Days of Fear (6 page)

I wait another hour. The boys come and go. There are always three of them with us. They watch over us but the mood is again relaxed. The sun is setting and the light is weaker now. My arms have been behind my back all this time and they ache. The fabric is cutting into my wrists. They order me to stand up and they put the blindfold back over my eyes. I repeat that I can't breathe with my eyes covered. Three of them lift me up and pull me, my feet dragging, outside. I only have socks on my feet. They laugh and talk amongst themselves, they seem to be discussing my situation with great mirth. They make me walk along a small path between grass and stones. There are puddles of muddy water, patches of wet earth, then sand, earth again, tufts of plants and grass. My heart is beating hard. I'm terrified. I ask where they're taking me. I ask thousands of questions, one after the other. I'm afraid they're going to kill me. A single shot to the back of the head, my body abandoned in a ditch, eyes blindfolded, hands tied. A lifeless bundle without form, dried blood around the bullet hole. I think of Enzo Baldoni, the Italian journalist who was kidnapped and assassinated in cold blood in Iraq before any negotiations could get started.

It's over, I say to myself. I find myself praying. My entire life passes before me as if it were a film. My children, my wife, my mother, the newspaper, the sea, my sailboat, my father, and my siblings. There's no time, I need to see more. The film is running fast, in black and white, the frenzied images pile up. It's over, goodbye to this crazy, unpredictable world that I so desperately love and so violently hate. Goodbye to everyone. My hour has come. I raise my eyes, still blindfolded, to the sky and ask for God's help and His pardon. I ask that He protect my children. I am no longer afraid. I'm ready. Then, suddenly, I feel that they're not going to kill me. I'm certain of it. I don't know why. My instincts tell me so. I want to believe it. Maybe my death is too absurd an eventuality for me to imagine, or perhaps I'm too important for our captors. I'm convinced that they're not going to do it. Not yet, not now. My legs are trembling as we move left. They push my head down and shove me into the trunk of the Corolla. I squirm. I've learned to try to keep my wrists apart when they tie me up so the knots will give a little. But this time the knots are too tight.

The blindfold slips down over my nose and mouth. I can see some light, now, but I can't breathe. I'm going to suffocate to death. I cry out a dozen times, “Please! Please!” I want them to stop, to take the blindfold off me. My breathing is shallower, faster; the blindfold over my nose and mouth begins to grow damp. My mouth and throat are dry. I make a desperate attempt to get hold of a stray piece of fabric with my teeth and pull it off my nose and then my mouth. It is a long, arduous procedure. I try to control my breathing as if I were underwater. I'm convinced I'm going to die. I tell myself that it would be a damned stupid way to die, but I also remind myself that many, many hostages have died like this.

I'm lying on my back, my knees on my chest. I turn over with difficulty and manage to loosen the knots and free my hands. I search for the cable and open the trunk. Fresh air. Finally. Twice, three times, I am tossed from one side of the trunk to the other as the car drives over particularly rough patches. It's torture. I have been taken prisoner by a group of Taliban. I do not know them, nor do I know what their intentions are; I'm alone, left completely to my own devices; I have no contact with the outside world; I am obliged to do everything these young soldiers want me to do, follow orders issued by people far away from here. Death could come at any mo­ment. It is a constant, an obsession that envelops me for fifteen days and fifteen nights with a force, a power that again and again has me gasping for air. I will have to learn to control my panic attacks in order to maintain a modicum of psychological and physical well-being for my increasingly weak and beleaguered body. I calm myself down now, willfully imposing self-control and serenity. I think about yoga, something that will often help me during times of panic over the course of my captivity.

The cable in the trunk snaps. I can no longer even flirt with the idea of escaping. There will be no interview, no meeting. There is no misunderstanding. They have arrested me. I am their prisoner. I even break out laughing, frantic but happy that I'm still not dead. Maybe, I think, we'll make it. We can resist. The country, my country, will not abandon us. My newspaper will sustain us. My friends, colleagues, brothers will help us. I'm certain of this. I have to worry about one thing and one thing only: staying alive.

I'm still shut inside the trunk. I don't move, my head hurts now, my blood is throbbing around my wound. I feel that the blood has clotted, it's no longer gushing out, which is something. But I'm worried: blows like that can provoke internal bleeding.

