Days of Fear (7 page)

Men, boys, even young children, draw close. They emerge out of the darkness. Here and there a lighter illuminates their faces as they scrutinize us, silently, their curiosity mixed with condemnation. I'm dying for a cigarette. A man who speaks a few words of English offers me one and I am allowed to smoke it. They let me speak, complain, explain. I talk without interruption to calm my nerves and ease the tension. Almost as if it were a game, a stupid game of soldiers and prisoners. They ask me who I am. I am a journalist, I say. It's a detail, for me a vital one, that I will continue to impress upon the Taliban. The story of three captured spies is an obvious lie, an easy excuse for an arrest that in reality is nothing more than kidnapping, a trap. I obstinately insist on establishing another rule: each of us must assume responsibility for our actions. They must admit that they arrested me, abducted me, that they are moving me to some hideout because they want to use me as ransom. I accept this but demand the respect that any prisoner deserves. I discuss the question with Commander Ali that evening. At first he rejects my demands, but I finally convince him to accept them. He will return to the question often during the seven days we spend together, putting everything in doubt again and again.

 

It's still Monday, March 5. We move another few kilometers toward an isolated group of houses. The Taliban help us get down from the cargo bed, they unload covers, gas stoves, tea­pots, weapons, and ammunition. The put us in a barn full of grain sacks, bags of seeds, equipment, old canisters, large containers made of black, smoke-stained clay. We sleep stretched out on a straw mat, all three of us together, our hands still tied with a strip of fabric but mercifully no longer behind our backs. I have certain bodily needs. The tension and the adrenalin mean that I must often ask leave to meet my bodily needs. This will be a feature of my detention. I will also use this need as an excuse to get in some exercise, get a breath of fresh air, try to keep my body in shape, especially my legs, which will end up reduced to something like matchsticks. I use the same excuse to interrupt the monotony of hours and hours stretched out on makeshift beds and to calm the waves of panic that assail me, at times so violently that I can't breathe. That night, Commander Ali warns me: “Once you're inside your cell, you don't come back out. If you knock for your needs, we'll kill you.”

We sleep like logs. Tired, distraught, incapable of fully accepting a situation that we continue to think of as a bad dream, a nightmare from which we expect to wake sooner or later and recount to our loved ones as if it were a sign to be interpreted. But that's not how things turn out.

The sudden wake up call—the small steel door opening and slamming against the wall—brings us hurtling back to reality. The Taliban on guard emits a short, sharp order: time for morning prayers, the first of five such prayer sessions that every Muslim must observe daily. This one is among the most important; the prayer must be recited according to a precise ritual and followed by a series of gestures. You must wash your hands, feet, face, ears, nose, mouth, arms, and elbows first. A method for eliminating all the impurities absorbed by the body during the previous day and night. You can skip these ablutions only if you have not yet taken care of your own needs. It is a delicate and very spiritual moment in which one comes before God. It is a question of respect and devotion.

I do not pray to my God that morning. They hand me a small empty canteen, one of those used to hold oil for cooking, and jerk their heads toward a spot where I can go to empty my bowels. I will not be out of their sight, and more importantly, the spot lies away from Mecca, the direction in which the militants, Sayed and Ajmal, are all praying. I watch them from afar, sitting on their heels. Mine have grown sore, unaccustomed as I am to this position. They insisted that I sit this way right from the start, and not, as they repeat with disdain, “western style.” I will grow so used to this position that even two days after my liberation I will not be able to assume others without pain.

They pray as a group, one beside the other, including my two collaborators, whose hands have been freed for the occasion. Each man kneels on his own carefully laid mat, and calmly performs the same gestures to a rhythm set down by a boy who, because of his seniority, his religious knowledge and acquired merit, officiates over the rite, alone, in front of the group.

 

Tuesday, March 6. The pickup is ready. The cargo bed is full of covers. The weapons are already in place. Ten minutes after having been woken, time enough to gulp down some tea and a few pieces of bread, and we're on our way. They tell me to get down, remain wrapped in my shawl, hidden under the dirty, dusty covers. I vanish beneath that mountain of wool, plastic and cotton and immediately begin to have trouble breathing. There's no air. With my hands, which, fortunately, are tied in front of my body today and not behind my back, I open a small spy hole through which a little air and light enter. I have been told we have to cross a river on a small barge and that nobody, including the ferryman, must see me. So I obey their orders and stay hidden beneath the covers.

