Under an Afghan Sky (8 page)

“Khalid’s girlfriend?” I asked.

“No, friend.”

I sat back on my blanket, leaning my back against my knapsack and camera bag, and stared at him for a while. Abdulrahman was short, with a round stomach that stuck out, frizzy dark hair under his skullcap, and small dark eyes. He pointed to my knapsack and said, “Give to me.” I did as instructed and watched as he, like Zahir, and Khalid, and Shafirgullah before him, went through all my belongings, pulling out one credit card at a time from my wallet, one item after another from my makeup bag.

“What is this?” he asked, producing a compact.

“Makeup,” I answered.

“I take for my wife.” He put the black compact in his pocket.

“Where is your wife?” I asked.

“She is in Kabul. With my son.”

“How old is your son?”

“He is two year old. He look like my wife. She very pretty.”

“How old are you?”

“You ask many questions, Mellissa. Why?”

“I am a journalist. I always ask questions. How old are you?” I repeated, knowing I would probably get only an approximate answer from him.

“Maybe I am twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”

“You only have the one son?”

“Yes. My wife, she want more. We have a few more. There is time.” He paused for a second. “I call her.” He took his cell phone out of his breast pocket and held it up to the ceiling, as if to find a signal from the highest point of the room. Then he dialed a number and put the setting on speakerphone so that I could hear. A woman’s voice answered on the third ring.

“As-Salaam Alaikum.” I could hear her voice loud and clear. You would hardly know we were in a hole.

“Salaam,” Abdulrahman said, and the two proceeded to chat for a few minutes, their conversation punctuated by laughter. Then I heard a baby’s voice. Abdulrahman pointed at the phone and looked at me. “My son. Do you hear him?”

I nodded and forced myself to smile. It hardly seemed fair that he was freely able to call his family and laugh and smile with them, while I was cut off from my loved ones, who were probably sick with worry about me.

“It’s not fair,” I said after Abdulrahman had said goodbye to his wife and son.

“What is not fair?” he asked.

“You can talk to your wife, and I can’t talk to anyone.”

“Yes, it is not fair,” he laughed again, his laugh high-pitched and piercing.

“Let me make a phone call,” I suggested. “That is fair.”

“No,” he answered. “You cannot.”

“Please? My family and friends are very worried about me. I just want to tell them I’m okay, and that you are taking good care of me.”

“No,” he answered.

“Please?” I pleaded. “It will only take two minutes to call them. One minute. Just to say hello.”

He appeared to think about it for a while, then shook his head. “No.”

“Maybe tomorrow? Think about it.”

“Maybe.”

Abdulrahman reached again for the white bag and pulled out an apple. He offered it to me but I shook my head. He bit into it, finishing the entire thing in about four big bites, the juice running down into his beard. He wiped it off with the sleeve of his light green kameez.

“It is good. You need to eat,” he told me, reaching next for a package of orange-flavoured cream-filled cookies. He ripped open the sleeve, grabbed a handful, and tossed the rest to me. I took one and bit into it. The sweet artificial orange taste spread between my teeth. If this was going to be my diet for a while, I was sure I’d develop serious cavities, and going to the dentist is not something I enjoy, even on a good day. In fact, I’d gone to great pains to avoid the dentist over the last three years, making sure I brushed and flossed at least three times a day. Now I wasn’t sure when I’d get to brush my teeth again.

Defiantly, I grabbed another cookie and stuffed it into my mouth, as if to say,
Fuck it. If this is my fate, I may as well go all out.
I chewed the cookie and imagined all the sugar molecules getting into every crack and nook of my teeth.

“You like biscuit,” Abdulrahman said to me, not really asking a question.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I tell Khalid to bring you rice tomorrow,” he suggested.

“I want to go home tomorrow.”

“You go home, maybe three days.”

“Really?” This was the first time I’d heard a timeline from any of the kidnappers. I didn’t believe him, but I really, truly, desperately wanted to.

“Money come, you go.” Abdulrahman made a gesture with his hand as if brushing me off. “Money come, you go.”

I asked him when the money would come, how it would come, and when I could go.

“If money come—tomorrow, you go. Tomorrow, Monday, you go Tuesday,” he replied.

