A Rope and a Prayer (18 page)

Badruddin moves us to a far smaller, dirtier house five minutes away by car. Transported at night, again with a scarf placed over my face, I have no idea where our new home lies in Miran Shah. We are confined to two small rooms in the back of a large traditional Pashtun family compound with mud-brick walls. An old man and a young boy bring us meals three times a day, often with meat that appears several days old. We sleep on dust-covered mattresses.

One room has posters on the walls. One shows a Swiss chalet in the snow-covered Alps, a setting often used in Indian movies. Another features a majestic Ottoman mosque in Istanbul, a city I have visited with Kristen. The other room holds sleeping bags and camping equipment apparently used by Taliban fighters when they enter Afghanistan. A large radio antenna perched on a nearby rooftop is part of a seemingly sophisticated Taliban communications system in Miran Shah.

We are allowed to walk in a small courtyard that is the width of a city sidewalk. Direct sunlight reaches it for a few hours each morning. Throughout the day, we hear children playing and laughing on the other side of the walls but never see them.

Akbar—the seemingly kind guard—departs. Qari—the unstable guard who nearly shot Tahir—arrives with a new Taliban fighter in his early twenties named Mansoor, who speaks broken English.

During our first night here, the Taliban commander who owns the house introduces himself to us. At first, he is polite and respectful. He promises to update us every three days on negotiations for our release. As the conversation continues, though, my optimism fades.

He proclaims that he was held in American detention and I am receiving vastly better treatment than he endured. Then he complains that the Taliban released the group of Korean missionaries they kidnapped in 2007 far too quickly. I had covered that kidnapping. The Taliban first demanded that the Afghan government free twenty-three Taliban prisoners in exchange for twenty-three Koreans. President Karzai flatly refused, citing the blistering domestic criticism he came under for releasing five Taliban prisoners for the Italian journalist four months earlier. In response, the Taliban executed two male Korean missionaries.

The Korean government then carried out direct negotiations with the kidnappers, who released the remaining twenty-one hostages after six weeks in captivity. The Taliban triumphantly announced they had been paid a ransom of roughly $20 million. Afghan officials said the actual number was closer to $1 million. American and NATO special forces units later hunted down and killed the Taliban leaders involved in the kidnapping. The commander tells me the Taliban mishandled the case. If they had held the Koreans longer, he believes, the Taliban could have forced the world to accept them as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

“The elders should have listened to me,” he says. “I could have gotten the Emirate recognized.”

I think to myself that we are in a giant insane asylum. Next, he asks me if I support the American government. I respond that I am an independent journalist and try to explain that American government and military officials frequently do not like journalists and are often angered by our stories.

“Who did you vote for in the presidential election?” he asks. Sensing a trap, I tell him that I did not vote in the American election because I was in Afghanistan at the time. In truth, I voted by absentee ballot. He says that if I had voted in the election it would mean that I am personally responsible for the actions of the American government, including drone strikes carried out in the tribal areas. He promises to give us an update on the negotiations in three days and leaves. We will not see the commander again for months.

In our first days in the new house, I try to engage Mansoor in more in-depth conversations. Mansoor is short—roughly five foot six inches tall—but stocky and strong. He has dark hair, a thin beard, and a boyish face. He and Qari occasionally wrestle each other to pass the time. Mansoor wins every time.

Our talks do not go well. During one, Mansoor complains that when he got married in Afghanistan, American warplanes circled over the large crowd that formed in his village in a pro-Taliban part of Afghanistan. His family was terrified that the group would be seen as Taliban fighters and bombed. During another, Mansoor agrees with me that he will teach me Pashto and I will teach him English. He buys me a notebook in one of his trips to the local market. For a few days, we give each other brief lessons. Then we both lose interest. Mansoor and I fail to connect on a fundamental level. What interests me—the outside world and my wife and family—does not interest him. What interests Mansoor—religion and jihad—does not interest me.

