The Taliban Shuffle (27 page)

“Who was that?” I asked.

“ISI.”

“Seriously?”

“Problem, Kim. Man come up, say ISI, hand me ISI card. He say, ‘Who is boss?’ ”

“What did you say?”

“You know. I say, ‘I’m a small boy, no read, no understand, I don’t know she. My boss send to Serena to pick she up, I pick up. I don’t know she.’ ”

“Good work.”

That was always Samad’s act, whenever the ISI asked about me. At least, that’s what Samad said he told the ISI. How could I know for sure? My gut trusted Samad, but I didn’t really understand the ins and outs, all the levels to this Pakistan fun house. Tammy said Samad seemed trustworthy, but given all the double games being played here, given how many times my gut had been wrong, how many times I had been played, how many times other friends had been played, I had no idea if Samad was telling the truth. Part of the reason I had hired Samad in the first place was that he didn’t work at the Serena or the Marriott—both of which were known for hiring staff members who made extra money by informing to the ISI. He also came recommended by a Pakistani journalist friend—but again, some Pakistani journalists played for the ISI team. The ISI was everywhere, in newspapers, TV, shopping malls, hotels, and most definitely lurking inside our cell phones.

A few months earlier I had tried to report on a suicide attack at an ISI office in Rawalpindi. But whenever we tried to talk to anyone, someone else showed up, telling us to leave, shoving us back, refusing to show any identification. The busybodies pulled people away mid-interview and threatened to arrest them—and us. When we left Rawalpindi, a car of spooks tailed us to Islamabad, until we made a few quick turns.

So on this afternoon, I looked at Samad.

“Let’s see if they follow us.”

We pulled out of the parking lot and drove in the direction of my house. A white car followed. Samad turned right. The car followed. Samad turned left. The car followed. These guys were hardly sophisticated. Being followed by the ISI in Pakistan felt like being chased by the Keystone Cops, like the
Mad
magazine cartoon
Spy vs. Spy
. I would like to say the song from
Mission Impossible
played in my head, but it was more like “Mahna Mahna” from
The Muppet Show
. It certainly didn’t feel serious. After one too many turns, I decided I had enough.

“Pull over,” I told Samad.

We stopped on the side of the road. The white car had no choice but to drive slowly past, the two men inside looking out the window at us. Clever. Samad waited and then dropped me at home.

The next morning he showed up, looking mopey. When I opened the door, he stood in his button-up shirt tucked into his hiked-up jeans, staring at the ground like he wished it would open up and swallow him.

“Problem, Kim.”

“What happened?”

“Last night, the ISI come to my home. Because of car, they know my home. They show up, ask about boss. They say they arrest me if I don’t tell them.”

“So you did, right?”

“So sorry, my sister, I did.”

“It’s OK, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

It’s not like it mattered that much—I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Samad seemed like he felt bad. He seemed like he really considered me his sister. But how could I know for sure? The next Sunday, I needed him to drive me to a meeting. I called, once, twice, three times. But Samad didn’t pick up the phone. I started to panic. Could he have run away with the car, after I loaned him money? Could he betray me? I worried that I was being played. That night, Samad called.

“So sorry, Kim, I go to cousin brother’s home,” he said. “I forget phone.”

I soon flew to Afghanistan for some stories, putting the Pakistan spy intrigue and Samad aside for a while.

But after a few days, another intrigue knocked at the back of my mind. I wondered where Sean was. He was supposed to be back in London by Easter—it was May, long past Easter. I hadn’t heard from Sean in weeks. Farouq hadn’t heard from Sami. And no one had seen Sean since the week after I spoke to him—since he told me about his wacky plan to meet a top insurgent in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

“Oh, you know how Sean is. Disappears for weeks at a time,” a friend said. “Don’t worry.”

“Yeah. I don’t know, I’m worried.”

I called Tom, the British journalist and my former housemate at the Fun House.

“He’s probably fine,” Tom said. “But I haven’t heard from him. He was supposed to check in ten days ago.”

“Ten days ago?”

“I know. I’m going to Jalalabad tomorrow to try to talk to him and track down Sami’s family. I’m also in touch with his driver in Pakistan. But you know how he is, Kim. He’s probably fine.”

