A Rope and a Prayer (40 page)

Our private security team is furious to learn of our meeting with the FBI. When we call to inform them of the latest video communication, they chastise us, claiming that our outreach to government officials has “put the stamp of USG on the case.” This will set us back, they claim. It’s difficult to know whether it was merely a coincidence that the video emerged during our visit to Washington. Dewey adds that my generation as a whole is impatient and all about immediate gratification. Then he suggests I consider “taking up needlepoint.” I fire off an e-mail telling him I can stomach any offense he throws at me—except needlepoint. Later we will learn that David made the video on April 20—a week before either of my trips to D.C. Still our outreaches appear to be another lesson in futility.

I relay the contents of the video to Michael. He considers it a setback, but recommends that we move forward with our plan to meet the Afghan and Pakistani officials and continue to push for contact with Siraj Haqqani.

“Up until now the kidnappers have been relatively sedate in their communications,” Michael says. “I am sorry you have to deal with this now—no one should ever have to go through this.”

Exhausted and upset, I go over to Jason’s apartment for the evening, but I can’t sleep. Around 1 A.M. he finds me sprawled out on the couch in the living room. We talk about the video and my growing sense of hopelessness. “I’m embarrassed that I have not been able to bring David home,” I tell him. “I feel like I have failed him.” Jason assures me I am doing everything possible in the face of an impossible situation. Then we sit in silence for the next half hour.

 

 

The next morning, at 8:30, I meet Lee and Carol at the Willard Hotel, the site of the Afghanistan-Pakistan summit. It is a grand old hotel, with a touch of European flair. We set up camp in one of the seating areas along the wide carpeted corridor that connects the lobby to several conference rooms. The walls are mirrored and the hallway is punctuated by love seats, coffee tables, and upholstered chairs. It’s a rainy day and the air-conditioners are on full force, adding to the already uncomfortable atmosphere.

We wait for several hours before finally meeting with a senior Pakistani intelligence official. As we ascend the elevator to the top floor and follow the circuitous security detail, I try to catch my breath. Holbrooke told me that this man has a soft spot and that I should not hold back from showing emotion. Several Pakistani security guards and aides line the hall. I recognize one of the aides from Eikenberry’s confirmation.

We join the intelligence officer in a large suite. He is affable and courteous. “Up until now, we have thought that David was in Afghanistan,” he says, a hint of surprise in his voice. “My American friends informed me today that he is in Pakistan.”

We all keep quiet, having heard this excuse before. It’s all I can do not to blurt out, “No kidding.” He adds that David is being held by “the most despicable people,” not referring to the Haqqanis or the Taliban by name. He adds that Pakistan’s ISI does not talk to these people directly, but can reach them through intermediaries. He says he sent a message regarding David a while back, but that the captors responded that one order of business needed to be cleared up before they could move onto David.

“They wanted us to pay for the dead body of the Polish hostage,” he states plainly, referring to Piotr Stanczak, who was executed on video two months ago. It is believed Piotr was under the control of Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander affiliated with the Haqqani network.

My heart sinks. I feel sick to my stomach. Tears well up in my eyes as I realize how gruesome and twisted this situation is. The Pakistani official notices and stops for a moment, realizing the impact of his words. He asks his aide to bring me a glass of water. He looks a bit teary-eyed himself and seems choked up by my sadness.

“Do you have children?” Carol asks.

“Yes,” he replies.

“Well then you know how horrible this is,” she says.

This is Carol’s go-to comment, part of her emotional arsenal. She asks this of all officials and it always allows room for a thoughtful pause and then an empathic response.

Shortly after, the Pakistani official resumes, adding that his agency will do what it can. We should not lose hope. At the end of the conversation, he turns to Carol and says, “Don’t worry, ma’am. You will have your son back.” Then he adds, “And when he gets back, I personally think you should spank him.”