Qari increasingly unnerves me. He spends hours each day memorizing verses in an electronic Koran. Seated on his knees, he holds the small device—which looks like a digital camera—in his hands. As a computerized voice repeats verses in Arabic, he rhythmically recites them. Rocking back and forth, he seems to be in a trance. After each session, he gently kisses the electronic device, recites a blessing, and wraps it in a small cloth. He then carefully places it on a shelf to ensure it does not make contact with the ground. Qari is polite to me but we rarely speak. I fear provoking him and have no interest in trying to understand him. He has no interest in trying to understand me.

When we hear over the radio of the November 26 terrorist attacks on luxury hotels in Mumbai, our guards are elated. Mansoor cheers as the carnage drags on for three days and 173 people are killed. I ask him why he is celebrating. Mansoor declares that the luxury hotels are dens of prostitution, alcohol consumption, and debauchery. The guests deserve to die because they are sinners.

Another week passes and it becomes clearer that Tahir and Asad will be separated from their families for Id al-Adha—a major Muslim holiday on December 8 that marks Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and show his devotion to God. They are more and more frustrated.

Tension is also growing between me, Tahir, and Asad. They are angry with me for my promises to Atiqullah on the second night of the kidnappings that he would get prisoners and millions of dollars for us. I tell them I was trying to save our lives. They say I have vastly raised our captors’ expectations.

My attempts to play sick are going nowhere. I have made myself vomit in the new house but the guards do not appear worried. Qari says that I am intentionally making myself sick. December 10, the one-month anniversary of our kidnapping, is approaching. There are no signs of a deal. After taking Tahir to a local doctor several times for stomach and skin problems, the guards stop taking him to the doctor without explanation.

Becoming more desperate, Tahir and I talk over what we can do to create pressure for our release. We settle on a hunger strike, an option we have both been considering for weeks. We have no idea if it will work, but are running out of options. That night before dinner, Tahir announces that he is going to stop eating food. I decide to stop eating food and drinking water, hoping it will make the guards think I will die quickly. Asad does not join us.

The following day, I lie on the mattress where I sleep, staring at the ceiling for hours at a time. I think of the hunger strikes I have read about over the years but cannot remember how long a person can survive without water. I experience less pain than expected and I am pleased by the initial results. At the end of the first day, our guards panic and beg us to eat dinner. We refuse. Relatives of the commander who owns the house beg us to eat as well. It is an enormous shame to them, they say, to have guests who refuse to eat. We decline.

As the second day comes to a close, my stomach begins to ache, my throat is dry, and I have cottonmouth. Pressuring our captors, though, elates me. I am finally doing something concrete to relieve the suffering of my wife and family. That night, the guards announce that Atiqullah has called and said a deal for our release is imminent. It only needs the approval of Karzai, who is on a foreign trip. The French aid worker whose video I was shown when we first arrived in Miran Shah has been released, they say. We are next.

Tahir says we should continue the strike. As a Pashtun, he does not want to show weakness by stopping without achieving our goal. Asad urges us to begin eating again. He says we are angering our captors, not pressuring them. I am torn. A recent radio news broadcast confirmed that Karzai is, in fact, at a meeting abroad. I worry that our continued defiance will cause our captors to refuse to compromise and scuttle a final deal that could be days away. Recent kidnap cases in Afghanistan have ended in four to eight weeks. I hope our month-old case will end in that range as well.

I tell Tahir that we should end the strike. He has kidney problems, is in intense pain, and I worry about his health. The guards have promised to begin taking Tahir to the doctor again if we begin eating. At first, Tahir refuses. We receive a second call from Atiqullah, who swears our release is days away. Tahir relents and we eat for the first time in forty-eight hours.

 

 

Instead of releasing us, Badruddin moves us to a nicer house. It is larger than the previous one but feels more like a prison. Twenty-foot-high brick walls covered in peeling white paint surround a thirty- by thirty-foot concrete courtyard. We have a freshly painted blue bedroom to ourselves and the guards sleep next door in a room of their own. Three times a day, a boy from the family who brought us food in the previous house arrives with our meals. When the electricity goes out and the house’s water pump has no power, another boy brings us barrels of water for washing.

