Under an Afghan Sky Read Free Page B

me a cigarette and that was it. I smoked like a chimney during my six weeks in Afghanistan and then stopped as soon as I got on the flight back to Canada. I hadn’t had a puff since.
    We were smoking the last puffs of our cigarettes when Shafirgullah pulled out another.
    “Why are we stopped here?” I asked.
    “We waiting,” Khalid answered.
    “For what?”
    “You like motorcycle?” he asked.
    “What?” I wasn’t sure what he was asking.
    “Motor-cycle,” he enunciated, so I might understand better. “You ride?”
    “I have before. Why?” I replied.
    “We wait. Motorcycle.”
    I didn’t understand. “Where are you taking me?”
    “We go to my home,” he said. “It is nice place. You will like.”
    I asked him if had family there—a mother? A father?
    “My girlfriend there.”
    “Your girlfriend,” I repeated.
    He nodded and smiled. “I not kill you. We just want money.” Of course they wanted money. I knew how this worked.
    “How much money you want?” I asked. I was beginning to speak like they did—in broken English.
    Khalid lit another cigarette. “Two people. Last two people we take. They from Germany and Britain. We get… how you say… ten hundred—”
    “Ten hundred?” I asked.
    He was trying to do the math in his head. “Ten thousand hundred…”
    He pulled out my notebook from my knapsack. He wrote a one, and five zeros after it: 100 000.
    “A hundred thousand dollars,” I said.
    “Yes. Each one,” he replied.
    “That is what you want for me,” I asked, “a hundred thousand dollars?” My heart sank. The idea of my network or someone having to negotiate with these guys didn’t sit well with me. I’d heard of hostage-takers demanding millions from other governments and organizations.
    Khalid looked at me closely, as if studying my face. “No, for you, maybe we ask two. Two hundred thousand.”
    “But you won’t kill me?” I wanted to be sure.
    “No, I no kill you.”
    “Promise?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Shake my hand. Promise.” I reached out my hand. He took it and held it firmly.
    “I no kill you. I promise you.”
    I hung onto his hand for a second longer to make sure he had shaken on his promise, then reached for another cigarette. Shafirgullah, who had been fixated on his cell phone and was text-messaging on it during this entire exchange, took a smoke out of the package and handed it to me, along with the matches.
    I lit it and inhaled deeply. The nicotine must have emboldened me. I asked Khalid if I could use his phone.
    “Who you want to call?” Khalid asked in reply.
    “My friend.”
    “Why?”
    “To let him know I am okay. He will be worried about me.”
    “It is a boyfriend?”
    “Yes. Just one call. He will be worried.”
    Khalid and Shafirgullah conferred in Pashto for a minute.
    “Okay, one call.”
    Khalid reassembled my phone and handed it over to me. It was the phone I had hidden and that had beeped earlier. Now I saw that there was a text message. It was from Paul. Paul Workman, the CTV correspondent with whom I’d developed a close bond since we met in Kandahar the year before. “What can you tell me?” it read. I knew then that he knew what had happened to me. With trembling fingers, I pulled up his number on speed dial. It rang twice.
    “Hi, it’s Paul.”
    “Hi, P. It’s me. I’m okay, don’t worry, I’m okay.”
    “Where are you?”
    Khalid motioned to me. “Tell them you are with the Taliban.”
    “I’m with the Taliban,” I said into the phone. “But I am okay.”
    “Oh, Mellissa.”
    “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
    Paul asked me if I had any idea where I was, and if my captors were listening in.
    “Yes, they’re listening. They are treating me well. I’m being looked after by a very nice man. His name is Khalid. He wants to speak to you.”
    At that moment, Khalid took the phone from me. “Hello. Everything is okay. She is with us. We looking after her.” Suddenly he looked spooked and abruptly ended the