A Rope and a Prayer (31 page)

“Well,” he says a bit sheepishly, “we are interested to hear from you, what progress you have made. So far your husband is in good condition but over time anything can happen.”

“The newspaper will not help me and our government will not pay. Our government is very different from the Italian government or the Korean government,” I inform him, knowing that those countries had recently paid ransom in Taliban kidnappings. “So we will keep trying. Five million is a lot. We will never have it. We have a certain amount now and we can get it to you very quickly,” I add, as I have been instructed to do by John and Michael.

“Yes. You know our circumstances,” he explains. “Everybody is putting nose in. We should not talk all the time because it is dangerous. So try to keep it limited.”

I agree with him and add, “That is why our representative is in the country. He can talk to you and the government cannot trace the call.”

“Atiqullah says to you he is the only authentic representative for this issue,” he adds.

“Okay, for the money issue?” I ask.

“Yeah, yeah,” he confirms.

I am relieved he has not made any mention of prisoners.

“Okay,” I repeat. “John is my only rep in country. Can we have him and Atiqullah talk again? He knows my father. He is a family friend. He also knows Afghanistan. That is the connection between us.” I know invoking one’s father is a form of credibility in Pashtun culture. I also don’t want to let on that we think David and his captors are in Pakistan.

“Listen, you just try to prepare to arrange the money, then we will talk to you. You try to prepare the money as quietly as possibly,” he states.

“Okay, we will keep trying,” I say, to let them know more funds may be available if we keep talking. “We have an update about funding in the country, if you want to contact John he should know about it. He has access to the money and can get it to you.”

“Yeah, we are going for praying,” he says, wanting to get off the phone, in just one of the absurdities of the situation. He may be a criminal and a kidnapper, but he’s observant. “After two days we will have another conversation,
inshallah
,” he adds. God willing.

“Okay, Tahir and Asad—they are okay?” I ask. I know their families are worried sick. And I want to reinforce the idea that they must be part of the deal.

“Yeah, yeah, completely well. There is no problem,” he says. “Is okay—one hundred percent.”

“Okay,” I add, “and tell David I love him and I pray for you all. I pray for you
all
every day.” I hope in some bizarre way this will play on their sympathies, if only momentarily. There is a muffled pause, a fumbling in the background.

“God bless you,” he responds.

 

 

Michael alerts me he will be traveling to Washington in a few days, and I plan to meet him there. We exchange text messages and set a meeting point: the bookshop at Union Station, just in front of Au Bon Pain. At this point, we have only seen each other in miniature during our telephonic computer exchanges on Skype. I tell him I will be wearing a red scarf.

I have no idea what to expect beyond the sandy brown hair, prophet-length beard, and broad smile I have seen on my computer screen. I have heard rumors about Michael. Mystery precedes him. A Google search reveals he was expelled from Afghanistan by President Hamid Karzai in 2007 for trying to negotiate with the Taliban. He has worked in the region for the United Nations and the European Union as a diplomat. Some speculate that he is a member of British intelligence. This is most likely wild rumor fueled by the fact that he has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the last twenty-five years and is fluent in several local dialects and well versed in the nuances of tribal structures and custom. He is an expert on Taliban leadership. Two former hostages I met claim he was their lifesaver. The Kabul bureau trusts him and uses him as an analyst. David viewed Michael as a well-respected expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I have found him to be an insightful and articulate Skype correspondent.

He arrives on time. I’m relieved to see he is somewhat older than I expected and slightly professorial in his demeanor. A tall man with a warm smile, he greets me with three kisses, alternating cheeks. There is an awkward charm about him and something fatherly that puts me at ease. He is quite sensible, respectful, decent—and every bit as eloquent in person as on a computer screen. He’s married and has a normal family life outside the business of kidnapping. He informs me he has just been offered a fellowship at Harvard and seems genuinely surprised by the honor. Michael says he is in Washington on business. He occupies quite a niche: a person who has talked to the Taliban. He jests that Karzai has done wonders for his brand.

