He told us to pray to him, to call out to him, to see if he would come down from his throne in heaven and untie us.

” Then he laughed.

A genuine laugh like he found this truly funny.

Several of the other fighters laughed, too.

He said the first train would come around 1:00 in the morning.

That was in about 3 hours.

He said we should use that time to think about our choices, about how we had wasted our lives following a dead prophet instead of the true religion.

Then they left.

They climbed back into their trucks.

They started the engines and they drove away, the sound of the motors fading into the distance, getting quieter and quieter until there was nothing.

Nothing but silence.

complete absolute silence.

I lay there on the cold ground tied to a railway track and the reality hit me like a physical blow.

I was going to die.

We were all going to die.

A train would come in a few hours and it would crush us.

It would be violent and painful and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

I started to cry.

Not loud sobs, just tears running down the sides of my face into my hair.

I could not wipe them away because my hands were tied behind my back.

They just fell warm against my cold skin.

I could hear others crying too around me.

Quiet sounds of despair.

Someone was praying in a whisper, words I could not make out.

Someone else was completely silent, maybe in shock.

My wrists were burning where the wire cut into them.

My chest hurt from the tightness of the wire and from being beaten earlier.

My mouth was swollen and still bleeding a little.

Every part of my body hurt.

Cold was seeping into my bones from the ground beneath me.

I started shivering which made the wire cut deeper into my skin.

But worse than the physical pain was the knowledge that I would never see mourning, never see my family again, never have a chance to say goodbye.

My mother would wake up tomorrow and realize I had not come home.

She would search for me, ask neighbors, maybe even go to the Taliban authorities who would not help her because they had killed me.

The thought of her pain, of her spending the rest of her life wondering what happened to me, that was worse than my own approaching death.

I tried to pray, but I could not.

I tried to remember scripture, but my mind was blank with fear.

All I could think was, “Jesus, where are you? Where are you?” Time moved strangely.

Minutes felt like hours.

I stared up at the stars and thought about how indifferent they seemed.

Beautiful and cold and far away.

While down here we were dying.

The universe did not care.

The stars did not care.

Were we just alone in this vast empty cosmos, suffering and dying with no one watching? Somewhere in the darkness, Brother Rasheed started to sing.

His voice was weak, cracked, barely audible, but he was singing a hymn in Dari.

The words were about God being our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Others joined in.

Quiet, broken voices singing into the night.

Sister Paresa’s voice next to me, shaking but still singing.

Brother Hassan’s voice from across the tracks.

One by one, those who could still speak, who had not given in completely to despair, they sang.

I tried to sing, but my swollen lip made it hard to form the words.

So I just listened, and something shifted in me.

I do not know how to explain it.

The fear was still there, the pain was still there, but something else came too.

A whisper in my spirit so quiet I almost missed it.

I remembered Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified.

How he prayed in such agony that he sweat drops of blood.

How he begged God to take the cup of suffering away from him.

How he said, “If it is possible, let this pass from me.

” But then he said, “Not my will but yours be done.

” And I whispered it into the cold night with tears on my face and wire cutting into my wrists.

I whispered it.

Not my will, Jesus, but yours be done.

If this was how I was supposed to die, then I would die.

If this was the end, then I would meet him face to face in a few hours.

The one I had given up everything for.

The one I loved more than my own life.

I would finally see his face.

That thought, as terrifying as it was, was also somehow comforting.

In a few hours, all the pain would be over.

All the fear would end, and I would be with him forever.

We waited there in the darkness, cold and bleeding and bound.

We waited for the train that would end our lives.

We had maybe 3 hours left.

3 hours to prepare our souls for eternity.

I closed my eyes and tried to make peace with God, with my life, with my death.

1:00 am came and went.

No train.

At first, I did not notice.

Time had become meaningless, measured only by the increasing cold that seeped deeper into my bones, and the growing numbness spreading through my hands.

Minutes and hours had blurred together into one long stretch of suffering and waiting.

But brother Rasheed noticed.

He had worked for the railway company years ago before he retired.

He knew the schedules, knew the patterns of train traffic in this area.

I heard his voice in the darkness, barely audible.

He said the first train should have passed already.

His voice was confused, uncertain.

Maybe it is late, someone replied.

Their voice was weak, hopeless.

Trains are often late in Afghanistan.

