Days of Fear by Daniele Mastrogiacomo

Author:Daniele Mastrogiacomo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2011-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

They wake us at seven. It’s Saturday, March 10, the sixth day of captivity. I ask the time constantly and thus manage to follow the rhythm of the days. We’re on the move again. Finally, I think, we’ll be leaving this hole behind us. I’m pleased. I prefer movement because the time passes more quickly. I ask if our journey today will be a long one, but the Taliban give me only a vague answer. The pickup is ready. As always the fighters sit on top of one another in the cargo bed—their weapons leaning up against the side rails, the rocket launchers loaded. I find it difficult to get used to my new arrangement: the chains on my wrists hamper my movements, leaving marks and bruises on my skin. It is a damn uncomfortable position that I barely manage to tolerate. Ajmal tells me the commander has spoken to him about an investigation that should take about five or six days. Perhaps they have already obtained the information they were looking for. There’s a new Taliban in our midst, young, like the others, his face framed by a short black beard, his eyes dark, deep, his gaze inscrutable. He helps me up into the cargo bed and asks about my wound, my state of mind. Then he introduces himself: “My name is Tariq.”

Ajmal doesn’t trust him. During a break in the journey he warns me to be careful: “He’s from al-Qaeda, from Pakistan, he understands English perfectly but pretends he doesn’t.” I’m worried, but also puzzled. I sincerely doubt that Tariq is part of bin Laden’s network. I have run into them a couple of times, in other theatres of war: their faces are full of hate; they want nothing more than to see you dead. Tariq, on the other hand, is a mild-mannered man. He is educated and intelligent—completely different from our jailors. I learn that he is a pious man, a religious scholar; he studied for many years at the Madrassa. He knows the Qur’an by heart and he is always reciting it. But it is the topics we touch upon—he in his labored English—his open-mindedness, and the absence of any form of fanaticism in him, that convince me Ajmal is mistaken. He will acknowledge these qualities the following day, when he says, “Tariq is an anomaly in this context. He seems like a true believer, a man of piety. He is cultivated and blessed with a depth of knowledge that is rare among the Taliban.”

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