“I should tell you, your husband was due to interview me before this unfortunate incident. Did you know this?” he asks as we settle into the lobby coffee shop of a nearby hotel.

Of course I do. I’ve scoured David’s e-mail account for references to Michael and found out he was indeed going to meet with him in Pakistan, the day after his fateful interview with Abu Tayyeb. “David would be slightly upset knowing I have now scooped him on several interviews, including you,” I joke, recalling my brief chats with Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

Michael says he still believes that Atiqullah is not the ultimate decision maker in the kidnapping and that he does not have the authority to release our three. Michael is pushing for John to meet with a relative of Siraj face-to-face to try and strike a deal. Upon parting he praises my patience. I think this is a dubious honor. I have been beating myself up for days with the thought that if I were truly doing a good job, David would be free by now. Michael counters that the United States government cannot find Siraj Haqqani. Why should it be any easier locating David and securing a deal for his release? He adds that Siraj cultivates a self-image of being moral, but in reality heads a criminal conspiracy. “When you’re dealing with one of the world’s most formidable characters,” Michael tells me, “things take time.”

A
bu Tayyeb calls Kristen to negotiate and informs me that she told him to speak with someone in Kabul. Then he disappears again. I am relieved in a way. At least Kristen is not negotiating herself. Over the next several weeks, we receive contradictory reports from our guards about the negotiations. On one day, they say an agreement is close. On another, they say there is no progress.

Our existence reverts to its old pattern. Each day consists of the same tedium: prayers, meals, naps, and depression. Tahir and Asad grow more and more pessimistic. I tell them to be patient. They shake their heads at me.

My mind-set is gradually shifting. For the first three months of captivity, I tried to find ways that I could somehow help engineer our release. Now, as we begin our fourth month, I tell myself it is my job to wait as long as it takes for our release. I am sure that Kristen and my family are doing all they can to free us. My part of the bargain is to be patient and strong and do nothing rash. We are being treated well compared to other hostages, many of whom spent far longer in captivity. I think of Terry Anderson, the American journalist held for seven years in Lebanon. I try to look at my time in captivity as a jail sentence that I must serve until release. At the age of forty-one, I have twenty to thirty years of life ahead of me. A few more months of imprisonment in exchange for decades of happiness are worth it.

The question I posed about who represented the true Taliban in the first days of our kidnapping now seems silly. In my mind, Qari, the unstable guard who nearly shot Tahir and our kidnapper who uses multiple false names are one and the same. As I come to know the alternate universe the Haqqanis have created in Miran Shah, I grow more and more dejected. Our captors are unwavering in their belief that the United States is waging a war against Islam.

It is a universe filled with hypocrisy. My captors bitterly denounce missionaries, but they press me to convert to their faith. They complain about innocent Muslims being imprisoned by the United States, even as they continue to hold us captive and try to extort money from my family. They rail against American, Israeli, and European mistreatment of Muslims, but they celebrate suicide attacks on mosques that kill dozens of Muslim worshippers as they supplicate to God. Those living under Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s apostate governments, they say, deserve it.

Yet in our day-to-day existence, when commanders are absent, some of our guards show glimpses of humanity. These moments give me hope that we may somehow be able to talk or reason our way to freedom. I do not know if they are simply humoring me so I will remain an obedient and patient captive. I do not know which side of our contradictory captors is real.

 

 

Over the last three months, I have gradually gained a clearer sense of our guards and their backgrounds. They are mostly Afghan men in their late twenties and early thirties. Some have grown up as refugees in Pakistan. All have the equivalent of elementary or junior high educations from government or religious schools. None have seen the world beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Waging jihad seems to give them discipline, self-respect, and a sense of belonging to a greater cause. They see the United States military as the latest foreign force trying to subjugate Afghanistan and Islam. Akbar believes he must have many children because they will be needed to fight Afghanistan’s next foreign invader: China.

