Under an Afghan Sky (26 page)

Things had improved a little since the Taliban were overthrown, but women in Afghanistan generally aren’t able to choose from a plethora of opportunities, as women in the West are. In my short time in Afghanistan, though, I’d met quite a few women who were determined to defy that fate, creating lives of their own. I thought about Shukria Barakzai, who I’d interviewed the summer before. A journalist-turned-politician, she invited me into her home, where she lived with her three daughters, and talked openly about why she chose—at great risk to herself and her family—to lead such a public life.

“I grew up with war in this country,” she said in near-perfect English as she poured tea into short glasses for us. “Peace is still a dream for me.”

She attended university in Kabul in the 1990s but was forced to leave school when the Taliban took power. After the US-led invasion in 2001, she went back and got her degree, and started a newspaper for women, which was the brave beginning of her campaign for women’s rights. She was outspoken on subjects like violence against women, and maternal and infant mortality. Barakzai was a natural politician, eventually becoming a member of the Afghan parliament, where she continued to press for changes that would give women more opportunities and equal rights. An attractive woman with deep, dark eyes that sparkled as she talked, she was passionate about her country and believed she had an important contribution to make to her society and to women in Afghanistan.

But her determination came at a huge cost. Death threats were delivered to her door on a daily basis. A car bomb exploded outside the gates of her house. She was a target of the Taliban, who even after being overthrown were just as determined not to let women
advance. But despite the threats and intimidation, Barakzai continued to go about her business, accepting fully the dangers that came with her position.

“At least you know you are dying for something,” she told me. “I’m happy that I’m dying for my country, my goals, for my nation. No one can protect you from a suicide attack. God knows, one day, when, where, how, they will succeed. So I should try my best, and I have to use the time I have.”

Barakzai’s youngest daughter joined us after the camera had been turned off, climbing into her mother’s lap. She was only three years old, a cute dark-haired innocent who didn’t have any idea what her mother was trying to do. Barakzai pulled a comb out of her purse and started combing her daughter’s hair. “I hope they are not fighting for the same thing I am fighting for today,” she said, referring to her children. “I would love to give them some better future in society. But I believe it will take a long time. A generation, maybe. It’s a long time, but I believe it can happen.”

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know that you were risking your life to go to work every day, that an assassin’s bullet stalked you wherever you went. I couldn’t help but look at her with admiration. Here was someone who was really trying to make a difference in her poor, besieged country. I felt small and insignificant just being in her presence. But it was important for me to at least be able to tell her story. It was people like Shukria Barakzai who gave the rest of us hope that the world truly could be a better place.

I took another bite of the bread Shogufa had made, chewing slowly. “Khalid, does Shogufa go to school? What does she want to do when she gets older?”

He scratched his head, unsure, perhaps, of how to answer.

“She no school. She be bomber, like me. We die together,” he said after a few more french fries.

“She doesn’t want to go to school? She doesn’t want to have a job?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “She want to get married. She want to have child. I want five childs.”

What if she doesn’t want five children? I asked him. But it didn’t matter. He had five siblings, and he wanted the same for his own family.

“You know,” I began, “it’s not fair for your children if you die in a suicide bombing. And if Shogufa dies in a suicide bombing! Who will look after them? You can’t have children and then leave them to go and kill other people.”

“My mother. She will have them,” he answered.

I gave up. It was useless to try to reason with someone who refused to consider that there may be alternative beliefs to his. It was late anyway, and I could feel a cool breeze coming into the hole from the pipes. Khalid seemed to notice too, and he opened one of the bags. It was filled with cut-off shirt cuffs and sleeves, and scraps of cloth. He grabbed a handful and stuffed it into a pipe opening, then gave me the bag and pointed at the other pipe. I took some of the scraps and did the same, to block the cool air that was coming in. It was only going to get colder. And if, God forbid, I was there into the winter, we would surely need more blankets. I shuddered at the thought.