The infrastructure is poor.

Delays are common.

We fell back into silence, waiting, shivering.

Some praying, some beyond prayer.

Each person lost in their own thoughts, their own fear, their own attempt to make peace with dying.

My wrists had gone completely numb.

I could not feel my hands anymore.

The wire had cut off circulation entirely.

I tried to wiggle my fingers to see if they still worked, but I could not tell if they were moving or not.

Everything below my wrists was just absent, gone, like my hands had been cut off, and I was just now realizing it.

The wire around my chest made every breath a conscious effort.

I had to think about breathing.

Had to deliberately pull air into my lungs with small, shallow gasps.

If I tried to breathe deeply, the wire cut in sharply, and the pain was immediate and intense.

So, I breathed like a wounded animal, quick and light, never quite getting enough air, feeling slightly dizzy from lack of oxygen.

My back achd terribly from lying on the hard ground and steel rail for hours.

The rocks and gravel pressed into my spine.

My muscles were cramping from being unable to move, from being held in the same position.

The cold had penetrated deep, making everything hurt.

Worse, making my whole body feel brittle and fragile.

I could hear others around me in a various stages of suffering.

Some were crying quietly, soft sounds of despair that floated through the darkness.

Some were praying, their whispered words rising like smoke into the night sky.

Sister Ila next to me was reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over in Dari like a mantra like a rope she was clinging to as she drowned.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Over and over, her voice getting weaker each time, but still praying, still holding on.

The sky above me was so clear.

Living in the city, you never see stars like this.

The lights and pollution wash them out.

But out here in this dark empty place far from the city center, the sky was full of them.

Thousands and thousands of tiny points of light scattered across the darkness.

I thought about how the Bible says God knows every star by name.

That he counts them, knows each one.

If he knows the stars, if he cares about distant balls of burning gas millions of light years away, does he know me? Does he see me right now? Tied to this track, dying slowly from cold and fear.

Does he care? The questions that come when you are facing death are strange.

They are not the big theological questions you discuss in church or study in books.

Not questions about doctrine or interpretation or tradition.

Just simple, desperate human questions.

Does God see me? Does he care that I am suffering? Am I alone? I heard Sister Paresa crying next to me.

I wanted so badly to comfort her, to reach out and hold her hand, to tell her it would be okay.

But I could not reach her.

I could not even turn my head to see her.

The wire held me too tight, positioned my body too specifically.

I could only stare up at the indifferent stars and listen to her weep.

I tried to speak, to say something encouraging, something about Jesus being with us, about heaven waiting for us, but my voice came out as a broken whisper, and I do not think she heard me.

The words just fell into the darkness and disappeared.

Time crawled forward like a dying animal, slow and painful and seemingly endless.

I would think surely an hour had passed and then realize it had probably only been 15 minutes.

My sense of time was completely broken by pain and fear and cold.

Around 2:00 in the morning, if I was guessing the time correctly based on the position of the moon, something changed inside me.

I cannot explain it exactly.

The crushing fear that had been sitting on my chest since they tied us here.

that suffocating terror.

It started to lift just slightly.

Not gone, never gone, but less heavy.

I started to think about my life, not in a sad, regretful way, but in a strangely grateful way.

I thought about the good things God had given me, even in my short and difficult life.

I thought about my father, how he would carry me on his shoulders through the market when I was small.

how he would save the best pieces of fruit for me, the ripest apples, the sweetest melons.

How he worked so hard to provide for us, leaving before dawn and coming home after sunset, his hands rough and his back bent, but always with a smile for his children.

I thought about my mother, how strong she was even in her grief.

How she insisted I go to school when other girls were kept home.

How she believed I could be more than just a wife and mother.

That I could learn and grow and contribute to the world.

Even though she did not know I had become a Christian, even though that secret had created a wall between us, I loved her.

I was grateful for her.

I thought about my brothers.

How they would fight over toys but protect each other fiercely from outsiders.

How they looked up to me, their big sister, asking me questions about everything.

I would miss watching them grow up.

I would miss seeing what kind of men they would become.

I thought about Aunt Sariah who first told me about Jesus.

How brave she was to risk telling a Muslim girl about Christ.

If she had not taken that risk, I would never have known him.

I would have lived my whole life without hearing the gospel.

Without knowing there was a God who loved me personally, specifically, completely.

