A Rope and a Prayer (5 page)

The grand American project, though, never achieved the agricultural production promised. It consumed vast amounts of American and Afghan finances and took three times longer to complete than planned. Arriving with Grader in 2004, I found that the American-built suburban tract homes still stood, but their Afghan occupants had built walls around them, a sign of the gulf between American and Afghan notions of privacy.

I learned that “Little America” was one chapter in a century-long effort by the Pashtun elite to modernize the country, all with mixed results. In many ways, Afghan history followed a cycle of Kabul-based, elite-backed reform movements provoking violent opposition from the country’s conservative rural tribes.

Yet whenever I began to write off the American Cold War project, other experiences gave me pause. Pashtun farmer after farmer told me “Americans built Helmand.” I met scores of Pashtuns who had attended the experimental American-funded high school in Lashkar Gah in the 1960s and 1970s. Thirty years later, they warmly recalled the names of David Champagne and their American teachers, often with tears in their eyes. Dozens had become senior government officials or doctors, engineers, and teachers.

In particular, the sophistication and bravery of one man and one woman from the classes of 1972 and 1974 intrigued me. After the fall of the Taliban, Muhammad Hussein Andiwal became the provincial police chief and Fowzea Olomi became the head of women’s affairs in Helmand. They insisted that “Little America” was ripe for another American-backed renaissance.

For my book, I planned to chronicle Fowzea’s and Andiwal’s efforts to modernize Helmand after 2001. On the day before we drove to our ill-fated Taliban interview, I had met in Kabul with Andiwal, who had been recently fired from his job as Helmand’s police chief. Despite the presence of 8,000 British and American troops, the Taliban had gained control of most of the province. Andiwal blamed the British and the British blamed the Afghans. I began to wonder who was telling the truth and if there were any heroes in Helmand.

Twelve hours after interviewing Andiwal, I lay in the back of the car bound and blindfolded. A dynamic that has always existed in journalism had escalated in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an intensifying race to the bottom, the reporter who took the greatest risk often received the highest acclaim. In Bosnia, a desire to expose injustice had primarily driven me, followed by competitiveness and ambition. In Afghanistan, competitiveness and ambition had gotten the best of me. I had lost my way.

As my Taliban captors blared prayers over the car radio and celebrated the capture of their quarry, a new meaning enveloped the sweeping question I had grandly posed to myself in 2001: how can religious extremism be curbed? My life and the lives of Tahir and Asad now hinged on whether we could find a way to placate our captors, gain their sympathy, and stop them from killing us. As I lay powerless in the backseat, the question was simple: how do we survive?

 

 

Our kidnapper, Atiqullah, eyes me suspiciously in the living room of the house where Tahir, Asad, and I have been taken. Roughly two hours have passed since we were kidnapped. I still do not know which Taliban faction has abducted us or who Atiqullah is.

A large man with short dark hair protruding from the sides of his cap, Atiqullah appears self-assured. He speaks calmly and confidently, and is in clear command of his men. He offers me back the eyeglasses his gunmen had taken from me and tells me to stop sobbing, a tactic that had eased the suspicions of my captors in Bosnia. Weeping is a great shame, he explains, and it upsets him and his men to see it. Later, I will learn that the Taliban consider crying to be a sign of guilt. If a person is innocent, he does not fear death, because he knows God will save him.

“You will be treated well,” he assures me, citing Islam’s mandate that prisoners not be harmed. “I understand foreigners get sick. You will be given bottled water. If you need to see a doctor, you will see a doctor.”

“Whatever we eat,” he adds, “you will eat.”

His beliefs appear to be a combination of Pashtunwali and fundamentalist Islam. Gracious treatment of guests is a Pashtun hallmark. Deep suspicion of nonbelievers is an excess of radical Islam. Since the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s, religiously conservative rural Pashtuns have been their base of support.

With Tahir translating, I try to convince him to release us. I tell him that we were invited to Logar Province to interview Abu Tayyeb and hear the Taliban’s side of the story. We are journalists, I say, and I served as
The New York Times
’ South Asia bureau co-chief from 2002 to 2005. I describe the articles I wrote in Bosnia exposing the mass executions of 8,000 Muslims. I tell him Christians there imprisoned me when they caught me at a mass gravesite and accused me of being pro-Muslim. I tell him I had won the Pulitzer Prize and a half dozen other journalism awards for helping expose the massacres.

