While blankets were placed on the ground and we settled in, the
mullah climbed the steep bank to our right for another four hundred feet, followed by Ahmed. The mullah sat atop a rock, apparently to make a phone call. I wondered whom he was calling.
Using leaves and twigs, our captors built a small fire. Not long after a serving of tea, a rare sound drifted up from the valley below—the whine of a motorbike’s engine. I couldn’t have been the only one who heard it, but no one else reacted to the noise. It seemed to be expected.
What, I wondered, was happening now?
The answer arrived soon enough. Our company was growing.
Two men marched into the middle of our camp. The first was probably in his early- or midthirties. He was tall and lanky, with a well-groomed beard that extended about two inches past his chin.
“Hello!” he said in Pashto. “How is everybody doing?”
When the rest of our group saw or heard this man, they immediately dropped what they were doing and focused their attention on him. Though he made no effort to intimidate and even smiled during his greetings, I realized he must be a Taliban leader.
While this man did not come across as scary, I was uneasy at the sight of the man who accompanied him. It was a familiar and definitely unsmiling face: the Butcher.
The new leader, whom the others addressed as the Commander, discussed matters with our captors. Within five minutes of his arrival, he turned to the three of us hostages and said via Rafiq’s translation, “We are going to resolve all this in the next two hours.”
Two hours?
I felt my stomach tighten. This could be good, but it seemed more likely that a quick resolution would not be in our favor.
Whatever we were headed for, there was no doubt that events were picking up speed. After lunch, six of us made a brief hike up the mountain: the Commander, the Butcher, Wallakah, and Hopeless, along with Rafiq and me. All the Taliban in this group were armed, except the Commander.
The Commander pulled a business card from his pocket, punched a number into another phone, and then handed the phone to me. “Talk to this guy,” he said.
“Who am I going to talk with?” I asked. The Commander didn’t answer.
“Hello?” I said into the phone.
“Hello,” said a male voice. “I just want to commend you for your work.” The speaker’s accent identified him as Afghan, but he spoke good English. A friend of the Commander’s, I assumed.
The man asked me a series of personal questions: “Where do you live in the States? How many children do you have? What are their names?”
I answered the questions but grew increasingly uncomfortable. “Who am I speaking with again?” I said.
“That’s not important,” the man said abruptly.
The questions continued, but I became more careful with my answers. I didn’t want to endanger my family by giving too much information to the Taliban.
Then another voice came on the line—to my surprise, one that sounded American. “Dr. Joseph, this is Mark at the ISAF headquarters.” ISAF was the International Security Assistance Force, a NATO-sponsored military presence in Afghanistan, made up of troops from the United States and other nations.
I exhaled with relief.
“Mark, it’s such a pleasure to talk to someone from the States,” I said. “If that was your colleague, I need to let you know that I gave him some coded answers because I didn’t know who I was speaking with.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “We just wanted to confirm who you are.”
I passed more information on to Mark.
“You’ve done a good job of staying calm,” he said. “Keep doing what you’re doing. We have our eyes on you. Now I have someone else here who wants to talk to you.”
A moment later a crisp voice filled my ear. “Hello, Dilip. I’m one of the generals here,” a man said. “I just want to give you one tip: keep playing your Asian cards more than your American cards.”
“General, thank you, I’ve been doing that.”
Suddenly I heard only silence. We’d lost the signal.
I handed the phone back to the Commander. “Who were you talking to?” he demanded.
“It’s your phone,” I said. “You dialed it. I thought it was one of your friends.” I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that I’d just spoken with ISAF headquarters.
I guessed that the Commander didn’t have any idea who he’d just put me in touch with, that calling the ISAF was simply random luck. My theory seemed even more likely a moment later when the Commander pulled the same business card from his pocket and asked if I recognized any of the phone numbers scribbled all over it. There must have been more than twenty. After taking a quick look, I said no.
Only later did I think of the possibility that the ISAF had intercepted the call so they could talk to me.
Either way, that phone conversation left me feeling more encouraged and less alone. The military knew where we were. Suddenly the idea of a rescue seemed a little less far-fetched.
A couple of minutes later the Commander again addressed his hostages. “Here’s how we’re going to resolve this,” he said. “We’re going to exchange the three of you for four prisoners at Pul-e-Charkhi prison.”
Wait a second
, I thought. We were so focused on the money before. This was a new emphasis.
Are these guys communicating with each other? Is there going to be an argument over this?
No one challenged the Commander’s statement. I tried to stay positive. The prison was close to Kabul. Maybe if we were transferred there, someone from our staff in the city would be able to get us out.
Maybe.
The Commander handed me a phone and instructed me to call our team. At the same time, the Butcher caught my eye and traced a finger across his throat, a not-so-subtle reminder of what would happen if negotiations didn’t succeed.
I reached Roy and Dean, though the connection was shaky and I had trouble hearing them. I explained how our Taliban numbers were growing and described the call with the ISAF. Then I related the new urgency and the new demand.
I suddenly remembered a comment Haqqani had made the day before—if we came up with two hundred thousand dollars quickly, then he, Wallakah, Hopeless, and Ahmed would divide the money among themselves and their families and let us go. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time since so many numbers and demands were being thrown around. It was clear now, however, that with more players involved, our situation was growing more complicated.
I recalled something else—Haqqani’s warning that Taliban from Pakistan would take us away if we couldn’t resolve the situation quickly. I’d heard of abductions that had played out this way. Even
after a ransom was paid, hostages were given to or “stolen” by another group, and the negotiation process started all over again.
I certainly did not want to end up in the lawless region that was western Pakistan. Were we near there even now? If we had indeed been traveling east, we might already be only a few miles from the border.
“Roy,” I said, “this is moving in exactly the direction that they predicted. More Taliban are arriving, and the stakes are going up. I hope you will be able to respond.”
