Kidnapped Journalist: I’m just calling to say goodbye
Jennifer Wells
Mellissa Fung, the CBC-TV journalist held captive in Afghanistan for 28 days in the autumn of 2008, is seated at a boardroom table in the offices of her publisher, a point only worth noting as she visually marks out the size of the hole in the ground in which she lived — no, survived. The table, she considers, appears to be twice the size of her mud-walled holding tank: a dirty black bucket for a toilet, an ever-present male captor no more than a metre or so away, the grime on her body, the stench of her warden, her future unknown.
I pass Fung a copy of Under an Afghan Sky, her just-released memoir of captivity. Her softly curled hair falls loosely about her face, and she begins to read.
Mellissa Fung has written an account of her kidnapping in Afghanistan in October 2008, while on assignment for the CBC.
Dearest P,
I can’t imagine what you’re thinking right now, or what you’re going through, and I don’t even know where you are, so I just wanted to write and tell you that I’m okay. It happened so quickly.
When it began: it was a sunny Sunday. October 12, 2008.
“I had just arrived in Kabul the night before,” Fung recounts, her hands resting on her memoir. “I had come up from the base in Kandahar to do some stories on people — Afghans — which is all I ever wanted to do.”
The refugee camps in the north were flooded with families fleeing their homes in Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces. “I couldn’t believe it when I actually saw the size of the camp. . . It was one big slum.”
It was a good day to be a journalist. The interviews with families in the camp went well.
Fung, then 35, walked back to the car with Shokoor, her fixer. “My last words to Shokoor were, ‘This was good. This was a good story. I’m so glad we came.’ ”
And then. “A car just pulled up. Cloud of dust. Blue car. And then these guys got out. I didn’t even know what was happening. I saw somebody point guns. I saw somebody point a gun at Shokoor. I screamed. The next thing I knew I was being stuffed in the back of the car. I felt a knife in my shoulder.”
The car came to a stop. There was a small village. A mountain in the distance. A journey was made across stones and short grass led by Khalid and Shafirgullah, young men who said they were Taliban and had Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.
Fung: wounded.
Huge drops of blood fell at my feet with every step I took. The blood was dark and red and pouring out of my shoulder, running down my body in rivulets.
There were birds. Fung remembers the birds, swooping down into the tall grasses. And she remembers the feeling of dusk falling.
Khalid granted her a single phone call, which she placed to CTV correspondent Paul Workman.
Hi, P. It’s me. I’m okay, don’t worry, I’m okay.
Khalid took the phone. “She is with us,” he said, before abruptly ending the call. Fung pleaded. One more moment to say goodbye. Please.
Hi, it’s me again. I’m just calling to say goodbye. . . Bye. Love you.
There was the faint sound of an airplane somewhere overhead. Fung remembers that.
From Kabul, Workman did what Fung did — he started to write.
Dearest M,
This is the only way I can keep in touch with you, writing letters. . . I just hope that one day you’ll be able to read them. . . I was back inside the work tent when your second call came through. I couldn’t believe they would let you call again, but I have to say, M, your first words scared the hell out of me. ‘I just phoned to say goodbye.’ I thought, Oh my God, they’re going to kill her.
It was dark. The travellers had reached the end of their journey. There was a hole in the ground, the size of a manhole cover. “Go” came the order. Fung was pushed toward the hole. “No,” she resisted. “I am not going down there.”
Dearest M,
It’s getting dark here, M, and it makes me shudder to think of you getting ready for another night in the dark and the cold. I’m very, very frightened.
There was a plastic clock in the hole. It was after 10 p.m., day two of captivity. The air was cold and growing colder. A thin blanket. The ground was hard.
Khalid’s uncle, Abdulrahman, was on watch that night, staying with Fung. In the hole.
She felt a hand on her leg.
I must f--- you.
Fung’s spirit is indomitable. She believes that getting in a “good right hook” when she was thrown into the back of the abductors’ car likely led to that knife being plunged in her shoulder.
“I know karate. And you will be dead. And Allah will send you to hell.”
“I must f--- you,” he said, more menacingly, holding what looked like a carving knife to my throat.
“F--- off, go to jahannam,” I repeated. He pressed the blade into my neck. I closed my eyes and started to pray.
A fleeting wounded look passes across Mellissa Fung’s beautiful face. “Let your mind go to the worst place and it probably happened,” she says. “I have a really hard time. . . ” Her voice trails off.
In the first draft of the book, Fung ended her record of the day “as though nothing had happened.
“But then, you know, it didn’t feel honest to me.
“I think there’s a real reluctance, especially for women journalists, to admit they’ve been in these situations because we don’t want to be seen as susceptible to something a male colleague might be. . . It’s a really tough part of the book. These are the questions I’ve been dreading all week, because I still don’t really want to talk about it.”
Khalid did not allow Abulrahman to ever stay in the hole again.
It was Khalid who promised Fung that she would not be killed, a promise that at times seemed impossibly frail. Through the emotional swells of those 28 days, some sort of bond developed between the two as the abductor spoke warmly of his girlfriend, his desire for children. “Humans are full of weakness and strength, even my kidnappers,” says Fung. “It’s not that simple to make them evil.”
But Khalid also said he would be a suicide bomber one day. “He did say at one point, ‘You’re going to hear about me when I go. It’s going to be big — take a lot of people with me.’ ”
Fung reports that no ransom was paid for her release. Afghan’s National Director of Security swapped freshly arrested friends of Khalid and carried out a “straight trade,” Fung writes.
The interview draws to a close. “I like this one,” Fung says, returning to her memoir.
Dearest M,
It’s not even eight o’clock and I’ve already done the rounds of emails and have no idea how I’m going to fill the rest of the day. I hate to think of how much weight you’ve lost, knowing you can’t afford to lose any. . . By the way, the Canucks just came off a six-game road trip with two wins and four losses. Even Columbus beat them! Miss you, darling.
“It ends normally, like how we would end a note.”
Fung is a fanatical Canucks fan.
Of her relationship today with Workman, she says, “We’re just being together. This whole experience has taught us a lot about each other, and I couldn’t have written this book if it wasn’t for Paul being there every day.”
“One more thing,” Fung adds before leaving. She is donating her portion of book royalties to the Ayenda Foundation, which establishes schools and learning centres and scholarships for Afghan children. “I always knew that whatever came out of this book I wanted to benefit the people I left behind there.”
May 6, 2011