We hung up. The next night, I had a nightmare that Sean was kidnapped. I woke up convinced that he would be killed. I called Tom.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Tom, who had driven to the eastern city of Jalalabad near the Pakistan border with his fixer, Tahir, who besides Sami was the only Afghan fixer we knew with serious Taliban contacts. “The driver said he’d meet us. But then he turned off his old phone numbers. Tahir had to make a lot of phone calls but finally got a new number for the driver. He said he’d come up to Jalalabad from Peshawar to meet us. But then he switched off his phone.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.

“No. Tahir is still trying. I’ll let you know.”

Days passed. I worked on a story about pornography and soap operas invading Kabul—something easy and light that I could focus on, although Farouq and I shared the uncomfortable task of looking at various DVDs we had bought, making sure they were porn and trying to see if Afghans were involved. Still, almost seven years since this notion of democracy was thrust into Afghanistan, many Afghans, especially the young ones, saw it as a veneer for “anything goes,” for sex, drugs, and booze, and music about sex, drugs, and booze. Freedom was just another word for losing yourself in excess. I tried to do stories on this culture clash whenever I could, seeing it as a way to write about how Afghans lived, not just how they died.

“This is really, really embarrassing,” Farouq said, popping a porn DVD out of my computer. “People are really sick.”

“I am aware,” I said, popping one that involved a watermelon into my DVD player.

Tom became more and more cryptic. Then, finally, he called.

“I wanted you to hear this from me,” he said. “But Sean has been kidnapped.”

I felt ill. As far as Tom had been able to figure out, Sean and Sami had been taken hostage in late March, immediately after crossing into Pakistan to meet their contact. Brilliant, as Sean would say.

Dave flew to Kabul on his way to another embed with NATO troops. He was unsympathetic to my fears about Sean, blaming him
for being an idiot. As usual, Dave and I fought late at night, him yelling at me for some perceived slight. I curled up, facing the wall. He apologized, saying that he was under stress. But I stared at the paint. It was nothing I wanted to deal with at that moment, but I knew I would eventually have to face the truth. This would never be that fairy tale I thought I wanted, the dream of the overseas life, the family, the full-meal deal. I just couldn’t face it now. I didn’t want to be alone in Pakistan. With everything happening, I didn’t want to be alone at all.

I flew back to Islamabad for a few days before leaving on a trip to the States, where I planned to have minor surgery that would hopefully fix all my sinus and allergy problems. Sean was kidnapped, Dave was a war junkie, and, on nowhere the same level, I was facing a deviated-septum repair and the removal of a blueberry-sized polyp from my right nostril. I was in no mood for any more stress. I walked upstairs to the freezer, where I kept the booze. Procuring alcohol in Islamabad involved a bootlegger, a friend, or cumbersome red tape that meant you basically had to declare yourself a Christian alcoholic. I chose the friend option—one had earlier sold me about a dozen bottles, including syrupy concoctions like banana liqueur and Midori, a sweet, green, disgusting melon-flavored drink made from Japanese honeydews. Only fifteen-year-old girls would drink it. But in an Islamic country, I took whatever was offered, under the theory that at some point, at some time, life might become as desperate as me sitting beneath the pool table, swigging banana liqueur, bombs falling outside.

When I looked in my freezer, I noticed the gooey liquor bottles were missing. Dave would never drink those. The next morning, I asked the housekeeper. He immediately blamed Samad—almost predictable, as the two hated each other. Samad was a Punjabi, and as the driver, should have been relegated to the outside. The housekeeper was an Afghan-born Pashtun.

“Samad’s been sleeping in the main house,” the housekeeper volunteered.

“What?”

“Yes,” he said. His eyes grew large. “Inside, on the floor, I found him one day.”

I grabbed my office manager, hired three months before.

“Has Samad been sleeping here?”

“Well … I don’t know about every night, but I know one morning when you were gone, I came inside and he was sleeping on the floor of the office,” she said.

“He brings girls here,” the housekeeper said. “He has parties. He plays with the balls upstairs.”