After several days, the guards announce that we must begin cooking our own meals. The family that has been preparing our food will no longer do so. With cash from Badruddin, the guards buy food from the local market and order Asad to cook it. I try to wash the dishes, but the guards initially urge me to stop, saying it is shameful to have an elder clean for them. We agree that I will wash only the breakfast dishes. At dusk each day, Asad sautés onions over a small propane burner before adding rice. There is a momentary sense of good cheer among us. The food, at least, is fresher, cleaner, and better tasting. But cooking for ourselves gives a worrying sense of permanence to our imprisonment.

Our lives settle into a monotonous routine of meals, washing our clothes, and Checkah board games. While washing the dishes one morning, my wedding ring falls off my finger. I frantically chase it across the courtyard, grab it, and put it back on. Later, it falls off as I take a bucket shower in the bathroom. I am losing weight, but I wonder if this is a sign that something is wrong with Kristen. Worried I will lose the ring, I take it off before I wash in the bathroom, kiss it, and carefully place it in the pocket of my baggy local pants for safekeeping. The narrow gold band with KRISTEN engraved on its interior is the only physical connection I have to the outside world.

Boredom and claustrophobia begin to take a toll on the guards. Qari tears the Checkah board to shreds after he loses several games. Then Tahir and Asad rip up two Checkah boards out of frustration when they lose as well. I worry that Qari will shoot Tahir if he loses another game.

Each day, I spend hours walking in circles in the walled courtyard alone. In my mind, I relive happy memories of my times with my family, friends, and wife. I play out trips I took with Kristen to Europe and South Asia, our wedding, and our honeymoon. I remember the small, everyday beauties of life with her, such as having coffee together each morning. I pretend I am walking beside her down the Hudson River bank at dusk as we do in New York.

As time passes, I realize I must control my thoughts to fight off depression. Certain actions immediately raise my spirits, such as walking, talking with Tahir, and reliving moments with Kristen. Other actions leave me discouraged, such as conversations with the guards. Strictly managing my day and my thoughts becomes a survival tool.

For the first time in my life, I begin praying several times a day. I struggle to remember the Lord’s Prayer and don’t know if I’m reciting it correctly. Resorting to prayer heightens my sense of desperation, but it also gives me something to do each day, a task the guards cannot stop me from silently completing. In the months ahead, I will realize that prayer is something they can never take from me.

One day I pray in front of Mansoor and Qari, trying to demonstrate that I, too, have faith. They seem unmoved by it. I shift to silently praying as I walk in the yard. I don’t know if some higher being is hearing my prayers, reaching down and comforting me, or if prayer is simply a psychological trick that gives humans a false sense of control. I decide it does not matter. Whatever is happening, prayer centers and strengthens me.

 

 

Badruddin visits us intermittently at night and promises that negotiations are continuing. He is generally polite and respectful. During one visit, he gives me a woolen Afghan blanket to stay warm. During another, he gives us a Chinese-made shortwave radio with a hand crank to generate electricity when the batteries run out. It is familiar to me. The American military has distributed thousands of these radios to Afghan villagers in the hope of winning their support.

To my amazement, Badruddin arrives with a laptop computer one evening, opens it, and plays
Taxi to the Dark Side
, an American documentary film that won a 2007 Academy Award. The film recounts how two of my colleagues from
The New York Times
exposed that American soldiers had beaten to death a young Afghan taxi driver in the main American detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan. I am elated. The film is a perfect opportunity to explain American journalism to Badruddin.

As Badruddin and the guards watch, the documentary recounts how the American military initially stated that Dilawar, a twenty-two-year-old Afghan taxi driver, died of natural causes in 2002. One of my colleagues then visited his family in Khost Province and discovered an American military death certificate that declared the driver’s death a “homicide.” His brother could not read the document, which was in English.