I thought about my church family.

Brother Rasheed who taught me so much about scripture, who showed me what a life of faithfulness looked like.

Sister Paresa who became like a true sister to me.

Brother Hassan, Sister Mina, Sister Laya, all of them.

We had shared something precious.

We had worshiped together, prayed together, broken bread together, carried each other’s burdens.

Even if we died tonight, that was real.

That had value.

That mattered.

Those years of secret worship, of whispered prayers, of Bibles hidden under floorboards, they were not wasted.

They were some of the most real, most meaningful years of my life.

I thought about Jesus, how he had changed everything.

How he had given me peace when my father died and I thought I would drown in grief.

How he had made me part of his family when I felt utterly alone.

How he had loved me, a poor Afghan girl with nothing to offer him except broken heart and empty hands.

And I realized something lying there on that cold railway track.

Even if I died tonight, I had lived.

Really lived because I had known love.

I had known truth.

I had known Jesus.

The Taliban could kill my body.

They could crush it under the wheels of a train.

They could erase my physical existence from this world.

But they could not touch what was real.

They could not take away the three years I had spent following Christ.

They could not erase the joy I had felt in worship.

They could not destroy the hope I had found in the gospel.

I had lived free.

Even in Afghanistan, even in secret, even in constant danger, I had been free because Jesus had set me free from the inside.

Free from the fear of death, free from the tyranny of sin, free from the emptiness of just existing without purpose.

Tears came again, but different tears this time.

Not tears of fear and despair, but tears of gratitude.

I was grateful, even lying on a railway track, waiting to die, even in the worst moment of my life.

I was grateful to have known him, grateful that he had found me, grateful that he had called me, grateful that he had loved me enough to die for me.

If I died tonight, I would die knowing I was loved.

Knowing my life had meaning.

Knowing that death was not the end, that there was something beyond, someone waiting for me.

3:00 am came and went.

Still no train.

By now, several people had noticed.

The murmuring started quietly.

Brother Rasheed saying again that something was wrong, that the second train should have come by now.

others responding in confusion, in tentative, fragile hope.

But we did not dare hope too much.

Hope was dangerous.

Hope would make it worse if we were wrong.

If the train was just delayed and would come any minute and crush us.

So we stayed silent, waiting, suffering.

The cold was the worst part now.

It was relentless, merciless, cruel.

It reached into every part of you and made everything hurt worse.

My muscles were cramping from shivering and from being unable to move.

My back felt like it was on fire from lying on the rocks and steel for so many hours.

My face was numb from the cold air.

My lips were cracked and bleeding.

But my wrists, where I could still feel them, they were agony.

The wire had cut through the skin.

I could feel wetness that was probably blood, though it was too dark to see.

The pain pulsed with every heartbeat.

A throbbing that never stopped, never eased.

I drifted in and out of something like sleep, but not really sleep.

More like a state where I was not fully conscious, but not fully unconscious either.

A gray place between.

I would close my eyes and time would skip forward and I would open them again and not know if seconds or minutes or hours had passed.

In one of these half awake moments, I had a memory so vivid it felt real.

I was 5 years old again and I had fallen and scraped my knee badly.

I was crying not just from the pain but from the fear of the blood, the shock of being hurt.

My father picked me up and held me close and told me it would be okay.

He cleaned the wound gently while I cried into his shoulder.

He kissed my forehead and told me I was brave.

And then I heard something, not with my ears, but in my spirit, a voice quiet and clear.

It said, “I am holding you.

” My eyes opened.

The stars were still there, cold and distant.

The pain was still there, unchanged.

The wire still cut into my wrists, but I felt for just a moment like I was being held, like there were invisible arms around me keeping me from falling completely apart.

I started to pray.

Real prayer, not just crying out in fear, but actual conversation with God.

I thanked him for my life, even the hard parts.

I told him I was scared, but I trusted him.

I told him that if this was my time to die, I was ready.

But if he wanted to save us, I would praise him for that, too.

I prayed for my family.

I prayed that somehow they would be okay without me.

That God would provide for them, protect them.

I prayed that maybe somehow, someday, they would understand why I chose Jesus, that they would not hate me for it.

I prayed for my church family, the ones tied here with me and the ones who were scattered elsewhere.

I prayed that they would stay strong, stay faithful no matter what happened.