It was warmer in the hole with the pipes covered, but my feet were still clammy. I couldn’t get them warm, even when I took off my socks and tucked them under the blanket.

Khalid fell asleep almost immediately after telling me to “off the light.” I turned the light back on once I heard him snoring. It wasn’t even midnight. I picked up my notebook and counted the number of empty pages left. I was losing hope that I’d be released before I ran out of pages, but I defiantly flipped to a fresh page and started writing.

Hi Mom and Dad,

I just want to start by saying that I’m so sorry for putting you through this. I know how worried you must be, and I can’t imagine what you are going through. I’m so sorry. I know it’s hard for you to understand why I wanted to come here, and you probably think that no story is worth my life. You need to know that I am okay. My kidnappers are treating me very well, and they have not hurt me. I’m being fed and kept in a small room, but I am fine. I just hope you are okay. I’ve been praying a lot—there’s not much else to do—but it’s been okay.

I didn’t know what else to say. I’m not a parent, and probably will never be, so there was no way I could really comprehend what they were going through. I thought about all the parents I’d interviewed. Parents who’d lost their young children in tragic accidents; parents who didn’t know where their children were (those were the among the hardest interviews); and parents of fallen soldiers. For me, those were the most heart-wrenching.

CBC used to do a special broadcast around Christmastime on the soldiers who’d been killed in Afghanistan the previous year. We interviewed families of the soldiers so that Canadians could get to know who these young men and women were who had died fighting the war in Afghanistan. I’d done several of those interviews the year before my first tour to Afghanistan, and they had helped me understand more deeply the sacrifice military families make.

I will never forget the father who broke down halfway through telling me how much his son loved his three young children. Or the mother who talked about her son’s love of cars. Their children were all unique, but there was one thread of consistency: They all went to Afghanistan because they thought they should be there. They felt like they were making a difference for people who needed their help. The parents all understood the risks, and when their children were at war, they lived with the knowledge—and the fear—that
there might come a knock at their door in the middle of the night. If you had a child who was in the military, that was a part of life.

My parents, however, were in a different category. They may not have liked that I wanted to cover the conflict in Afghanistan, but my job didn’t come with the same dangerous risks that a soldier’s did—my job wasn’t on the front lines. So they didn’t have to steel themselves for anything because the assumption was that I’d be safe. Now, they were faced with the uncertainty of where their daughter was and what might happen to her. I felt terribly guilty for putting them through what must surely be a version of hell.

I paused, tired of writing, then flipped through my notebook until I found a blank space on the back of a page that had already been written on. I started to write again—all the prayers I knew by heart, until the pen fell out of my hand, jolting me awake so I could “off the light.”

Khalid woke up early the next morning and, after he went to the bathroom and washed his hands and face, told me he’d had a dream—”when you see in sleep”—he called it. It wasn’t a good dream, and he seemed really bothered by it.

“What was it about?” I asked.

“Shogufa. Someone take Shogufa.” His voice was flat and his face ashen.

“Someone kidnapped her?” I asked. He nodded. I paused for a second but decided to go ahead and say it anyway. “Now you know how it feels, how my parents and my friends and my sister must feel. It’s not good, is it.”

He shook his head no and conceded that it was a horrible, helpless feeling. He told me that in his dream he didn’t know who
had taken her, and he had run through the streets of the village in search of her, but no one could help him find her. She had disappeared.

He took his cell phone out of his pocket and put the SIM card in. He punched in a few numbers and I could hear the automated female voice on the other end saying in Pashto that the person he had phoned was unavailable. He ended the call and dialed again. And again. “She no answer,” he said, looking at me.

“It’s early,” I assured him. “She’s probably still sleeping.”

Khalid wasn’t convinced and dialled yet again. Finally, an hour later, Shogufa answered, and she and Khalid spoke for several minutes.

“See,” I told him, “she was just sleeping. She’s fine. Think about my family. They’re not fine because they cannot call me.” When he didn’t respond, I reached for the cell phone he still held in his hand.

