Kidnapped by the Taliban Read Online Free PDF Page A

that? Would you have any hesitations or security concerns?”
    Cilicia has an amazing, strong spiritual faith. She didn’t even blink. “If this is what you are supposed to do,” she said, “I think security would be the least of my worries.” Despite the violent history of Afghanistan, I felt the same way. I accepted Daniel’s offer to join him on the trip.
    Even though I’d grown up in that region of the world, there was so much about this nation I didn’t know. My research showed that Afghanistan was about the size of Texas, but that was where any similarity with the Lone Star State ended. Afghanistan’s population of twenty-eight million 1 was 99 percent Muslim. 2 Two-thirds of the population were illiterate. 3 The average lifespan was forty-three years; 4 more than a tenth of the nation’s children did not even reach the age of five. 5 To offset meager incomes, many Afghans turned to cultivating poppy fields—the country was the world’s foremost producer of opium, the key ingredient for heroin. 6
    I wondered what I was getting myself into.
    Two weeks later, with the morning sun just beginning to slant red-hued rays across the landscape below, I got my first glimpse of the towering, snow-capped peaks that surround Kabul. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is at an elevation of nearly twenty-five thousand feet; Kabul sits at nearly six thousand feet. The view from my plane window reminded me of Denver and the Rocky Mountains, though these peaks are even more prominent. As we flew over the city, I was surprised to see that Kabul was laid out in a well-planned grid, including a downtown, rows of residential houses, and a business district.
    The picture was a bit different on the ground, however. After connecting with my driver, I was soon hurtling through potholed streets in what felt like a high-speed car chase. At each major intersection, we raced into a roundabout filled with cars, trucks, bicyclists, and pedestrians jockeying for position, always within inches of each other. In the middle of it all, a lone policeman holding an AK-47 stood on a small concrete platform and watched over us.
    Those policemen weren’t the only signs that I was now in a war zone. Armed Afghan soldiers in green-and-brown camouflageuniforms patrolled the streets. Nearly every dilapidated home and building were protected by brick walls at least ten feet high and lined with razor wire. Everything was covered with layers of mud. The citizens of Kabul, however, appeared to take these conditions in stride. Women wearing headscarves bartered over fruits and vegetables with shopkeepers whose tiny storefronts lined dirty, cluttered sidewalks. Men in groups of two or three—most of the older ones in traditional garb and many of the younger ones in Western-style jackets and pants—dodged traffic on the way to their destinations.
    At last we arrived at the locked gate and modest home of our NGO team house. I met the staff and was soon ushered into a meeting with members of another NGO. They were leaving the country and wanted to know if Morning Star would take over their medical clinic. It was fascinating to hear what was being done to help and equip the Afghan people, medically and otherwise—and to hear how much more help was needed.
    One of the visiting team members that morning was Cheryl Beckett, a thirty-year-old Ohio native who’d helped feed and give medical assistance to Afghans for the previous five years. Little did I know that we would strike up a friendship on my successive trips—or that seventeen months later, she would be among ten volunteers massacred, reportedly by the Taliban, on the way back to Kabul after an aid mission. *
    It was the next morning that I met Rafiq, program director for three of the NGO’s community centers. If I did join Morning Star, this was a man I would work with closely, so I hoped to make a good impression.
    Rafiq was nearly six feet tall and, unlike most Afghans, cleanshaven and wearing a