Caught Up in History: The Week of Death and Fear Part 2

Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, Peshawar, Pakistan
I immediately checked email upon waking. "Mom could die and was in surgery," the email shared. She had cancer of the lungs and they were going to remove one portion of her lungs and then decide what was next. I waited anxiously for more news, and asked to speak with her. My brother called from her bedside so I could hear her voice one more time, not knowing if it was my last. She was coherent and I thanked the Lord I could hear her alto voice one more time.


Tuesday, 5pm, September 11, 2001, Peshawar, Pakistan

News of Thousands More Dead

It was the team meeting night, and our habit each week was to gather for a meal and then have our team meeting. At that time, our team consisted of twelve adults and 6 children, with our Luke being the youngest. We headed to our team leader's house, where he had satellite television tuned in to the international news channel, and we watched re-runs of the 1st plane hitting the Twin Tower.

To our horror, we saw the live view of the 2nd plane hitting the tower.  It was impossible to get my mind around what I was seeing.  Dr. Woodberry, a world expert on Folk Islam and well connected, as well as our team leader both began calling our Pakistani colleagues who informed us this was the work of Osama Bin Laden. The men were told to escort their families home and then report to the office. We were told to stay off the streets and only drive for work related errands. All foreigners in Peshawar went into immediate lock-down, travel only for necessary work.

We went home that night by 6 or 6:30pm I think, after praying together as a team, and I immediately began looking through our cupboards and taking inventory what was in our apartment. I tried to call my brother's cell phone, using my cell phone and our landline, but the entire phone system, both landline and cell, for the whole country of Pakistan had crashed. I knew immediately - Pakistanis were all also calling America trying to reach their loved ones in the Twin Towers.

Pakistanis seemed to sense that they would need to stop traveling and trying to reach the US or other places, perhaps fear for their own safety or being profiled? The airline seats began opening up Tuesday night Pakistan time, and the foreigners in Peshawar began to find seats on airplanes available to get out of Peshawar to get somewhere, anywhere else. The airplanes, booked for weeks in advance, all of a sudden were flying empty.

After a few hours at the office that night, Neal came home, but at 10:30 pm he received a call requesting he report to the senior commanding military officer at the Peshawar airport. Why was he being asked for at such a late hour? We hugged each other goodbye, not knowing if he was going to be jailed, or what was going to happen. Were we targets here? We were filled with so many questions and fear.

The streets no longer looked like the same busy and happy Pakistani streets. The sounds were the same, but now they sounded sinister. "Who exactly are we at war with?"  "Is this the beginning of WW3?"

He showed up with another American colleague, and entered a room filled with Pakistani military officers. To Neal's shocked surprise, the Pakistani commander proceeded to express with tears in his eyes his sorrow over what had happened to so many American civilians. He said these events were  the work of cowards, the killing of non-combatants. He pledged his loyalty to protect the project work we were involved in, and that our resources would be treated as if they were belonging to Pakistan. A guard was posted over our resources until we could return.

When Neal returned home that evening to our apartment, we wept at such unexpected kindness, in the midst of espionage charges by the Pakistani ISI.  We tried to make sense of all the different branches of government and the alignment of factions of different powers.

While Neal was away, I was dismayed with myself for allowing my cupboards to get so messy and out of control. What items exactly did I have to lose?  I vowed to never again lose control over the stuff in my house and to live more simply in the future.  It was ridiculous what was in the closets. It was not the way I wanted to live or be remembered.  In the meantime, I had to figure out what to pack, based on how much we'd be allowed to take out of country, assuming that we'd never see our home again. I didn't have time and energy to clean and organize, I only had time to pick through as fast as possible, not knowing when or if we'd have to flee, not knowing when an airplane seat would open up.

While our baby, Luke, slept, and the clock crept towards 1am, I tried valiantly not to worry about what was happening to Neal. I was 4 months pregnant with our 2nd, a daughter, but I dragged blue packs into the hallway and began carrying and sorting items into "must go," "I'd really like it to go," and "what a luxury if we can take this" piles. They also had to be organized into "5 kilo", "20 kilo" piles, because I had to wait to find out how many kilos we'd be allowed to take with us.

When he returned and told me the story of what happened and what the commander said to him, we thanked God for good and kind people still in the world and went to sleep, knowing Wednesday would be a long day.  The rest of the packing would have to wait until we got more information, but we'd have to be ready to move fast.

