PART-6 (Last Part)
Qari unnerved me. Earnestly reciting hugely inaccurate propaganda about the West I had seen on jihadi Web sites, Qari seemed utterly detached from reality. Other guards joked that he had mental problems.
](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world/asia/18hostage.html?pagewanted=6#secondParagraph)
In my mind, Qari and Atiqullah personified polar ends of the Taliban. Qari represented a paranoid, intractable force. Atiqullah embodied the more reasonable faction: people who would compromise on our release and, perhaps, even on peace in Afghanistan.
I did not know which one represented the majority. I wanted to believe that Atiqullah did. Yet each day I increasingly feared that Qari was the true Taliban.
The following day, Atiqullah arrived to move us again. During the ride, he said we would be taken to a place where I could receive bottled water and we could call our families. He promised to protect me.
“I will not kill you,” he said. “You will survive.”
I insisted that he promise to save Tahir and Asad as well. “You will not kill the three of us,” I said. “It has to be the three of us.”
Initially, Atiqullah refused. For days, I raised the issue over and over, remembering that under the Pashtunwali code a promise of protection should be ironclad. At one point, I suggested that he cut off my finger instead of harming Tahir and Asad.
Later that day, he finally promised to protect all three of us. “I give you my promise,” he said, as I lay down in the back of the station wagon. “I will not kill any of the three of you.”
Then, he said, “Let’s kill Asad first,” and laughed.
THE following afternoon, a new commander arrived. A bone-thin man with a long beard and one arm, he got into the driver’s seat and guided us through barren, rock-strewn territory, steering the car and shifting gears with lightning-quick movements of his one hand.
At sunset, he stopped the vehicle, and Atiqullah announced that we would have to walk through the mountains. A large American base blocked the path in front of us, he said. The one-armed commander gave me a pair of worn loafers, and another guard gave me his jacket.
As we walked, I understood why Western journalists had grown enamored of the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance fighters in the 1980s. Under a spectacular panorama of stars, we wound our way along a steep mountain pass. Emaciated Taliban fighters carried heavy machine guns with little sign of fatigue. Their grit and resilience seemed boundless.
I thought about making a run for it but had not had a chance to talk it over with Tahir and Asad. I also knew that the half-dozen guards would quickly shoot us.
As the hike continued, I grew suspicious. Atiqullah — who had promised to carry me if needed — proved to be in poor shape. On one of the steepest parts of the ascent, he stopped, sat on a rock and panted.
Nine hours after we set out, the sun rose and the hike dragged on. Asad approached me when the guards lagged behind, pointed at the way ahead and whispered, “Miram Shah.” Miram Shah is the capital and largest town in North Waziristan, a Taliban and Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. North Waziristan was the home of some of the Taliban’s most hard-line members. If we were headed there, we were doomed.
After 11 hours, our hike finally ended. The guards lighted a fire, and we warmed our hands as we waited for a vehicle to pick us up.
Exhausted and anxious, I told myself that Asad was wrong and Atiqullah was right. I told myself that we were walking into southern Afghanistan, not Pakistan. I told myself we would survive.