I hope I am convincing him that I am an independent journalist. I hope I am convincing him that the United States is not a monolith and some Americans defend Muslims and are rewarded for it. For years, I have thought that if the Taliban ever kidnap me, my work in Bosnia would protect me. I would be investigated online, declared a friend of Islam, and, I hoped, released.

Finally, I take off my wedding ring, show him the engraving of my wife’s name on the inner band, and explain that we were married only two months ago. Tears roll down my cheeks again and I beg him to free us. The melodrama is intentional. I have read that a captive’s best chance of survival is getting their captor to see them as a human being. I hope my display of emotion will help us.

Atiqullah grows angry, orders me to stop crying, and tells me I will see my wife again. But he denies our requests to call Abu Tayyeb or a Taliban spokesman Tahir knows. He says he controls our fate now.

He hands me back my notebook and pen and orders me to start writing. American soldiers routinely disgrace Afghan women and men, he says. They force women to stand before them without their burqas, the head-to-toe veils that conservative Pashtun villagers believe protect a woman’s honor. They search homes without permission and force Afghan men to lie on the ground, placing boots on their heads and pushing their faces into the dirt. He views the United States as a malevolent occupier.

Atiqullah produces one of our cell phones and announces that he wants to call the
Times
bureau in Kabul. I give him the number and he briefly speaks with one of the newspaper’s Afghan reporters. He hands me the phone. One of my colleagues from the paper’s Kabul bureau is on the line. I say that we have been taken prisoner by the Taliban.

“What can we do?” my colleague asks. “What can we do?”

Atiqullah demands the phone back before I can answer. My colleague—one of the bravest reporters I know—sounds unnerved.

Atiqullah turns off the phone, removes the battery, and announces that we will move that night for security reasons. My heart sinks. I hoped that we would somehow be allowed to contact Abu Tayyeb, the commander we had arranged to interview, and be freed before nightfall. Now, as we wait in the house, I know that my colleague will be calling my family and editors at any minute to inform them that I have been kidnapped.

After praying, our captors serve us a traditional Afghan dinner of rice and flatbread. After sunset, they blindfold us, load us into cars, and drive us into the darkness.

Atiqullah is at the wheel. A man who has been introduced to us as “Akhundzada,” Atiqullah’s “intelligence chief,” sits in the passenger seat with a scarf over his face as well. I am seated in the backseat between Tahir and Asad. Roughly thirty minutes into a jarring drive down dirt roads, Atiqullah allows me to take off my blindfold. We traverse a barren, moonlit desert landscape of dust-covered plains and treeless hills. I recognize nothing. We could be anywhere in Afghanistan.

With Tahir again translating, I ask for permission to speak and offer to answer any questions Atiqullah might have. He assails Israel and accuses the United States of being a greedy colonial power bent on stealing the Muslim world’s resources. He is doctrinaire, but we are not being beaten or abused.

After a roughly two-hour drive, we arrive in a remote village where Atiqullah says we will spend the night with his guards. He is leaving and will return the following day. His men lead us into a small, one-room dirt house. A half dozen of us—three guards and three prisoners—lie down on the floor under musty-smelling blankets. I think of my wife and family. By now, they must know.

I
am sitting atop Times Square. From the thirty-eighth floor, I can see all way to the mouth of the Hudson River. I have just assigned a photographer to shoot a portrait to accompany a first-person magazine account titled “My Bra Saved My Life.” We will photograph the once injured hiker who hung her bra out as a beacon to alert passersby. Nothing attracts attention like a bright red sports bra with size D cups, apparently. In a pinch, it’s a real lifesaver. I smile to myself. This is a far cry from my husband’s line of work.

I am about two weeks into my new job as photography director at
Cosmopolitan
magazine. My train of thought—the combination of humor, absurdity, and mass-market appeal my new job straddles—is interrupted. It’s 4:30 P.M. I wonder why I have not yet heard from David, even though I know that power outages are common in Pakistan, as are travel delays. Perhaps he has not yet figured out how to access the Internet from his guesthouse. He’s there on assignment and is researching a book on the history of American involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001—what went wrong and what should be done to remedy the situation. This is David’s final reporting trip to the region. He was scheduled to depart Kabul for Islamabad this morning.