“Why can’t I go on Monday if that’s the day the money comes?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe what? Maybe I can go?” I was starting to get impatient.

“Maybe you go back to Kabul.”

I sighed. I wasn’t getting any straight answers.

“Abdulrahman. This kidnapping racket. How does it work? You kidnap someone and then what happens?”

Abdulrahman scratched his crotch and readjusted his skullcap.

“We ask for money—from your father, friend, your company. We get money, you go back to Kabul.”

“How long does this take?” I could feel a burning anger inside my stomach.

“Few weeks.”

“A few weeks? How many?” I was beginning to treat him like an interview subject who was being deliberately evasive, like so many politicians I’d tried to get straight answers from over the years. He was no different.

“Last two people, they go last night.”

“You have other hostages?”

“‘Hostage’ bad word,” Abdulrahman admonished me. “You are our guest.” He grinned.

“Guest?” I almost spat out the word. “You stab your guests and throw them in holes in the ground? Is that your idea of hospitality? How many other ‘guests’ do you have right now?”

“The two are gone. You are only guest now. Khalid going to look for more.”

“That’s nice. Hopefully you treat them better.”

“You are lucky. You are woman. We no leave you here yourself,” he said, ignoring the anger that was flashing in my eyes. “The two men—we leave them alone. We tie their hands, feet…” He motioned with his hands that they were handcuffed and tied to the ceiling. “We give water, biscuit; no one go there to stay with them. You are woman, we have to stay with you.”

“Why?”

“Muslim law.”

I shook my head. Here we go, I thought, another discussion about Islam. I had no appetite and no interest, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

“Where does it say in the Koran that it’s okay to kidnap a woman and stab her?” I challenged.

“Tsk, tsk.” Abdulrahman shook his head. “You no understand. We do this work for Allah. You must read Koran.”

“I read the Bible. But I would like to read the Koran, so I can see where you get this from. Because I don’t believe Allah would be happy that you’re holding me as a prisoner.”

“You Muslim, we no keep you here. You no Muslim, you are our guest.” He grinned again. I noticed he had a crooked set of top teeth.

“You think Allah says it’s okay for you to kidnap me and throw me in a hole?”

“This is very nice house, you are guest,” he said. “Allah happy.”

Allah might have been happy, but I was getting frustrated and annoyed. “I don’t think Allah would like what you’re doing to me,” I argued. “Allah would want me to go back to Kabul, and then back to Canada.”

“You no understand Koran. You must study Koran,” he replied, echoing Zahir. “You will understand Allah if you study Koran.”

“I want to study the Koran. I want to know where it says in the Koran that it’s okay to do this to someone. You probably also believe that this will help you get to heaven and your seventy-two waiting girlfriends.”

Abdulrahman smiled. “Yes. Seventy-two girlfriends.”

“What about your wife? What happens to her when you have girlfriends?” I was getting angrier.

“My wife is my wife. My girlfriends are my girlfriends.” He grinned again.

“You can’t have a wife and seventy-two girlfriends at the same time.”

“Why not? Allah say okay!”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Allah wouldn’t want you to ignore your wife while you’re entertaining your girlfriends. What kind of God does that make him?”

“Allah say okay! Allah is great!”

As with Zahir, I realized the conversation had reached a dead end and I didn’t want to pursue it any further. Even though the Koran says women and men are equal under God, I knew that the Taliban and other Muslim fundamentalists believed in applying traditional laws to women. Women have to be covered up; they have to wear chadors or hijabs, to hide any trace of their sexuality in public. They even pray separately in mosques. Men and women are anything but equals in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Women are stoned for infidelity; men are allowed to have up to four wives. No wonder they’re promised seventy-two virgins when they get to heaven.

“You must be Muslim!” Abdulrahman said loudly. “Allah is great!” He glared at me. “This,” he gestured with his hands at the hole, “is Allah’s will. We no kill you. Inshallah, money come, you go.”

“You’re saying that kidnapping me, and holding me like this, is God’s will?”

“Yes. Inshallah, money come, you go.”