Half an hour later the Corolla stops. I hear the doors opening, then closing. I understand that they are coming around to open the trunk, that there's going to be some kind of ex­change. I hope—yes, for a second I delude myself—I hope that they're going to free us, that the nightmare is over. Pats on the back, more apologies, smiles, maybe a bit of roughing up, but then off we go, freedom awaits. Just one final warning: get out of Taliban territory and never show your faces here again. Naked, stripped bare, robbed of everything, scared, but alive. And free.

 

But that's not what happens. Though they continue to call it an arrest, this is an abduction. They are convinced they've captured some spies and we remain totally under their control. Or perhaps they already know who we are. They may have identified the newspaper I work for and now they realize they've hit the big time. A big fish caught in their net. Foreign. Italian. Journalist. Excellent merchandise to barter with, to trade for goods, or, even better, for money. The trunk won't open. The cable hangs loose above my head. They go at it in two, then in three. With their hands, their fists, then their guns. I hear one of them snap a clip into his gun. A sharp, metallic, unmistakable sound paralyzes me with fear. I scream that it's broken, that I'm not responsible for it not opening, that they need to use the key. Somehow, I make myself understood. They open the trunk and cool, fresh air gusts in. I can breathe again.

The blindfold over my eyes has fallen down to my neck and I fear they'll be angry, that they will mete out some kind of punishment. Four, five faces smile at me, a confused mass of hands and arms lift me up and out of the trunk. All those mouths repeating in a chorus of shrieking voices: “Please, please, please!” Imitating me, ridiculing me. All I'm thinking about is breathing, I have to get air into my lungs, pull myself together. I tell them my heart is acting strange, that I could kick the bucket here and now, which would be a serious problem for them if their intention is to exchange me for some prisoners.

I look around, turning a full 360 degrees. We're in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of an immense stretch of sand and stones. Before us, to the south, there is nothing but an enormous, infinite desert. The sun has almost set. To our left there's a pickup ready, a Toyota V8 turbo. Powerful, rugged, fast. The flat cargo bed is full of pots, gas cookers, lids, weapons, missile launchers, tanks of water and gas, and a dozen kids with guns at the ready: Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns, ammunition belts with two hundred rounds a piece. In the cab, together with two fully loaded anti-tank missile launchers are three more Taliban: the commander whom I met in the farmer's house; his lieutenant, a kid with long ruffled hair in a white turban; finally, a third man, older, with a dark gray turban, clearly an officer. He's on a satellite telephone.

A pair of strong arms helps me walk and lifts me into the cargo bed, where I find Ajmal and Sayed. They make room for me. We sit with our back to the passenger cab, leaning up against four large plastic tanks fastened to the cab itself. Sitting like this, our backs will be slightly cushioned when the truck lurches and bounces during our moves.

We huddle in together as best we can, legs crossed, our feet under the pile of covers and mattresses, our hands tied tight behind our backs. Our arms hurt, there is not enough room. But we make do, soldiers and prisoners alike. We're all in the same boat. We feel the same discomfort and the same pain, and we try to put up with it. I will have to get used to the difficulties, the distress, the hunger, thirst, cold, and heat. This is no longer a simple interview. This is the jihad.

The commander, a small plump man whose name I will later learn is Ali, shifts into first and steps on the gas. We're heading south. The pickup takes off like a bat out of hell. The eight cylinders roar, the turbo comes to life with a deafening snarl. The soldiers stare at us, and when the pickup jumps and jolts the barrels of their weapons draw dangerously near our chests. Four soldiers are sitting up front in the cab, their backs to the cargo bed and us; another four are sitting on the side with their legs dangling off the truck. The heavy machine guns are leaning against the steel frame of the cargo bed, barrels pointing outwards, ready for action. In the middle, there are four more Taliban. I can't figure out how they can even fit in—we squeeze together, wriggle for more room, huddle up against one another.

