own notebook had been dashed.

“You must write,” he told me. “Write, write.” He would occasionally flip through my full notebook, reading—or trying to read—the letters to my friends and family. I didn’t think he actually understood any of it, so I never hesitated to hand it over.

I flipped through the pages of the new book, then closed it, promising to write in it later. I wanted to ask Khalid about his nickname. “Hezbollah?”

He smiled. “I have many names.”

“What other ones?”

“Many other names.” He smiled a wide smile. Then asked me if I had email.

“Email?” I asked. “Of course I have email.”

“What is your email?” Khalid asked me.

“Why do you want to know? Do you have email too?”

“I have email. Yes. When I go Pakistan. When you go to Canada, I will write you.” He was staring intently at me. Was he serious? He wanted to stay in touch? This gave me hope, though, that I might be released soon.

“What is your email?” I asked him. He wrote it down for me. [email protected].

“What is yours?” he asked.

I decided against giving him the address to my CBC account and gave him my Yahoo account instead. “You will write to me?” I asked.

“Yes, I write to you. You go to Canada, I write to you. You my sister! You will write to me?”

I nodded, knowing there was no way either of us would honour that agreement, but it was a compelling notion, the idea of hostage and kidnapper staying in touch, a continuation of a relationship formed out of captivity.

“Who do you email now?” I asked, half surprised but not astounded that this young Afghan in this remote area would have access to the Internet and email.

“My friends,” he said with a smile. Then he changed the subject. “My sister husband—he in Kabul. He have work for me.”

“What kind of work?”

“Important work. You will hear from it. When you go to Kabul, you will hear what is it I do for him. People will be dying from me.”

I asked him who would be dying and why would he want to kill his own people, if it was just foreigners he hated. He tried to explain that the idea was just to create havoc. Afghans, he said, hated foreigners, which wasn’t news to me. After thirty years of being invaded by them, the country had had enough, and most Afghans just wanted to be left alone to rebuild the country their way.

If there were no foreigners, I tried to argue, the Taliban would take over, and women and children would suffer again.

“Taliban good. Taliban are Afghanistan,” he insisted. I knew there was no arguing this point, so I gave up.

I was, however, still hopeful that I might be released soon, given that he was talking about keeping in touch when I got back to Canada. Maybe Shafirgullah was right. Maybe Sunday would really be freedom day. Today was Thursday. The next day would be Halloween.

“Khalid,” I asked, “Shafirgullah said my case will finish on Sunday. Is that true? Is that what your father said?”

“Inshallah, Mellissa. Soon. Inshallah.”

“I’m tired of ‘inshallah.’ It’s always ‘inshallah.’ ‘Inshallah, inshallah.’ Why can’t you just say yes or no?”

“It must be inshallah. Without Allah, nothing happen.”

“Well, Allah is taking too long,” I said.

Khalid sighed and picked up the package of cigarettes. I shook my head. I had decided a few days before that I was smoking too much, and so was limiting myself to one cigarette an hour. I would have a few drags and then put it out, to relight later, or smoke half of it on the half-hour. But one cigarette an hour was already nearly a pack a day. I didn’t even want to know how much damage I was doing to my lungs and how long it would take me to get back into running shape when I got out of there. Assuming that I was getting out of there. I wasn’t sure what to think anymore. I was tired of getting my hopes up every time someone said “two days” or “three days.” I was still hopeful about Sunday, but I had learned that with hope came the risk of crushing disappointment. Every time I heard digging, I’d wonder whether it would bring freedom, or just another night of detention with a new guard.

“I tell your friend three days,” Khalid said, trying to explain.

“What do you mean?”

“I tell him… three days then I kill you.” I took that to mean that he—or his father—had given the negotiators a deadline. Presumably for money. Or another prisoner. I thought of Khalid’s friend at Bagram.

“What if they can’t give it to you in three days?” I asked. “You’re really going to kill me?”

Khalid laughed. “No, I no kill you.”

“Will you let me go?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. I wondered how long they would keep me before they decided I just wasn’t worth the investment. They’d already invested almost three weeks in this hostage taking; maybe that was the point of no return. But if they were asking for a prisoner exchange, there was no telling how long it would take. I did not even want to hazard a guess. If only there was an opportunity for escape. Maybe if they were going to keep me longer, they would move me somewhere else and I’d have that chance.