Read A Rope and a Prayer for Free Online

American troops, the Taliban had gained control of most of the province. Andiwal blamed the British and the British blamed the Afghans. I began to wonder who was telling the truth and if there were any heroes in Helmand.
    Twelve hours after interviewing Andiwal, I lay in the back of the car bound and blindfolded. A dynamic that has always existed in journalism had escalated in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an intensifying race to the bottom, the reporter who took the greatest risk often received the highest acclaim. In Bosnia, a desire to expose injustice had primarily driven me, followed by competitiveness and ambition. In Afghanistan, competitiveness and ambition had gotten the best of me. I had lost my way.
    As my Taliban captors blared prayers over the car radio and celebrated the capture of their quarry, a new meaning enveloped the sweeping question I had grandly posed to myself in 2001: how can religious extremism be curbed? My life and the lives of Tahir and Asad now hinged on whether we could find a way to placate our captors, gain their sympathy, and stop them from killing us. As I lay powerless in the backseat, the question was simple: how do we survive?
     
     
    Our kidnapper, Atiqullah, eyes me suspiciously in the living room of the house where Tahir, Asad, and I have been taken. Roughly two hours have passed since we were kidnapped. I still do not know which Taliban faction has abducted us or who Atiqullah is.
    A large man with short dark hair protruding from the sides of his cap, Atiqullah appears self-assured. He speaks calmly and confidently, and is in clear command of his men. He offers me back the eyeglasses his gunmen had taken from me and tells me to stop sobbing, a tactic that had eased the suspicions of my captors in Bosnia. Weeping is a great shame, he explains, and it upsets him and his men to see it. Later, I will learn that the Taliban consider crying to be a sign of guilt. If a person is innocent, he does not fear death, because he knows God will save him.
    “You will be treated well,” he assures me, citing Islam’s mandate that prisoners not be harmed. “I understand foreigners get sick. You will be given bottled water. If you need to see a doctor, you will see a doctor.”
    “Whatever we eat,” he adds, “you will eat.”
    His beliefs appear to be a combination of Pashtunwali and fundamentalist Islam. Gracious treatment of guests is a Pashtun hallmark. Deep suspicion of nonbelievers is an excess of radical Islam. Since the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s, religiously conservative rural Pashtuns have been their base of support.
    With Tahir translating, I try to convince him to release us. I tell him that we were invited to Logar Province to interview Abu Tayyeb and hear the Taliban’s side of the story. We are journalists, I say, and I served as The New York Times ’ South Asia bureau co-chief from 2002 to 2005. I describe the articles I wrote in Bosnia exposing the mass executions of 8,000 Muslims. I tell him Christians there imprisoned me when they caught me at a mass gravesite and accused me of being pro-Muslim. I tell him I had won the Pulitzer Prize and a half dozen other journalism awards for helping expose the massacres.
    I hope I am convincing him that I am an independent journalist. I hope I am convincing him that the United States is not a monolith and some Americans defend Muslims and are rewarded for it. For years, I have thought that if the Taliban ever kidnap me, my work in Bosnia would protect me. I would be investigated online, declared a friend of Islam, and, I hoped, released.
    Finally, I take off my wedding ring, show him the engraving of my wife’s name on the inner band, and explain that we were married only two months ago. Tears roll down my cheeks again and I beg him to free us. The melodrama is intentional. I have read that a captive’s best chance of survival is getting their captor to see them as a human being. I hope my display of emotion will help us.
    Atiqullah