“Inshallah,” I said. The light bulb attached to the ceiling flickered. I had noticed it was getting dimmer and dimmer throughout the day. Abdulrahman noticed it too and pointed to the battery. He said he’d ask Khalid to bring a new battery the following day. I
told him I didn’t want to still be in the hole by then. Abdulrahman laughed. “Maybe day after tomorrow. Why you go to Kabul?” he asked.

“So I can catch my flight back to Canada,” I answered.

“Canada. I know Canada,” he said. “I have been to Canada.”

“Yes, you told me. Where in Canada did you go?” I knew he wouldn’t be able to tell me. “Eastern Canada or western Canada?”

“Do not… remember. Close to New York.” I asked him why he was in New York, and he told me he had friends there and was learning English. I remembered he had told me that on the first night, when we were in the bullet-ridden white house.

“And then you visited Canada?” I asked.

“Yes, very close to New York. But Canada—Canada is not a country like Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

“What do you mean?” This was a very strange thing to say.

“Afghanistan, Pakistan—this country been hundreds of years. What is Canada? How old?”

“One hundred and forty-one years,” I answered. I knew that because I had been in Italy during Canada Day in July, when my girlfriends and I had been invited to the Canadian embassy for Canada Day celebrations.

Abdulrahman scoffed. “That is nothing. Other countries are hundreds of years old. What is a country that is one hundred years? It is nothing. Not a country.”

This bothered me a lot. Just like I wouldn’t say I’m a devout Catholic, I wouldn’t call myself as an unduly patriotic Canadian. I’d gone to graduate school in the United States, and I’d travelled the world in search of other cultures and history. But everywhere I went, I was pretty proud to be a Canadian, proud of everything Canada stood for internationally in the tradition of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. I had recently been in Beijing for the Olympic
Games, where I’d been lucky enough to see Canadian athletes win medals in their sports. I wasn’t embarrassed to say my heart would skip a beat every time I saw the Maple Leaf raised and the anthem played.

“Canada is a great country,” I told the fat Afghan. “You don’t know anything.”

“Why you think it is so great?” he asked. “It is not a country.”

“It is a great country. You don’t have to be old to be great. It’s a young nation, but we are a peaceful nation, and Canadians care about other people,” I said.

“You send your soldiers here to kill Afghan people,” he said.

“We send our soldiers here to help the Afghan people.” I must have sounded a bit like any one of the Canadian military commanders I’d interviewed about the war and their struggle with the Taliban. “The Afghan people do not want the Taliban to rule here. The Taliban are bad for Afghanistan. Our soldiers are here so young girls can go to school, and women can feel safe outside their homes.”

“Women no work, girls no school,” Abdulrahman spat. “My wife, she no work.”

“Does she want to work?” I asked.

“No. She happy. She work at home. She cook, she have baby.”

“What if she wanted to work?”

“She no work. She work at home.”

“That’s fine if she doesn’t want to work. But some women like to work outside the home,” I argued. “And they should be able to. And girls should be able to go to school.”

“Why you work?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I work?” I answered.

“You no husband, you must work.”

“I like my job. I like to go to work. What is wrong with that?”

“Women should not work.”

“That’s your opinion.” I was getting tired of this. If we were having this conversation anywhere else, I would have walked away. Unfortunately, that option wasn’t open to me. I didn’t need to worry, though. Abdulrahman reached over and disconnected the cables.

“Sleep time,” he said.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was after ten. I’d spent at least three hours arguing with him and now welcomed the silence. The ground was hard and uncomfortable. I pushed my face into the red pillow and forced myself to shut my eyes.

I was finally drifting off when I felt Abdulrahman’s hand on my leg. He was inching closer and closer to me. I sat up with a start and fumbled to reattach the wires to the battery. The light came on, but it was definitely fading. “Don’t touch me,” I warned him.

“I must fuck you,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Fuck off.” I told him. My blood felt cold as it coursed through my body. I told myself to calm down, but more than anger now I was feeling fear, something I’m not used to.

“I must fuck you,” he repeated.

“No.” I was willing my voice not to shake. “Allah will punish you. You will not go to
jannat
if you dare touch me.” I pulled my legs up to chest and hugged my knees together. “You’re married, you have a wife, and the Koran says you must not touch a woman who is not Muslim. You will go to hell.” I spoke slowly and firmly.