Free Under an Afghan Sky by Mellissa Fung Page A

of his breast pocket and held it up to the ceiling, as if to find a signal from the highest point of the room. Then he dialed a number and put the setting on speakerphone so that I could hear. A woman’s voice answered on the third ring.
    “As-Salaam Alaikum.” I could hear her voice loud and clear. You would hardly know we were in a hole.
    “Salaam,” Abdulrahman said, and the two proceeded to chat for a few minutes, their conversation punctuated by laughter. Then I heard a baby’s voice. Abdulrahman pointed at the phone and looked at me. “My son. Do you hear him?”
    I nodded and forced myself to smile. It hardly seemed fair that he was freely able to call his family and laugh and smile with them, while I was cut off from my loved ones, who were probably sick with worry about me.
    “It’s not fair,” I said after Abdulrahman had said goodbye to his wife and son.
    “What is not fair?” he asked.
    “You can talk to your wife, and I can’t talk to anyone.”
    “Yes, it is not fair,” he laughed again, his laugh high-pitched and piercing.
    “Let me make a phone call,” I suggested. “That is fair.”
    “No,” he answered. “You cannot.”
    “Please? My family and friends are very worried about me. I just want to tell them I’m okay, and that you are taking good care of me.”
    “No,” he answered.
    “Please?” I pleaded. “It will only take two minutes to call them. One minute. Just to say hello.”
    He appeared to think about it for a while, then shook his head. “No.”
    “Maybe tomorrow? Think about it.”
    “Maybe.”
    Abdulrahman reached again for the white bag and pulled out an apple. He offered it to me but I shook my head. He bit into it, finishing the entire thing in about four big bites, the juice running down into his beard. He wiped it off with the sleeve of his light green kameez.
    “It is good. You need to eat,” he told me, reaching next for a package of orange-flavoured cream-filled cookies. He ripped open the sleeve, grabbed a handful, and tossed the rest to me. I took one and bit into it. The sweet artificial orange taste spread between my teeth. If this was going to be my diet for a while, I was sure I’d develop serious cavities, and going to the dentist is not something I enjoy, even on a good day. In fact, I’d gone to great pains to avoid the dentist over the last three years, making sure I brushed and flossed at least three times a day. Now I wasn’t sure when I’d get to brush my teeth again.
    Defiantly, I grabbed another cookie and stuffed it into my mouth, as if to say,
Fuck it. If this is my fate, I may as well go all out.
I chewed the cookie and imagined all the sugar molecules getting into every crack and nook of my teeth.
    “You like biscuit,” Abdulrahman said to me, not really asking a question.
    “It’s okay,” I said.
    “I tell Khalid to bring you rice tomorrow,” he suggested.
    “I want to go home tomorrow.”
    “You go home, maybe three days.”
    “Really?” This was the first time I’d heard a timeline from any of the kidnappers. I didn’t believe him, but I really, truly, desperately wanted to.
    “Money come, you go.” Abdulrahman made a gesture with his hand as if brushing me off. “Money come, you go.”
    I asked him when the money would come, how it would come, and when I could go.
    “If money come—tomorrow, you go. Tomorrow, Monday, you go Tuesday,” he replied.
    “Why can’t I go on Monday if that’s the day the money comes?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Maybe what? Maybe I can go?” I was starting to get impatient.
    “Maybe you go back to Kabul.”
    I sighed. I wasn’t getting any straight answers.
    “Abdulrahman. This kidnapping racket. How does it work? You kidnap someone and then what happens?”
    Abdulrahman scratched his crotch and readjusted his skullcap.
    “We ask for money—from your father, friend, your company. We get money, you go back to Kabul.”
    “How long does this take?” I could feel a burning anger inside