And I prayed for the Taliban fighters who had done this to us.

This was the hardest prayer.

I did not feel like praying for them.

I felt anger, hatred even.

They had beaten us, tied us here to die like animals.

They deserve judgment, deserved punishment.

But Jesus said to pray for those who persecute you, to bless those who curse you.

He did it from the cross, looking down at the soldiers who had nailed him there.

And he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

” If I was going to die like he died, then I should pray like he prayed.

So I did.

It felt forced and hollow at first, the words sticking in my throat.

But I prayed that God would forgive them.

That somehow their eyes would be open to the truth.

That the same Jesus who had saved me, a sinner could save them, too.

Around me, I could hear others praying now.

Brother Rasheed was quoting scripture, his voice thin but steady.

I heard him reciting from Romans 8.

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those words settled into my heart like stones sinking into water.

Nothing could separate us from God’s love.

Not the Taliban, not the wire cutting into my wrists, not the cold, not even death.

We were loved.

Right now, in this terrible moment, we were loved by God.

4:00 am came and went.

No train.

Now, everyone was noticing.

The impossible was becoming possible.

Two trains that should have passed.

Two trains that always pass at these times.

as regular as clockwork, both missing.

Brother Rasheed said it out loud, his voice filled with wonder.

He said, “Maybe God was doing something.

Maybe he was stopping the trains.

” But that seemed impossible.

How could God stop trains? They run on schedules, on diesel fuel, on mechanical systems.

They are not controlled by prayer or faith.

They are just machines.

Someone said maybe the Taliban had stopped the trains themselves so they could come back later and see if we were dead to make sure the job was finished.

That thought sent fresh fear rippling through all of us.

If they came back and found us still alive, they would just shoot us instead or do something worse.

We fell silent again, hoping and not daring to hope, suffering and trying to endure.

praying and wondering if our prayers were reaching heaven or just echoing into empty space.

The pain in my wrists was unbearable now.

The numbness had worn off and been replaced by a burning, throbbing agony that consumed my awareness.

I could not think about anything else.

Every heartbeat sent a pulse of pain up my arms.

I could feel the wire had cut deep.

Could feel the stickiness of blood on my skin.

My lips were so cracked and dry.

I had not had water in hours, and the cold air had sucked all the moisture from my mouth.

My tongue felt thick and swollen.

I would have given anything for a sip of water, just one sip.

But I was still alive.

Against all logic, against all expectation, against the testimony of years of train schedules, I was still breathing.

We were all still alive.

The sky started to change.

Very slowly, very gradually, the absolute black darkness began to thin.

Not light yet, not even gray, just less dark.

The stars started to fade.

The brightest ones still visible, but the dimmer ones disappearing.

Dawn was coming.

We had survived the night.

I do not know if I can describe what that realization felt like.

My body was broken.

My wrists were bleeding.

I was freezing and in terrible pain.

But I was alive.

We were alive.

We should be dead.

By every reasonable expectation, we should have been crushed by a train hours ago.

But we were not dead.

We were still here, still breathing, still tied to these tracks, but somehow impossibly still alive.

Around me, I heard sounds.

Not words at first, just sounds, gasps, sobs, noises of disbelief and relief and confusion all mixed together.

Brother Rasheed started praying.

His voice stronger now, filled with emotion.

He was thanking God, praising him.

He said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord who has not abandoned us to death, who has not left us as prey for our enemies, who has stopped the trains.

” Others joined in, voices weak and cracked from thirst and cold, and hours of crying, but praying, praising, thanking God for what seemed impossible, but was real.

I tried to speak, but my voice would not work properly.

My throat was too dry, my lip too swollen, but in my heart I was screaming, “Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

” over and over, “Thank you.

” The sky grew lighter.

Pink and orange started to spread across the horizon like paint spilling across a canvas.

Dawn was breaking and we were still here to see it.

We had lived through the night.

We had survived what should have killed us, but we were not safe yet.

We were still tied to the tracks, still unable to free ourselves.

And when the sun rose fully, the Taliban might come back to check on us, to see if we were dead, to finish the job if we were not.

Or a train might finally come now that it was morning.

The signal malfunction or whatever was stopping them might be fixed.

We might still die.

We needed help.

We needed someone to find us before it was too late.

We needed another miracle.