He must have meant the pool table.

“Is that true?” I asked the office manager. “He’s playing with the balls upstairs?”

I envisioned Samad having sex on the pool table. The office manager shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve seen him with a girl out near his room in the back.”

“What? Who? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Girls?”

The housekeeper shrugged. He appeared to be settling into his story. “You don’t want to hear anything bad about Samad. He was also having girls in your house. Maybe in your bed.”

I called Samad. “Where are you?”

“Five minutes, boss.”

He showed up in twenty. I practically dragged him inside. He denied everything—the booze, the girls. He said he had slept once on the floor of my office because he was worried about security.

I didn’t believe Samad, but I kind of shared the blame. He was only twenty-two, a poor kid who lived in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother, sister, and various other relatives. I had handed him the keys to a five-bedroom house that he knew would be empty. I had helped him buy a car. I had given him my bank card and my bank code—although I would later figure out that he had never taken any money. I had handed him temptation. What did I think was going to happen?

“Give me the house keys,” I said.

Samad looked at me, eyes brimming with tears, chin quivering. He handed me the keys.

“We’re hiring guards, so you don’t have to worry about the house. We need to get locks for the alcohol. You’re not allowed to bring women here. You’re not allowed to bring friends here. You’re not allowed to come inside anymore. You’re going to have to earn back my trust.”

Samad sulked as he drove me to an interview. I snapped at him, suspicious that he had been stealing money from me.

“You probably work for the ISI,” I said.

“No, Kim,” he said. “You are my sister. No ISI. I don’t do anything.”

“I don’t believe you.”

That silenced him. He stared straight ahead and drove. For days, we barely talked. Eventually Samad drove me to the airport, and I flew back to the States, where things would be even worse.

S
omething needed to give—my nose or my lifestyle. For my entire life, I had suffered from allergies, asthma, sinus infections, bronchitis. But in Asia, those illnesses had become my usual state. I was allergic to mold, pollen, grass, anything green, anything with four legs, but primarily I was allergic to dust, and in every country I visited, the dust was an unwelcome companion. I was always sick. Even though Farouq was a doctor, there wasn’t much he could do. Whenever I arrived at the airport in Kabul, the air immediately assaulted me. It supposedly had a very high percentage of fecal matter; the dust was called “fecal dust,” the air, “fecal air.” About eight times a year, a sinus infection knocked me out, and Farouq brought me antibiotics, a large IV bag of sterile saline water to shoot up my nose, nasal sprays with foreign lettering, and decongestant pills. Nothing really helped.

I opted for surgery in Portland, Oregon, so my father could take care of me. The surgery was actually very simple, and I had soon healed enough to travel. I couldn’t fly, so I rented a car to drive to Chicago. This would give me a chance to visit my relatives and evaluate my relationship with both Dave and the United States. I planned to think about this, and not at all about Sean and what might be happening to him.

Along the road, I saw my brother in Seattle, who was soon moving to London, making my parents wonder just what they had done wrong; my grandmother in Montana, who took me to a funeral and introduced me as a Pakistani; and a police officer in South Dakota, who made me sit in his police car with his police dog while he wrote me a warning ticket for speeding. Finally I pulled into Chicago. This was my so-called “home leave.” Every two years, the
Tribune
paid for its foreign correspondents to come back for a week, to make sure we didn’t go native while abroad. I was so far gone, even walking into the newspaper building seemed like entering another time zone.

But my newspaper was now a foreign country. I had always loved the Tribune Tower, a megalomaniacal Gothic temple to the industry. Pieces of landmarks from around the world had been embedded in its outside walls, from the pyramids of Egypt to a remnant from the World Trade Center. A piece of the moon even sat in a special window. For a journalist, entering this building had always meant something. Famous quotes about freedom of speech were carved into the walls of the lobby. From the time I first walked in here as a college student, I had felt awed by these constant reminders that journalism mattered. Now I had a hard time convincing the guards that I actually worked here.

“Kim Barker,” I said, repeatedly.

“You’re not in the system,” the guard said, staring at a computer screen of employees.

I leaned over the counter and looked at the screen. “Not Baker. Barker.”