Under an Afghan Sky Read Free

looking up to the sky, and I could hear the faint rumble of airplanes.
    “Do you have a GPS?” Khalid asked.
    “No,” I said, “why?”
    “Airplanes. They tracking us.” He led us into a ravine where the ground was covered with shale-like rocks. It was hard to walk and keep my balance. “Shh. Sit down.”
    Again, we sat down. The men took their Kalashnikovs off and put them on the ground. We waited. The airplane sound got louder, then faded. The two of them started searching my knapsack again. They pulled out my wallet and this time went through all my cards.
    “Credit cards,” Khalid said.
    “Yes,” I told him, “but they’re only good in Canada. You can’t use them here.” He nodded and put them back in their compartments.
    “Where this money is from?” He pulled out several denominations of Canadian bills.
    “Canada.”
    “How much is this?”
    I reached out and he put the bills in my hand. I counted.
    “About a hundred dollars,” I answered. He took the bills back and stuffed them in the pocket of his pants.
    The men seemed convinced that I had a GPS, and they were determined to find it. Instead, they found my Nike wristwatch, which Khalid held to his ear as if to listen for the ticking. Then he took a sharp rock and smashed it into pieces. And then he smashed the pieces some more.
    “That was my watch, not a GPS.” I scowled at him. He had moved on already, pulling out my camera from the bag. I had a littleCanon point-and-shoot that I’d bought—it was basically brand new—to take with me to Beijing while I was on assignment at the Summer Olympics only two months before. I watched as they took it out of its case and found the on switch.
    “Camera,” Shafirgullah said, proud that he knew how to say the word in English.
    They scrolled through all my pictures, asking questions. “Who is that?” “Where is this?” “What were you doing?”
    Khalid pointed the camera at me, motioned to Shafirgullah to sit next to me, and took a picture of us. Then Shafirgullah picked up his gun and pointed it to my head. He said something in Pashto and laughed—and click, the pose was captured.
    The two men traded places. Khalid showed Shafirgullah which button to push, and it was his turn to hold the gun to my head.
    “Stop this,” I said to them, “it’s not nice.” They laughed. “And it’s not funny.”
    Suddenly there was a
beep, beep, beep.
It was coming from my crotch.
    “What is that?” Khalid asked. “You have GPS!”
    “No,” I lied, “that’s coming from your phone.” I pointed to his pocket.
    Beep, beep, beep.
    “Where is that? It is your pocket! Give to me!” Khalid was angry now. I had no choice but to pull my spare phone from my pants and hand it over.
    “You lie to me,” Khalid said. “You say you no have GPS.”
    “I don’t. It’s a phone. I forgot I had a spare one.”
    He grabbed the blue-and-white Nokia cell phone from my hand and did the same thing he had done with my other phone: he took the battery and the SIM card out and put them and the phone in his pocket.
    “What else in your pocket?” he demanded.
    “Nothing,” I lied.
    “I want to see.” He stuck his hand in one pocket and then the other, and pulled out a small one-decade rosary. I’d bought it in Italy that summer when three of my girlfriends and I were in Tuscany for our friend Maureen’s wedding. It was made of rose petals, and at one time had a nice rose smell, but the scent had long worn off. I’m not super-religious but I am a practising Catholic, and I’d kept the rosary in my right pants pocket since I bought it.
Never know when you might need it, Mellissa.
Khalid threw the beads to Shafirgullah, who tossed it onto the gravel.
    “Let me keep that,” I said, reaching my hand out. Shafirgullah picked it up and gave it back to me, and I put it back in my pocket.
    “Get up,” Khalid ordered. He said something to Shafirgullah in Pashto and the curly-haired man pointed his gun at me, pushing