Under an Afghan Sky Read Online Free PDF

hole. And I wanted to be found.
    “Go,” Abdulrahman ordered again, “it is a good room for you there.”
    “No,” I said. I sat down again with my back against the mud wall. “I am not going there. I will stay up here tonight. I’ve slept on the ground before. I’ll be more comfortable here.”
    “You must go,” he said. “You will not stay here.”
    “Mellissa.” I hadn’t heard Khalid’s footsteps, but he’d joined Abdulrahman and was now sitting next to me. He said my name with four syllables instead of three—it sounded like he was saying Me-llis-si-a.
    “Khalid, please don’t make me go in there,” I pleaded. “I am afraid of the dark.”
    “Zahir stay with you,” he told me. “I come tomorrow to see you.”
    “Can’t we stay back in that house? It was better there.”
    “No,” Abdulrahman said, “it is not safe there. Taliban are in this area.”
    “I thought you were Taliban.”
    “Other Taliban.”
    The two of them spoke in Pashto and then Khalid got up.
    “I go now, see you tomorrow,” he said.
    “Wait, Khalid, you said you would stay with me.” I looked hard at him.
    “I see you tomorrow. Zahir stay with you tonight.”
    “No, you promised you would stay with me,” I argued.
    “Zahir my brother. He stay. I come tomorrow. I promise.”
    And he was gone.
    Abdulrahman stood up and pushed me roughly toward the hole. He was fat and strong; I tried to resist, but there was no way to struggle, even though I really did not want to find out what was down there.
    “Go,” he said.
    He grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet and over to the hole. I looked down and saw the faint glow from Zahir’s flashlight.
    “I don’t want to go in there,” I repeated. Abdulrahman was getting impatient. He reached and grabbed me underneath my armpits and threw me down the shaft—which was maybe eight feet deep and two feet wide—and into the hole, feet first. I landed on my butt.
    “Go through!” Abdulrahman ordered from above.
    I felt Zahir’s hand on my running shoe. “Come, this way,” he told me, and I saw that there was a tunnel running off one side of the hole. I inched my way forward, but the tunnel was no more thanabout two feet high. My head hit the hard mud ceiling. I crouched down lower, slowing moving forward, following Zahir, who was crawling backward. The tunnel, about twelve feet long, opened up into a small space.
    I looked around at the mud walls. The ceiling was made of old pieces of dark grey ceramic tiles and held up by two vertical wooden beams painted a bluish grey. There were hooks on the beams. The entire space was no more than six feet long, three feet wide, and just over five feet high. Two blankets were spread out, covering the dirt floor. The blankets, beige with coloured stripes, were woven from a thick canvas-like material. Two pillows bookended the hole on either side—one was a dark red velvet, the other a dirty white. A black metal bucket stood close to the entrance. In the middle was an old car battery, jerry-rigged to a light bulb attached to one of the hooks near the ceiling. A small plastic alarm clock sat on the battery. I noticed a white grocery bag to the side, a red plastic watering can, and my camera bag and knapsack in a corner. There was also a wooden door-like panel leaning against the wall next to the entrance.
    Zahir sat cross-legged in the far corner.
    “Sit,” he said. Abdulrahman was shouting down to us in Pashto, so Zahir crawled back over to the shaft and spoke to him for a few minutes. Soon he was back. He wrapped his kaffiyeh around his head and face, motioning for me to do the same with my scarf. He then covered the entrance with the wooden door. “Cover your mouth,” he told me. I was about to ask him why when I heard a noise at the top of the shaft. Someone was covering the opening with a board or some other object. I could hear digging. A cloud of dust came rushing through the entrance, filling the room. I tried to hold my scarf