Strangely, I feel almost protected, safe. Now, I fear the others, too: the police, the Afghan army, and the English soldiers stationed in the area. I'm afraid that anyone who finds himself on our tracks might decide to attack. We're hostages, and as such, in addition to being merchandise to be exchanged, we could also serve, if necessary, as excellent shields for our kidnappers. I lower my head. My hands are tied behind my back and there's no way I can reach the edges of the quilt that covers us and pull it up over my chest. The Taliban to my left takes care of it for me. His name is Aleef, one of the few who will tell me his name and with whom I will repeatedly attempt to converse. My wound is throbbing and I feel like I might be running a temperature. Every bump, every jolt, every sudden deceleration makes me feel like my brain is knocking against my cranium. I only hope that nothing serious has happened internally, that there is no risk of hemorrhage. We're in the middle of the desert, there are no doctors around, we don't even have any medical supplies with us.

The getaway is a rally over sand dunes, hillocks, rocks, tufts of grass and wild shrubs. The pickup leaps and lurches and shakes. We complain, cry out in pain, yelp, and curse. The fabric tied around our wrists makes our forearms swell. We are not following any road or trail, we're driving over virgin terrain to avoid encounters that could prove dangerous for everyone. The pickup accelerates. The race is getting faster by the mi­nute. I don't know where we're heading, how long this trip will last, how it will end. But I'm still alive and that is something.

I observe my two companions. Their heads are hanging. Every jolt sends waves of pain through them, too, especially when in the darkness that surrounds us, Commander Ali doesn't see the small sand dunes in our path. When this happens, the pickup stops dead, the front wheels sink into the sand, the rear wheels lift off the ground, and a cloud of dust mixed with small stones and uprooted tufts of grass rises and blusters around us. Then, with a series of leaps and lurches that breaks our backs the truck flies off into the night again. Ajmal is covered in sand. He, like me and Sayed, can do nothing more than shake his head, spit the sand out of his mouth, and cough.

The Taliban soldiers, barely twenty years old, laugh, but it's not cruel laughter; there's no sadism in this contagious gaiety that seems to be part of their very spirit. I haven't seen them, and I will never see them, sad, depressed, or angry. They're a tight-knit group, a crew, and this is their family. They've grown up together. Together, they've studied the Qur'an, which they know by heart in its original Arabic. They live and fight together. Together, they are ready to kill, to cut throats, to massacre. They long to die in battle, together.

They laugh when the pickup struggles over these rollercoaster dips and rises. They want to measure our resistance and make us understand that this is their life. They will share their joys and their sufferings with us, their food and their famine, their thirst and their water. We will never go without. Their attentiveness leaves us dumbfounded, but we will learn to fear it when we discover what they're capable of.

 

The air is clear, clean, fresh. I look up above me: a black mantle lit by millions of stars shining with a brightness that is only possible in the desert. I'm reminded of night crossings in the sailboat when I was a kid. My father would hand me the rudder, leaving the watch to me. We would be in the middle of the sea, and I, the lone navigator. I would occasionally look at the compass, but I had learned to use the stars to plot my position. I do the same thing now. I can make out the constellations. We're in a different hemisphere but I know which direction we're heading. We're going south, perhaps southwest. I picture the map of Afghanistan, visualize the districts in this part of the country, which I have learned by heart, and realize that the Taliban are taking us as far as possible from the place where we were abducted. We're heading into the southernmost reaches of Helmand province, where they feel safer, where there are no trails and little risk of crossing paths with anyone.

It's past midnight when we arrive in a village surrounded by opium-poppy plantations. It's on the banks of the Helmand River, which here makes one of its many turns before heading west and emptying into Lake Hamun, in Nimroz Province. We'll be staying here for the night. It's pitch black. In the districts we will crisscross over the course of our captivity there is no electricity. When the sun goes down, they light torches, or, at most, a gas-fueled lantern. They go to bed shortly after sunset and wake before dawn.

 

The Taliban need to find a place to stay. They can count on the people of this village—they have friends here, people who support them. Nonetheless, they avoid showing us around too much. They order me to cover my head and keep my mouth closed. We stop at a widening in the road and a small group of people gathers around the pickup. They're curious. Word has spread. The mujahedeen, legendary heroes cloaked in an aura of mystery, have arrived with their precious booty: three captive spies who were operating in their territory. They are discreet but they cannot help showing us off a little, like game they have just bagged. This is how they reinforce their reputation and increase consensus among the masses.