“Please, Khalid, let me make a phone call.”

“I cannot, Mellissa. I sorry,” he responded, taking out the SIM card and putting the phone back in his pocket.

“Please, just a short one, so I can tell Paul I am okay.”

He shook his head. “My father… he will kill me.”

“He doesn’t have to know. Please. My family and friends are so worried about me. I just want to tell them I am okay and you are looking after me.”

“I cannot, Mellissa. I sorry.”

I knew there was no changing his mind, and I was tired of begging. I felt like I’d been begging since the day I was kidnapped. Begging them not to shoot me, begging them to let me make a phone call, begging to be released, begging God to hear my prayers, begging, begging, begging. And I’m not a beggar by any means. In fact, maybe this was my lesson for being too proud to ask for anything, especially help, from anyone. It drives my friends crazy sometimes, usually when I’m in the kitchen. I remember one time
when I was cooking dinner for thirty at Kas’s condo in Toronto, for an engagement party for Maureen and her fiancé Dr. Don Low. It happened to be the hottest day of the year, and the air conditioning wasn’t working. And as usual, I had planned a menu that might have been a little too ambitious: herb-roasted salmon, chicken stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese, roasted potatoes, three salads—spinach, pasta, and Caesar—and chocolate cupcakes for dessert. And I wouldn’t let anyone into the kitchen to help, even as I was sweating and rushing to get dinner on the table.

In Italy on our holiday the summer before, it was much the same. As the designated cook at our rented villa, I planned all the dinners and insisted on doing all the shopping. And I wouldn’t let anyone into the kitchen to help me, protesting that it was a small kitchen (which it was). I might have relented one night and allowed Angela to chop some onions, but that was about it. The girls learned after a few days that it was much better to just lie around the pool and give me an hour in the kitchen before coming in for cocktails. It worked out okay for them too.

I suppose I was proud to be self-sufficient because I was raised that way. My mother had once warned me to “never rely on other people.” Her warning must have stuck because now my parents often accuse me of being too self-sufficient—which I think they sometimes translate as being selfish. So it was getting harder and harder to hear myself begging my kidnappers for freedom, for something I had taken for granted my entire life.

Khalid noticed I had grown quiet, and he took his Kalashnikov from behind his pillow. He asked me to pass one of the scraps of cloth to him and I did. I watched in fascination as he took his gun apart piece by piece, cleaning each carefully with the fabric scraps. He handed me the barrel and a cloth and motioned for me to do the same. I did, and then he handed me the wooden hand guard. We
continued in this way until every surface of the weapon had been rubbed clean. Then he put the gun back together.

“Here,” he said, putting the rifle in my hand. “Hold like this.” He took my hand and put my finger on the trigger. “This. You can kill someone now.” The magazine was not attached, so I pulled the trigger. Even without bullets, it was a powerful feeling to hold a gun like that. Khalid pointed to his forehead. “You can shoot me,” he laughed. I put the gun to his head, the same way he did to me on that first day, the same way Shafirgullah had pointed his gun to Shokoor’s head when they were trying to shove me into the car.

I pretended I was pulling the trigger. Khalid laughed, knowing he was safe, the loaded magazine in his hand.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like if I was pulling the trigger for real, sending a bullet into my captor’s brain and ending his life right then, right there, in the hole. I would probably be thrown back by the force of the shot, and then I’d watch a red mark grow on his head as his eyes rolled toward the back of his head and he slumped over. It was a cruel and horrific thought, and it excited me a little to think that I might be in a position to have that much power to decide whether someone lived or died.

But I knew it was not at all possible for me to take someone’s life. I’d been through this already when I was thinking about strangling Shafirgullah in his sleep. And I certainly didn’t think I could kill Khalid. He was the one person I felt I could maybe trust. After all, he’d called me his sister and promised he would never kill me.

He seemed to read my mind. “You no kill me.”