We had gotten one by surviving the night, but we needed one more.

The light grew stronger.

I could finally see the others properly.

For hours, they had been just voices and shadows in the darkness.

Now I could see their faces.

What I saw made me want to weep.

Brother Rasheed’s face was swollen and bruised.

Purple and yellow marks covering his cheeks and forehead.

Sister Paresa had dried blood all down one side of her face from the cut above her eye.

The blood had run into her hair, matting it together.

Brother Hassan’s nose was clearly broken, bent at an angle, his eyes blackened.

Sister Leila’s hijab had come off during the beating, and her gray hair was loose around her face, making her look older and more fragile.

We all looked like we had been through a battle, because we had, and we had survived.

But we were not free yet.

The sun rose higher.

I could feel a tiny bit of warmth on my face, though my body was still frozen from lying on the cold ground all night.

My hands were still numb, completely without feeling.

I was worried about permanent damage, about whether the circulation could be restored after being cut off for so many hours.

We lay there in the growing light, still unable to free ourselves, still not knowing what would happen next, still afraid, but also filled with a strange, impossible hope.

Because we were alive.

Against all odds, we were alive.

And if God had stopped the trains for one night, maybe he would save us completely.

Maybe this was not the end.

Maybe there was still hope.

Then we heard voices in the distance.

My whole body went rigid with terror.

Was it the Taliban returning? Had they come back to finish what they started? to kill us now that the trains had failed to do it.

The voices got closer.

I could not see who it was because of how my head was positioned.

I could only stare up at the sky and listen to the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel near the railway tracks.

Getting closer and closer.

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would burst.

This was it.

Either rescue or death.

either salvation or execution.

After surviving the impossible night, would we die now at dawn? The footsteps stopped.

I heard sharp intakes of breath, sounds of shock and horror.

Then a voice speaking in dar said something like, “Oh god, what is this? Who did this? It was not Taliban.

It was not fighters.

It was ordinary people, civilians.

” their voices filled with horror at what they had found.

Three men appeared in my field of vision, looking down at me with faces full of shock.

They were not soldiers or militants.

They looked like local workers, ordinary Afghan men wearing simple clothes, work pants, and jackets.

One was older, maybe in his 50s.

The other two were younger, maybe in their 20s or 30s.

They were staring at us like they could not believe what they were seeing.

18 people tied to railway tracks, bloody and beaten, obviously left here to die.

The older man said we needed to get them free quickly before anyone sees.

His voice was urgent, frightened.

He knew that helping us was dangerous.

that if the Taliban found out he had freed Christians, he would be killed, too.

But he helped us anyway.

They did not ask who we were or why we were tied here.

They did not ask if we were criminals or terrorists or what we had done to deserve this.

They just saw people suffering and they chose to help.

That is mercy.

That is what humanity looks like when it has not been completely corrupted by hatred and ideology.

They started trying to free us, working quickly, their hands shaking with fear and urgency.

They did not have proper tools to cut the thick wire, so they used what they had.

One man had a small knife and he started sawing at the wire around the nearest person.

Another man tried to untwist the wire where it was wrapped, working at it with his fingers.

The third man ran back the way they had come, I think, to get something to help cut the wire, or maybe to get more people to help us.

It took time.

The wire was thick and had been wrapped tight and twisted with pliers by the Taliban.

And the men were scared, these brave men who had chosen to help us.

They kept looking around, checking to see if anyone was watching, if the Taliban might be coming back.

But they worked at freeing us person by person as fast as they could.

When they cut the wire around Sister Paresa, she tried to sit up, but could not.

Her body had been in the same position for so many hours that her muscles would not work right.

One of the men gently helped her, supporting her as she slowly tried to move.

She cried out in pain as circulation started returning to her limbs.

I watched them work their way down the line of people tied to the tracks.

Each person they freed would try to move and realize they could not stand.

The cold and the hours of being immobilized had left us all weak and stiff.

Some were crying from the pain as blood flow returned to their hands and feet.

Some were silent in shock, still not quite, believing we were being rescued.

When they reached me, the young man who came to help me looked down at me with tears in his eyes.

He said, “I am so sorry this happened to you.

” His voice was breaking with emotion.

He started cutting the wire around my chest first, sawing at it with his knife.

When it came loose, I could suddenly breathe deeply for the first time in hours.