This odd comment takes us all by surprise. After showing sympathy, he jokingly admonishes David for the situation and the grief he has caused his mother. It is the latest example of the contradictions and unpredictability we have grappled with for months.

After we depart and convene in the elevator, I say, “Carol, I think if you offered to spank David in front of that guy, he’d be out tomorrow!” We all have a laugh.

At the end of the evening, we meet with another Pakistani government official, a man who has been personally touched by terrorism. He offers little hope, beyond encouraging the three of us to “draw upon the power of the universe.” Think positive. This is a surreal comment, coming from a senior official of a conflict-torn country. And yet it is perhaps the most sound advice I have received to date. It is the only thing over which we have any sense of agency—our own ability to maintain hope. To possess blind faith that there will be a positive outcome. This by far is a more appealing endeavor than merely flying blind.

The following day, we drive to a hotel near the Pentagon for a meeting with another high-ranking American military official. I have exchanged e-mails with him over the last few months, but this is our first meeting. Lee, Carol, and I are greeted by his assistant and ushered into a conference room off the lobby. The officer arrives with several aides and analysts in tow. As promised, the FBI has given him a copy of the latest video of David, the “crying video.” He offers his sympathy and shares what he knows.

Thoughtful and straightforward, he proceeds to tell us that this is a very complex situation. He believes David is in the tribal areas of Pakistan. “We believe he is on the Haqqani compound in Miran Shah, but do not have a fix on a specific location. Anyone that tells you they know exactly where your husband is is lying.”

While I appreciate this honest admission, I am crushed. I had hoped the lack of information from government officials was due to secrecy. I hoped there was some greater knowledge of David’s case or plan in the works to secure his release. In the movies, our government’s intelligence and military institutions always have a card hidden up their sleeves. This, sadly, is not reality. I have been hearing about the Haqqani compound for weeks. “Exactly how big is this compound?” I ask.

“About twenty square miles,” he says, referring to the Miran Shah area. He goes on to tell us what he knows about the Taliban group holding David, stating that the different groups function much in the way syndicated crime families do. There are different factions, including the Haqqani network, Baitullah Mehsud, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Hizbi-i-Islami. “They compete with each other, but they also help each other out—guarding each other’s prisoners, etc.” He reiterates that the United States military cannot intervene if David is in the tribal areas. Once again, we are confronted with the reality that our only means of getting David out will be through private family negotiations.

Back at the hotel over dinner, Carol concedes: “You two have done everything possible. I feel at peace knowing that all avenues have been pursued. Our government can’t do anything. They don’t even know where David is.” I agree. I am increasingly convinced that my energy should be expended elsewhere, namely in maintaining my sanity. If negotiating doesn’t get us anywhere, all I have to fall back on are faith and prayer.

O
n April 24, we are told that we are moving back to North Waziristan. Elated, we depart Makeen on my brother Lee’s birthday. As we leave the house in the darkness, I pray that this is somehow the beginning of our journey home.

After driving for several hours, we arrive in an area roughly twenty miles south of Miran Shah. Later, I will learn that we are in Dosali district. Our new prison is a school that was built by the Pakistani government to teach local women how to make textile weaving and other skills to support themselves. It has been taken over by the local commander who is overseeing our imprisonment. The school has concrete floors and is a vast improvement over our house in Makeen, but the basic circumstances of our captivity are not changing. We continue to be lied to constantly and have no idea what negotiations, if any, are taking place.

Over the next four weeks, we receive contradictory reports. First, our guards repeat Abu Tayyeb’s story that an agreement has been reached to exchange us for twenty Taliban prisoners. Then they say my family is not offering enough money along with the prisoners. Finally, they tell us that only sixteen of the twenty prisoners have been agreed on.

I am horrified that the Taliban may receive sixteen prisoners for us. The deal would set a terrible new precedent that will encourage future kidnappings.

I ask Tahir if there is any way we can escape from the house at night. A set of power lines runs nearby that we could potentially follow. Tahir laughs at me and says it is too remote and too far from the Afghan border. I decide to wait.

