Free Days of Fear by Daniele Mastrogiacomo Page A

blusters around us. Then, with a series of leaps and lurches that breaks our backs the truck flies off into the night again. Ajmal is covered in sand. He, like me and Sayed, can do nothing more than shake his head, spit the sand out of his mouth, and cough.
    The Taliban soldiers, barely twenty years old, laugh, but it’s not cruel laughter; there’s no sadism in this contagious gaiety that seems to be part of their very spirit. I haven’t seen them, and I will never see them, sad, depressed, or angry. They’re a tight-knit group, a crew, and this is their family. They’ve grown up together. Together, they’ve studied the Qur’an, which they know by heart in its original Arabic. They live and fight together. Together, they are ready to kill, to cut throats, to massacre. They long to die in battle, together.
    They laugh when the pickup struggles over these rollercoaster dips and rises. They want to measure our resistance and make us understand that this is their life. They will share their joys and their sufferings with us, their food and their famine, their thirst and their water. We will never go without. Their attentiveness leaves us dumbfounded, but we will learn to fear it when we discover what they’re capable of.
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    The air is clear, clean, fresh. I look up above me: a black mantle lit by millions of stars shining with a brightness that is only possible in the desert. I’m reminded of night crossings in the sailboat when I was a kid. My father would hand me the rudder, leaving the watch to me. We would be in the middle of the sea, and I, the lone navigator. I would occasionally look at the compass, but I had learned to use the stars to plot my position. I do the same thing now. I can make out the constellations. We’re in a different hemisphere but I know which direction we’re heading. We’re going south, perhaps southwest. I picture the map of Afghanistan, visualize the districts in this part of the country, which I have learned by heart, and realize that the Taliban are taking us as far as possible from the place where we were abducted. We’re heading into the southernmost reaches of Helmand province, where they feel safer, where there are no trails and little risk of crossing paths with anyone.
    It’s past midnight when we arrive in a village surrounded by opium-poppy plantations. It’s on the banks of the Helmand River, which here makes one of its many turns before heading west and emptying into Lake Hamun, in Nimroz Province. We’ll be staying here for the night. It’s pitch black. In the districts we will crisscross over the course of our captivity there is no electricity. When the sun goes down, they light torches, or, at most, a gas-fueled lantern. They go to bed shortly after sunset and wake before dawn.
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    The Taliban need to find a place to stay. They can count on the people of this village—they have friends here, people who support them. Nonetheless, they avoid showing us around too much. They order me to cover my head and keep my mouth closed. We stop at a widening in the road and a small group of people gathers around the pickup. They’re curious. Word has spread. The mujahedeen, legendary heroes cloaked in an aura of mystery, have arrived with their precious booty: three captive spies who were operating in their territory. They are discreet but they cannot help showing us off a little, like game they have just bagged. This is how they reinforce their reputation and increase consensus among the masses.
    Men, boys, even young children, draw close. They emerge out of the darkness. Here and there a lighter illuminates their faces as they scrutinize us, silently, their curiosity mixed with condemnation. I’m dying for a cigarette. A man who speaks a few words of English offers me one and I am allowed to smoke it. They let me speak, complain, explain. I talk without interruption to calm my nerves and ease the tension. Almost