The relief was so intense, so overwhelming that I started coughing.

My lungs were expanding fully, pulling in air, and my body did not know how to handle it after hours of shallow breathing.

Then he moved to my wrists.

He worked carefully trying not to hurt me more, but the wire was embedded in my skin.

When he finally freed my hands, the pain was incredible, indescribable.

As blood started flowing back into my hands, it felt like they were being stabbed with thousands of needles, like they were burning from the inside.

I screamed.

I could not help it.

The pain was so sharp, so sudden, so intense that it ripped the scream out of me before I could stop it.

The man apologized, said he was sorry.

He was trying to be gentle, and he was.

His hands were steady and kind, working as quickly as he could while trying not to cause more pain.

He helped me sit up slowly.

The world spun.

I had been lying down for so long that sitting up made me dizzy, made everything tilt and sway.

He supported me, one hand on my back, letting me adjust.

I looked at my wrists and almost wished I had not.

There were deep grooves where the wire had cut in, the skin torn and bloody, my hands were swollen and purple, the fingers not moving right, but I could wiggle them slowly, painfully, but I could move them.

Nothing was permanently damaged.

It was a miracle in itself.

Around me, all 18 of us were being freed.

These three men and a fourth person who had come back with tools, they worked with desperate speed, helping person by person, cutting wire, supporting people as they tried to move after hours of being immobilized.

A woman appeared.

I do not know where she came from.

She had brought water in a container.

She moved among us, helping us drink.

The water hurt my cracked lips and swollen mouth, but I did not care.

I drank like someone who had been in a desert for days.

The water was the most beautiful thing I had ever tasted.

The woman was crying as she helped us.

She kept saying, “This is evil.

This is evil what they did to you.

” Over and over like she could not believe humans could do this to other humans.

But humans had done this.

Humans who believe they were serving God, who thought they were righteous, who were convinced that killing us was the right thing to do.

And other humans, strangers who did not know us, who owed us nothing, who were risking their own lives, they were saving us.

This is the human condition.

We are capable of both terrible evil and incredible good.

Sometimes in the same moment, in the same place, both extremes of human nature are on display.

One of the men asked where we should go.

We could not stay here.

When the Taliban realized we had not died, they would come looking for us.

We needed to hide, needed to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible.

Someone mentioned a tea shop nearby, owned by a man who was known to be kind, who sometimes helped people in trouble.

It was a risk, but we had no choice.

We could not walk far.

Most of us could barely stand.

The men and the women helped us.

They supported us, half carried us, moving us away from the railway tracks toward this tea shop.

It was maybe 3 or 400 m away.

But for us, injured and weak and traumatized, it felt like miles.

We moved as a group, supporting each other.

Brother Hassan had his arm around my shoulders, helping me walk because my legs kept giving out, kept buckling under me.

Sister Parisa was leaning heavily on one of the men who had freed us.

Her legs not working properly yet.

We must have looked terrible, like refugees from a massacre.

Bloody, bruised, barely able to walk.

A group of broken people stumbling across empty ground toward uncertain safety.

But we were alive and we were free and people were helping us, risking everything to help us.

Even in the darkest moments, even in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, there was still goodness.

There were still people who chose mercy over cruelty, love over hate, humanity over ideology.

We reached the tea shop just as it was opening for the morning.

The owner, an older man with a white beard and kind eyes, he took one look at us, and his face went pale.

But he did not turn us away.

He did not close his door and pretend he had not seen us.

He ushered us inside quickly, looking around to make sure no one had seen us arrive.

Inside, he told us to sit, to hide ourselves as much as possible.

His small shop was suddenly filled with 18 broken, bleeding people, and he welcomed us.

His wife came from the back and when she saw us, she gasped, her hand going to her mouth.

Then she started crying and then still crying, she started helping us, bringing water and clean cloths, trying to clean the blood from our faces, tending to our wounds as best she could.

We were safe for now.

We were safe.

We had survived the impossible night.

We had been rescued at dawn and now we were being sheltered by strangers who were risking everything to help us.

God had stopped the trains and he had sent these people to save us.

The miracle was real.

The tea shop was small, maybe 3 m wide, 4 m long.

There were a few low tables with cushions around them, a counter at the back where the owner prepared chai and simple food.

The walls were bare except for some faded posters and a clock that had stopped working years ago.