I talk the most with Akbar, who seems to illustrate how the United States lost the initial popular support in Afghanistan in 2001. In the first years after the fall of the Taliban, Akbar worked as a painter on some type of construction project. Over time, he turned against the United States as American forces arrested local leaders, searched houses, and, in his mind, humiliated Pashtuns. He also embraces wild conspiracy theories about the United States. He is convinced the American military uses some type of weapon that sterilizes Muslim men. Several of his Afghan friends, he tells me, are unable to have children.

He praises the Taliban for cracking down on warlords, combating corruption, and delivering law and order. He despises the Pakistani army. In Miran Shah, he spends many afternoons using a Taliban radio scanner to discover the frequency used by nearby Pakistani forces. Speaking in Urdu, he lures soldiers into a conversation and then curses them in Pashto and English. He seethes with hatred toward what he sees as an apostate army that oppresses their fellow Muslims in exchange for Western cash.

He and the other guards speak of the foreign militants in the tribal areas with reverence. In conversations, they refer to Osama bin Laden with the honorific “Sheikh Osama.” For several weeks, they take turns attending bomb-making classes from Uzbek militants in Miran Shah. They set off enormous explosions but Pakistani forces never come off their base to investigate. The only signs of a Pakistani military presence are planes and helicopters taking off from an airstrip somewhere to our east.

Timor Shah—our chief guard—is particularly proud when he comes home one day from bomb-making class with skinned knees. He set an explosive but did not give it a long enough fuse. As he ran away from the bomb, he dove to the ground as the blast erupted behind him. In some ways, the guards remind me of young soldiers anywhere. They enjoy playing with guns and testing their own strength. Chunky enjoys taking apart and cleaning his machine gun over and over. When I tell the guards my pen is my weapon, they laugh.

Day and night, they monitor American-funded Voice of America Pashto-language service radio and celebrate reports of the deaths of Afghan and American soldiers. Whenever a guard hears a news bulletin describing a major Taliban suicide bombing, he excitedly calls for the other guards to come listen. Hunched around the shortwave radio, they shout “God is great!” in unison after the number of dead is announced.

I try to get to know one of Sharif’s fighters, a young Pakistani Pashtun named Hamid who is training to be a suicide bomber. In his twenties, he has a slim build, brown hair, and brown eyes. He graduated from a high school in Pakistan and at one point hoped to become an engineer. He never attended college but is relatively well educated compared with the other fighters.

Conversations with him help me understand how hard-line Islam’s focus on the next world eases the training of suicide bombers. Taught that their relationship with God is all that matters, young recruits are slowly distanced from their families. When I ask Hamid why he wants to die, he replies that living in this world is a burden for any true Muslim. Heaven is his goal, he says. Earthly relationships with his parents and siblings do not matter. Music, laughter, and idle chatter are seen as distractions from worship. Life is a flat, colorless existence that is something to be endured, not enjoyed. Days are spent studying the Koran, praying, and fearing judgment day. If he successfully carries out a suicide bombing, he believes he will die as a martyr and ensure he goes to heaven, not hell.

Hamid speaks a smattering of English, and my own beliefs seem to interest and amaze him. During our six weeks together, he asks me a series of questions. Is it true, he asks, that a necktie is a secret symbol of Christianity? Is it true that Christians want to live a thousand years? Is it true that American soldiers hunt wild pigs—animals that Muslims consider unclean—and feed them to their commanding officers?

Sharif, a tall, burly, and imposing figure, tells me that the Taliban have been unfairly portrayed by the Western media. He says that the Taliban would have allowed girls to attend school when they governed Afghanistan, but security problems prevented them from doing so. Once security improved, he insists, girls would have been allowed to enroll in classes. He expresses dismay at the United States, a country he considered an ally against the Soviets. The 2001 American invasion was unjustified, he says. The Taliban should have been allowed to try Osama bin Laden on its own and determine if he was guilty of the 9/11 attacks.