Free A Rope and a Prayer by David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill Page B

where only our captors see me. The entire enterprise is designed to move us while arousing the least possible suspicion.
    Throughout the journey, I try to talk with Atiqullah, still blindly hoping he will see us as human beings and quickly agree to a deal. During the first night of the drive, Atiqullah asks us if his guards are treating us well. We lie and say yes, fearing retaliation from Qari if we report his beating of Tahir. Long bouts of silence are interrupted by brief exchanges between Atiqullah and me. Attempting to be cautious, I try not to be cavalier in what I say and offend him.
    After journeying all night, the sun rises and we continue driving. Atiqullah and I engage in a seemingly friendly conversation about our families, politics, and religion. We joke, laugh, and discuss life. He tells me the names of his children. I do my best to appease him. When we speak about politics, I say that the United States’ dependence on Middle Eastern oil has warped its foreign policy. When we speak about religion, I try to emphasize the commonalities between Islam and Christianity. I offer to read an English-language Koran if he can find one.
    After I describe the book I am writing in an effort to prove I’m a journalist, Atiqullah announces he is taking us to Helmand, where he said we will be released in a few days.
    “You will fly home from the British base,” he tells me. I do not tell him that I had been on the base three weeks earlier. While researching my book, I had embedded with an American marine unit in northern Helmand Province. The unit arrived for what it thought was a police training mission. Instead, it took far more casualties in Afghanistan than it did in a tour of similar length in Iraq.
    As we drive south, I fantasize about seeing the massive American-built hydroelectric dam and irrigation canals of Helmand. I’m getting desperate. I don’t want to be the latest in a long line of Americans dating back to Josiah Harlan who experience initial success in Afghanistan, followed by spectacular failure. I tell him I plan to quit journalism if I survive. He encourages me to stay in the profession.
    Knowing that Atiqullah is likely to disappear again with little warning, I try to extract promises from him. Under the Pashtunwali code of honor, a promise of protection should be ironclad. I begin by asking him to promise to protect the three of us. Atiqullah responds that he will protect only me.
    “I will not kill you,” he says. “You will survive.”
    I insist that he promise to save Tahir and Asad as well. “You will not kill the three of us,” I say. “It has to be the three of us.”
    Atiqullah refuses, and I raise the issue over and over as the drive drags on. At one point, I suggest that he cut off my finger instead of harming Tahir and Asad. He replies that the Taliban are not criminals.
    Later that day, he finally promises to protect all three of us. “I give you my promise,” he says, as I lie in the back of the station wagon. “I will not kill any of the three of you.”
    Then he says, “Let’s kill Asad first,” and laughs. I have no idea what to believe.
    On the second night of our drive across rural Afghanistan, we arrive in a darkened village. Its dirt streets are deserted and the cold air suggests we are at high altitude. A spectacular array of stars that is the brightest I have ever seen blazes overhead.
    Atiqullah, Tahir, Asad, and the other Taliban get out of the car and go to sleep in a mosque. Under the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islam, I am not allowed in a mosque because I am a kafir, or nonbeliever. In the past, moderate Muslims have welcomed me in mosques.
    I stay in the car with Akbar, the guard who speaks broken English and brought us food and clothes. Akbar whispers that Atiqullah has told him we will be exchanged within ten to fifteen days. I feel enormous relief. My patience, faith in Atiqullah, and statements about our worth appear to have paid off. Later that