But to us in that moment, it was a palace.

It was sanctuary.

It was safety.

The owner, whose name I later learned was Hamid, he locked the door behind us and pulled down the metal shutter over the window facing the street.

This was unusual.

Tea shops are meant to be open to welcome customers.

By closing like this, he was announcing that something was wrong, that something had happened.

Anyone who saw would ask questions.

But he did it anyway.

He chose to protect us even though it put him at risk.

His wife, Fatima, she moved among us with cloths and water from a large pot.

She was trying to clean the blood from our faces to see the extent of our injuries.

Some wounds were deep and would need proper medical attention we could not get.

But she did what she could with what she had.

She came to me and gently dabbed at my split lip with a damp cloth.

The water stung the torn flesh and I flinched.

She apologized softly, her voice maternal and kind.

She looked at my wrists and her face crumpled.

Tears started flowing down her cheeks as she carefully tried to clean the blood away from where the wire had cut into my skin.

Why? She kept saying, “Why would anyone do this? What did you do to deserve this?” I could not answer her.

My throat was too tight with emotion.

All I could do was cry silently as she tended to my wounds like I was her own daughter.

Around the room, the same scene was repeated.

Fatima moved from person to person, cleaning wounds, offering comfort, weeping at what had been done to us.

Hamid brought blankets and wrapped them around those who were shivering most violently from the cold and shock.

He heated water for chai, strong and sweet, and brought cups to us with shaking hands.

These people, these Muslim strangers who owed us nothing, who were risking everything by helping us.

They treated us with more compassion and humanity than I had seen in a long time.

They saw suffering and they responded with love.

It was that simple, that beautiful.

One of the men who had freed us from the railway tracks, the younger one who had cut the wire from my wrists.

He was standing by the door, looking out through a crack in the shutter.

He was keeping watch, making sure the Taliban were not coming.

His name was Rasheed, and his face was tight with fear.

Every few minutes, he would glance back at us and then return to watching the street.

The other men who had helped rescue us, they had left.

They had families to get back to jobs to go to.

Staying with us would only increase their danger.

But they had saved our lives.

They had seen people bound to railway tracks.

And instead of walking away, instead of pretending they had not seen, they had acted.

They had risked themselves for us.

I will never forget their faces.

I will carry them in my memory forever.

Ordinary men who chose to be extraordinary when it mattered most.

Brother Rasheed was sitting against the wall.

His breathing labored and painful.

The beating he had received was severe.

He was an old man and his body could not withstand such violence.

Sister Mina was tending to him, trying to make him comfortable.

But we all could see he was in bad condition.

His face was gray.

He kept touching his ribs and wincing.

Sister Paresa sat next to me.

Her cut above her eye had finally stopped bleeding, but the whole side of her face was swollen and bruised.

She looked at me and tried to smile, but her lip quivered and more tears came instead.

We held each other.

No words, just held each other and cried.

Hamid came and squatted down in front of our group.

His face was serious, worried, he spoke quietly, urgently.

He said we could not stay here long, maybe an hour, maybe two.

But then we had to leave.

The Taliban would be looking for us.

They would go house to house, shop to shop, asking if anyone had seen a group of injured people.

If they found us here, they would kill us and they would kill him and his wife for helping us.

He said we needed to split up into small groups, two or three people maximum.

Small groups could travel without attracting attention.

Large groups would be spotted immediately.

He said we needed to leave Kobble as soon as possible.

Not tomorrow, not in a few days, today.

now as fast as we could move.

Someone asked where we should go.

Pakistan.

Hamid said the border is maybe four or 5 hours drive in good conditions.

Longer if you have to avoid checkpoints, but Pakistan was the closest safe place.

Iran was too far.

Going north would take us deeper into Taliban territory.

South toward Pakistan was our only real option.

But how would we get there? None of us had cars.

None of us had money for transportation.

We could not just walk to the border.

That was impossible in our condition.

Hamid said he would make some calls.

He knew people.

He said, people who might help.

He could not promise anything, but he would try.

He went to the back of his shop and we heard him speaking on a phone, his voice low and urgent.

We could not hear the words clearly, but we could hear the tone.

He was calling in favors, asking for help, explaining the situation to people who might be willing to risk themselves for strangers.