Tahir and Asad are barely on speaking terms, and I increasingly distrust Asad. He continues to carry a gun and according to Tahir is bad-mouthing me to the guards. He tells them that I am the dirtiest foreigner he has ever worked with, according to Tahir. He also brags that he stole money from the foreign journalists he worked with in the past.

My hopes of ever leaving the tribal areas are slowly fading. From the yard of the house, the remains of a nineteenth-century British army post can be seen on a hillside. According to villagers, 1,000 British soldiers were killed in a battle there. I assume the figures are exaggerated, but the story is one more episode in the history of fierce Pashtun resistance to foreign occupation.

During one of the trips I made with Kristen to India, we visited St. Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta. Built by British merchants during the height of the British raj, the walls of the Anglican, Gothic revival church are lined with marble plaques praising the heroism of British soldiers who died in Afghanistan and the tribal areas. A century later, the plaques are largely forgotten.

On another nearby hillside, a newly constructed health clinic appears to sit unused. I had read that many doctors and nurses fear working in the tribal areas. Even before the rise of the Taliban, rumors circulated that medical vaccines for children are secret efforts to sterilize Muslims.

 

 

News broadcasts continue to serve as Rorschach tests for our odd group. In early April, our guards cheer an attack on an immigration center in upstate New York that kills thirteen people, firing their Kalashnikovs in the air in celebration. The Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud claims a Muslim he recruited carried out the attack in revenge for American drone strikes in the tribal areas.

When subsequent news reports say the gunman is a disgruntled Vietnamese immigrant who has no links to terrorist groups, our guards are puzzled. Having little knowledge of the world beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan, they ask me if Vietnamese people are Muslims.

When swine flu begins spreading across the globe later in April, our guards see it as God’s punishment to people who eat pork, a practice forbidden by Islam. On May 4, they excitedly cheer a news report that says masked men gunned down forty-four people at a wedding in southeastern Turkey and assume it is a terrorist attack that shows the steady spread of jihad. Later reports say the attack was the result of a blood feud between two local families.

The guards continue to assail the Pakistani army. Akbar and Chunky say they were nearly killed by a Pakistani army resupply convoy that opened fire on a group of civilian vehicles. They curse the army and say it fires wildly and needlessly endangers civilians.

Anecdotal evidence of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban using the tribal areas as a safe haven and embracing a jihad that spans the Muslim world continues to unfold before me. We are told that Mullah Dadullah, a widely feared Taliban commander whose men beheaded the Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi and driver Sayed Agha in the 2007 kidnapping, used a nearby house as a base. While in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Dadullah organized the Afghan Taliban’s first group of suicide bombers.

On another night, I meet Mullah Sangeen, a Haqqani network commander who oversees their operations in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province. He accuses the United States of launching an unprovoked war on Islam and sees the conflict as a global struggle between faiths. He tells me our release is close and departs. I know he is probably lying, but cannot stop myself from feeling hopeful for the next forty-eight hours.

Young Taliban fighters visit and express the same support for a jihad that spans the Muslim world. They discuss a prophecy that an army carrying black flags will someday emerge from Khorasan—the ancient name of Afghanistan—and liberate the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from foreign occupation. One of them said if it was up to him he would take me outside and give me one last chance to convert to Islam. If I refused, he would shoot me.

The only bright spot is a local man who visits the house and is compassionate toward us. He seems to embody the positive side of Islam and Pashtunwali that I remember. While our guards see me as dirty and refuse to share a plate of food with me, the local man scoffs at their bigotry. He announces that he would happily reach into my mouth and eat a morsel of food I had started chewing.

“He is God’s creation,” he says.

 

 

In late May, we move back to Miran Shah, and Sharif, the tall Taliban commander, informs us of a final deal. All that is needed, he says, is for the two sides to agree on where the prisoner exchange will take place. The next day, Sharif announces that there is no agreement.