“You know we’re going to do everything on this end that we can, Dilip.”
A crackle filled my ear, followed by silence. I’d lost the connection.
3:00
P.M
., F
RIDAY
I CONTINUED TO TRY TO REACH ROY AGAIN, WITHOUT SUCCESS. Finally I gave up.
The Commander seemed in no hurry to change our position. Hands behind his back, he chatted with Wallakah, who sat on a large rock. Rafiq also stood close to the group. The Butcher, meanwhile, paced nearby. Then he sat down, pulled his knife from his waistband, and took off the black leather cover. He began using it to pick dirt from his fingernails, twisting it this way and that. The curved blade must have been about ten inches long, but at that moment it looked at least twenty.
To distract myself from disturbing thoughts, I approached Hopeless, who stood on a slope at the edge of our high point. Earlier I’d noticed both he and the Butcher occasionally pulling a thin nut off one of the Black Mountain bushes that surrounded us, then chewing on the nut. These tall bushes looked almost like trees. Their thin branches were covered with dull-green leaves with sharp, pointed tips. The nuts were smaller and rounder than a walnut, encased in a shell.
I pointed to one of the bushes then moved my hand to my mouth, pretending to chew. “Do you guys eat these?” I said to Hopeless, knowing full well he didn’t speak English.
He seemed to grasp my meaning. He grabbed a branch of one of the bushes with one hand and plucked a nut off the branch with the other. Then he tore off the shell, muttering what probably could have been translated as, “You have to crack this open.” He offered me the nut.
I tried it. There was almost no flavor. It must have made up in nutrition what it lacked in taste.
It was about this time that the distant sound of a single-engine airplane reached my ears. My eyes combed cloudy skies for a sign of it, with no luck. Was someone up there looking for us? Why else would someone fly a small plane in this forsaken territory?
The Commander interrupted my searching, breaking away from his conversation with Wallakah and turning to me.
“So do you like us?” he asked. “Are we treating you okay?”
“Like” was a relative term. I liked that they were feeding us and hadn’t killed any of us yet.
“You guys seem okay,” I said. “I’m okay with everybody except this guy.” I nodded at the Butcher and smiled, trying to indicate it was a joke—sort of. Rafiq helped by laughing during his translation.
All the others chuckled in response, including the Commander. All, that is, but the Butcher.
The Commander finally decided it was time to move off the high point and back to the others at the plateau. The distance was only about a hundred feet, but it took us nearly ten minutes. Because of the uneven terrain, we had to stop several times to help one another.
At the plateau we were served another round of tea. While most
of us sat and sipped from our glasses, the Commander stood and addressed me again. The question this time was more personal and far more dangerous: “Do you believe in God?”
I was startled, yet I’d also been anticipating something along this line since Rafiq and I had discussed it during the original long hike.
Here we go
, I thought.
This could be the question that makes or breaks me
.
I had already resolved that, if asked, I would not lie about my faith. But I’d also decided to be wise about what I said. This wasn’t the time for a theological debate. My purpose in Afghanistan was to love and care for its people.
My answer was short and to the point. “Ever since I was little,” I said, “I have always believed in the one true God.”
“Okay,” the Commander said, his expression stern. “That’s good. But I can look up your information on the Internet. If you’re lying to us, we will kill you.”
“That’s fine if you want to look,” I said. “If you’re asking about my faith in God, that’s exactly what I believe. I pray to the one true God, the almighty creator of the universe.”
I wondered where this statement might lead. But instead of pressing me further about my faith, the Commander switched to more practical matters. It was time for our next phone call.
Back on our high point, I had no trouble this time connecting with Roy and Dean. They wanted more details on the prisoner exchange.
“Ask them,” Dean said, “to give us the names of the four prisoners.”
I pulled the phone from my ear. “Our guys are ready to move forward with this negotiation,” I said to the Commander. “What are the names of the prisoners?”
The Commander didn’t hesitate. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said,
“We’re not going to do that now. We’ve changed the plan. We want three hundred thousand dollars, nothing less.”
What?
Were they playing games? Testing us somehow? Or had they talked it over and decided to focus on the money after all?
I was especially frustrated at the thought they might be probing their ability to manipulate us. It occurred to me that I had leverage too. These guys needed my cooperation to get their demands met.
I gathered my courage and said as firmly as I could to the Commander, “We need to stick to one demand, or I can’t communicate effectively.”
When Rafiq translated, the Commander simply nodded. At least he didn’t seem offended by my statement.
I relayed the latest change to Roy and Dean. They accepted the new direction with little comment, which made me think they’d expected all along that money was the real goal of our kidnappers. We agreed to talk again in the morning.
“How soon do you think they will get the money?” the Commander asked after I ended the call. “How soon will this all happen?”
Once again I needed to be careful. “Listen, we have to take this one day at a time,” I said. “I’ve told them that you are now asking for three hundred thousand. They are working on it from their side. We will see what they say tomorrow morning.”
This seemed to satisfy him.
Our communications with the outside world were done for the day. Now the Commander had other things on his mind. Back at the plateau he smiled slightly at me and said, “What would you like to have for dinner tonight?”
It was a question I hadn’t expected. “I don’t need anything special,” I said. “You guys have been treating me just fine already.”
“No, you are our guest,” he said. “We are going to treat you to a feast tonight. We are going to kill a sheep in your honor.”
“No, no, please don’t go to all that trouble,” I said. “You don’t have to kill anything on my behalf. I’m good with what I’ve been eating.”
This time several of the Taliban responded. “No, no, no,” they said almost in unison.
“It’s our duty to treat you and give you a feast in your honor as our guest,” Wallakah said.
I suspected the feast was less about honoring their “guest” and more about coercing a local family to provide a good meal for our captors.