The phone rings. It’s my brother-in-law Lee. Not a good sign. “Hello,” I say. “Nice to hear your voice, but I am not so sure I want to be hearing from you. What’s wrong?”

Lee is the person my husband has designated as a first point of contact for all “worst case scenarios.” In the event of a mishap during a reporting trip, the plan is that Lee will be alerted and will in turn contact me. A former member of the Air Force and a pilot, Lee has nerves of steel, but is also a sensitive guy. Three years older than my husband, he has gotten David out of several tight situations. He is the consummate big brother, responsible and protective.

He laughs, understanding my predicament. “Well, it’s not good. But it could be worse.”

He tells me that David never returned from his last interview in Kabul, a meeting he had arranged with a Taliban commander. This is news to me. David left a note at the bureau with instructions on what to do should he fail to return in three hours. Lee tells me that David wanted him to wait twelve hours before reaching out to me. “Screw that,” he says. “I figured you would want to know. And I do not want to deal with this alone.”

Right away, my brother-in-law gains a spot near and dear to my heart. He is right. I would have been absolutely livid had he waited to inform me. David’s need to “protect” me sometimes infuriates me.

“Christie and I are in Florida on vacation,” Lee says, referring to his wife. “Stay calm. Take a moment to take this in.” My mind reels as I try to process what he is telling me. Then he continues, “You should jump on the next shuttle to Boston. We’ll meet you at Logan.” From there, we will drive back to his house in southern New Hampshire for the night. Apparently a meeting has been scheduled with the local FBI bureau there for early tomorrow morning. The FBI agents contacted Lee after David was reported missing to the United States Embassy in Kabul.

Shuttle to Boston? I am new on the job and a little busy at the moment arranging the photo shoot. I am trying to locate a reasonable facsimile of the sports bra worn by the hiker, to run as a still along with her portrait. My rational mind grapples for control. Of course, I quickly realize this is absurd. I need to get to the airport as fast as possible. David is my number one priority. I fight a wave of overwhelming terror, fear, and uncertainty. I am momentarily immobilized, numb, as I glance out the window.

It’s a crisp afternoon. The sky is clear, the river calm. Despite the tidiness of my new, modern surroundings, I feel as if my life has plunged into disarray. I thought I was prepared for this kind of call. Before we married, David and I discussed the inherent risks in his work as a foreign correspondent. We talked about several worst case scenarios, including injury and even death. These tragedies are concrete and would follow a prescribed protocol. But I never anticipated what to do in the uncertain face of David going missing. Here it is, I think, my worst fear come true.

I call the managing editor at
Cosmopolitan
and say something vague about a “family health emergency” and that I need to head to New England. She is gracious and does not ask questions. I tell her I will probably be out the next day or so. “Do what you need to do,” she says. She knows that my parents live in Maine. I secretly hope the magazine thinks I am running off to comfort an ailing elderly relative. The real explanation is too absurd to believe.

By the time I leave my office and head home to collect my things, I am composed and steady. I have prided myself on being able to stay calm in tense situations. And this is not my first brush with terror. I live a few blocks from Ground Zero. I recall the shock of being displaced for three months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the exhaustion, uncertainty. And all my adrenaline-fueled mistakes: forgetting to eat, sleep, and rest. What I learned then protects me now. On my way to Boston, I resolve to take better care of myself this time around, and to call on family and friends for support when necessary.

It’s 9:30 P.M. when I arrive at Logan Airport. I wait in the sterile baggage terminal. It’s Monday night. A bit deserted. No one else in David’s family has been alerted aside from his brother Lee. By chance I hear from my own brother, Jason. He is calling to check in and catch up. All he knows is that I returned from my honeymoon three weeks ago and started a new job. I try to keep my voice calm and upbeat. Jason is exuberant chatting about what a great time he had at our wedding at our family’s home in Maine. My sister-in-law chimes in on speakerphone. They are both so happy for us.