Go to:
Part 1
Part 3 To be continued.

Caught Up in History: The Week of Death and Fear Part 1

The week started like any other week that summer, hot and a full schedule of hospitality and serving ahead.

Sunday, September 9, 2001, Peshawar, Pakistan

We had our Sabbath worship, and played with our baby (Luke), and rested as we enjoyed our garden and iced frappuccinos. That Sunday night, the Afghan and Pakistan news headlines lit up with the announcement that Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the northern alliance coalition, the main resistant group to the Taliban, had been assassinated. Two men had been given the permission to interview him, but they were Taliban disguised as journalists who had a bomb hidden in their camera. Later we learned they weren't Taliban, but al-Qaeda.

We all felt the impact of his death, as another hope among Afghans died along with Massoud.


I reflected on what a crazy summer it had been. The 110F heat had impacted me especially hard, because I was pregnant with our 2nd, and felt nauseated all the time. Things had been getting really difficult in Afghanistan and in Peshawar all summer, and even the Dari language students had been asked to finish school a chapter early and get out.

One day that summer I had been verbally accosted by a conservative looking man who had a fully veiled woman standing next to him. He spoke a language I didn't understand, (we knew Dari, but he wasn't speaking the local Urdu but something else). Even so, he made it clear that despite my long skirt, my head and arms were not covered and thus I was inappropriately dressed. I looked at him wide-eyed, but at the time, we had no idea that we were living in Taliban recruiting headquarters. We knew the history of the British Durand line and what it did to the Pashtun tribal areas, but we didn't understand on Sunday, Sept 9, 2001 the connections to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani ISI (intelligence agency). We could just feel the changes, and they weren't good.

Many of my friends working in Kabul and surrounding areas had been encouraged to take early vacations and home assignment, so much that the Peshawar guest houses were full, and we were constantly being asked to take another worker into our home - there simply were not enough (cheap) beds available for workers, and the flights were overbooked - almost no one could find a seat out of Peshawar.

Then in August, our own company had our work shut down and been accused by ISI of clandestine activities, so our guys were sitting around with not much to do in between appealing the decision to the ISI and trying to figure out where the crazy accusation had come from. Neal went to the office everyday to organize papers, but it was quite boring.

A few weeks earlier, friends in Kabul had been caught showing the Jesus film and put in jail in August, and finally Mullah Omar decreed that foreigners had 24 hours to get out of Afghanistan or be jailed along with the 8. Our colleagues had to plead for more time - it wasn't possible to get folks from the Hazarajat and other really remote areas out that fast. They needed at least 72 hours. He relented, and the race was on.

Vans were hastily loaded up as almost all the foreigners with the exception of just a few managed to stay, depending upon who their visas were with. I remember something about a cat that got itself loaded into a van and forgotten about for 12 hours on the bumpy ride from Kabul, through the Khyber Pass, and out to Peshawar. Poor thing must have been frightened to death. Everyone was surprised when they saw a dusty old cat come out of the van behind them when they finally unloaded in Peshawar.

Just a few folks were able to "stay under the radar" and stay in-country.  It looked...and felt like the end of an era, and we all knew we were losing the valuables in our offices and homes in Afghanistan, along with the blood, sweat, and tears poured into these projects.  We wept, as we also knew the needless suffering going on, and so many Afghan friends no longer had salary to feed their children because we weren't there.

Dr. Dudley Woodberry had recently flown to Peshawar to be with the 100+ of us to help us grieve the loss of our work and homes in Afghanistan. He conducted a memorial service, and helped us forgive as a community those we needed to forgive.

So by Sunday night, we knew things were changing, the changes weren't looking hopeful, and today's death of Massoud made it all even more hopeless and worse.

Monday, September 10, 2001 Peshawar, Pakistan
The news of death continued.  I received an email Monday morning that my mom was being rushed to the Mayo Hospital in Rochester, MN. She may die, they said. She'd been visiting her doctor, because she was her doctor's lawyer, and she needed the doctor to sign some papers. While there, she began to have breathing problems, and her doctor evaluated her and said she had 70% blockage in her lungs.

I waited anxiously to hear what would happen at Mayo with mom.  Could the week get any worse, I wondered?

To be continued.