Ajmal and Sayed, on the other hand, don't need to hide. Only their hands, tied with a length of fabric, are hidden beneath the covers. They're Afghans. They can be swapped for Taliban soldiers currently in jail. Our captors watch them like hawks. If they make some sign, try to send some kind of signal, even the smallest, with their eyes, we may be killed on the spot. It'd be a trifling thing for the mujahedeen and nobody, certainly not the inhabitants of the village, would dare to say a thing.

Hidden under the mountain of covers I hear the Toyota maneuvering onto a barge. The motor of the little iron ferry starts, accelerates, chugs, and we begin the river crossing, twisting and rocking in the strong current. I pray to God that we make it to the other side. With my hands tied I'd never manage to swim to safety if we end up in the water. But after a few minutes we reach the shore.

The pickup roars to life again, and starts back on its mad race. To the south, further and further south, towards a second and then a third stretch of desert. The sky is blue, the sun has risen on my left. The Taliban push aside the covers and tell me that I can come out, thanking me for having remained hidden and quiet. One at a time, they pull out a small round silver container with engravings on the lid, and figures and symbols in Pashto. Each is full of a green powder. They arrange a line of the powder on the palms of their hands and then lick it up with their tongues. It is something they repeat every couple of hours.

I imagine it's some kind of drug. When I ask them about it, the boys laugh and offer me some to try. It doesn't strike me as such a good idea. Ajmal explains that it is a kind of hallucinogenic tobacco; you put it in your mouth and wait for your natural laboratory to call forth the effect. He also tells me it's a very strong stimulant. “They're used to it,” he warns me. “If you use it, the effects might not be so good.” I ask, needling them slightly, whether their religion allows such a thing, given that they don't drink, don't listen to music, don't engage in sex, have never read anything except the Qur'an, and distrust anything that smacks of the depraved and impure west. They explain that there are no prohibitions concerning drugs, and that it's not even a drug, really.

Aleef, the Taliban with whom I exchange a few words of English every so often, replies, needling me and provoking me in return: “You smoke cigarettes, we eat tobacco.” I suggest he smoke a cigarette, that he try something new. He tells me it's impossible. It isn't the Qur'an that forbids smoking but the commander in chief, Mullah Omar, “Amir ul-Momineen.” He says this seriously, without the hint of a smile, which would be seen as showing a lack of respect for the supreme leader. He explains that Omar issued a special fatwa after consulting with the other ten members of the Supreme Shura. In that moment, whoever had been a smoker was no longer a smoker.

Indeed, in the fifteen days we spent together, I never saw one of them with a cigarette in his mouth.

 

The pickup flies over the desert dunes. We tear along old tracks hidden by the shifting sands and dotted with small sharp rocks of various colors: yellow, purple, light blue, black. We drive over countless small hills stretching all the way to the horizon. After a couple of hours we see the outline of two mountains rising up out of an immense plain populated only by herds of camels and mules, and flocks of small black and brown lambs with thick wool. Many are wild, but when I look more carefully I can make out the shape of a small boy shepherding others with a stick. We are hundreds of kilometers from the nearest town. Yet there he is, alone, perhaps with nothing more than a flask of water, accustomed to wandering for days and days in the middle of this desolate land.

The landscape is devastatingly beautiful. Dunes rise out of the desert floor like ocean waves during a storm, their crests sculpted by the wind. As far as the eye can see, a succession of rolling hills, marshes, small lakes, and palm trees. A tiny black dot interrupts the horizon. It is moving away from us, trailed by a cloud of dust. One of the Taliban kneels, stares long and hard at the horizon, looks around, and then turns back to that suspicious presence. He yells something, the others reply and pick up their weapons. They pull him down and shake him up a little. One at a time, they, too, straighten up and stare at the black dot for a while.

I look at Aleef and ask him, worried: “Americans? Americans?” He shakes his head and says there's nothing to worry about. He glances in the direction of the suspicious dot one more time, and then begins to sing at the top of his voice. A song I will hear often during our days of captivity. Our warders themselves will shout it, it will play on the Taliban's car stereos; soldiers will pass around a cassette with the same song on it. There is no musical accompaniment, only sweet words, sung by young voices that are almost feminine. No fanfare, but rhythmic slogans, battle songs. A repetitive dirge burgeoning with melancholy. These songs are the hymns of the Qur'anic student movement. They tell stories of battles, conflicts, but also of a better world, a world that is more just, in which everybody lives safely and in peace, purged of thieves, hypocrites, and murderers. But also without women, progress, culture, books, music, dancing, cinema, and television. A world anchored to the past, to the age of Mohammed Himself. A great calm oasis without history, without emotions, and without feelings, founded on the doctrines of the Qur'an, the book that Allah bequeathed to the earth and in doing so eclipsed the other two volumes belonging to the great monotheistic religions.

I will speak often about the future Islamic utopia with these young men, who, however young, are conscious that their deaths await them around the next bend in the road. They remind me of a pack of wild dogs: strong, tight, mad, ferocious, curious, cunning, decisive. But above all, happy, convinced that they are in the right, ready to sacrifice themselves, to martyr themselves so that they may attain truth, make the great leap to paradise, the only real goal of an existence that is disfigured, limited, and totally closed to the world.

 

The mountains that I saw on the horizon a while back now form a range marking the end of the desert. We slow down and travel along trails that have been cut into the mountains by the motorbikes and pickups of drug and arms smugglers. Ajmal explains that this is a border zone. He thinks he recognizes some features, but he's not sure. We must be close to the Pakistan border. The mountains close around us, we are in a narrow gorge that finally opens onto a plain punctuated by large rocks and brushwood.

Commander Ali told us that he was taking us to the Movement's most important hideout, the “main base.” But he lied. There is no base camp. In time I will learn how deceitful the religious students are. They will tell us a mountain of lies. And somehow I don't believe they do so just to keep us in the dark: my sense is that it's part of their nature.

At the bottom of this valley protected by high peaks there are two buildings made of mud and straw. They are enclosed by a perimeter wall with two entrances, one to the east, and one to the west. Perhaps these buildings are habitually used by the Taliban, though there are no traces of a training camp or anything else of that nature. The militants need to hide, particularly from spying eyes overhead. During the night especially, but also by day, I hear the rumble of spy planes. This incessant surveillance agitates our captors and explains why they make us move hideouts a total of fifteen times in two weeks, sometimes twice a day.

Right now, this sound reassures me. It makes me feel that I have not been abandoned, that finally, after a long silence, the alarm has been raised. But it's only conjecture. There's nothing that really confirms my hypothesis. I am inside a bubble, and here only the desert silence is audible. The remote surveillance of these zones is standard procedure. Using drones, the English, with the help of the Americans, observe and record every movement on every inch of ground in this part of the country. We are perfectly visible. We stay inside all afternoon. The floor of these rectangular edifices is made of earth: there are four holes for windows and an entrance without a door.

 

The tension has eased. Now begins a kind of interrogation that will last nearly a week. No torture, not for now. The Taliban will take turns talking to each of us, one at a time, asking us who we are, what kind of life we lead, what we think of Afghanistan, of the war. What are our ideals, our projects, our dreams? It is not mere curiosity but part of the “investigation” ordered by the leaders of the group. Every dialogue will be dominated by a recurring theme: religion.

Commander Ali is sitting in front of us. He turns first to me, the foreign journalist. They are more curious about me than about the others. He begins to talk to me about Islam. He apologizes repeatedly for the head injury that his men inflicted on me and explains that things like that don't happen often, that their prisoners are not usually treated in that way. References to Guantánamo, to the military base in Bagram, are frequent: “They are not inclined to show prisoners the same attention there. Our brothers are tortured.” He encourages us to consider ourselves guests rather than detainees. It doesn't take much—a quick glance in the direction of the Kalashnikovs pointed at us, or at the miserable state in which we find ourselves—to glean the truth. But he insists, he orders his men to free our hands and begins firing questions at us.