While he was making calls, Fatima brought us more chai and some pieces of naan bread with honey.

Most of us could not eat.

Our stomachs were too twisted with fear and shock.

But the chai, hot and sweet, it helped.

It warmed us from the inside, gave us a little bit of strength.

I sipped my chai slowly, letting the heat and sweetness spread through my body.

My hands were still shaking so badly, I had to hold the cup with both hands to keep from spilling it.

The cup rattled against my teeth every time I brought it to my lips.

I looked around at my church family.

We were a broken group, bleeding, bruised, traumatized.

Some were worse off than others.

Brother Rasheed looked like he might not survive another day.

Sister Leila had a vacant look in her eyes like she was not fully present anymore.

Brother Hassan kept touching his broken nose and wincing.

Several others had injuries that clearly needed medical attention.

We could not get.

But we were alive.

We had survived the night.

We should be dead.

Crushed under train wheels.

But we were alive.

Drinking chai in a tea shop.

Being cared for by strangers.

Alive.

Hamid came back from his phone calls.

His face showed cautious hope.

He said he had found some people willing to help.

Not enough transportation for everyone at once, but enough to get us out in groups over the next few hours.

He said a truck driver he knew, a friend from his village, would come within the hour.

This driver made runs toward the border regularly transporting goods.

He could hide some of us among his cargo.

It would be uncomfortable, dangerous, but it would work.

He said another friend with a taxi could take a small group, maybe three people, and drive them south, pretending they were a family going to visit relatives.

He said a third person, someone he trusted completely, had a van that could take another group.

Not all of us could go together.

We would have to separate.

Some would go in the truck, some in the taxi, some in the van.

We would take different routes to avoid drawing attention.

And once we left Kbble, we were on our own.

We would have to find our own way from wherever the drivers could safely drop us.

It was terrifying.

The thought of separating.

We had been through this nightmare together.

We were bonded by shared trauma.

Splitting up felt like losing the only family who truly understood what we had just experienced.

But we had no choice.

Staying together would get us all killed.

Splitting up gave us at least some chance of survival.

Hamid said we needed to decide quickly who would go in which vehicle.

We needed to organize ourselves, choose groups, be ready to leave the moment each driver arrived.

The discussion was brief and painful.

Some people wanted to stay together but could not.

Families needed to be kept together where possible.

Those who were most injured needed to be distributed so each group had someone capable of helping them.

I was grouped with Sister Paresa, Sister Leila, and one of the younger men named Fared.

Four of us would travel together.

Hammed said an elderly man who sometimes drove his nephew’s car would come to take us.

This driver, Hammed assured us, was trustworthy.

He was getting old and probably should not be driving anymore, but he had agreed to help.

Brother Rasheed would go in the truck with several others.

The truck had space among the cargo where they could hide if there were checkpoints.

Sister Mana and her small group would go in the taxi, pretending to be a family.

We had maybe 30 minutes to wait for the first driver.

30 minutes of sitting in fear, wondering if the Taliban would find us before we could leave.

30 minutes of saying goodbye to people we might never see again.

I went to brother Rasheed.

He was still leaning against the wall, breathing with difficulty.

I knelt beside him and took his hand.

His skin was cold, his grip weak.

He looked at me with those kind eyes that had always been filled with wisdom and love.

He smiled slightly despite his pain.

He said something that I will carry with me forever.

He said, “God had been faithful.

From the moment we were captured until now, God had not left us.

He stopped the trains.

He sent rescuers.

He provided sanctuary.

He was with us in the darkness.

and he brought us into the light.

He said, “Whatever happened from here, whether we survived or not, whether we made it to safety or were caught again, we had witnessed a miracle.

We had experienced God’s deliverance, and that was a gift, a precious gift that could never be taken away.

” I was crying.

I told him I was scared.

I told him I did not know if I was strong enough for what was coming next.

He squeezed my hand with what little strength he had.

He said, “Faith is not about being strong enough.

It is about trusting that God is strong enough.

” He said, “Jesus carried his cross when he could barely walk.

He fell under the weight of it, but he kept getting up.

He kept moving forward, not because he was strong enough, but because he was obedient to his father.

” He said, “That is what we must do.

Keep moving forward.

One step at a time.

One moment at a time.

Not in our strength, but in his.

Then he did something that broke my heart and healed it at the same time.

He blessed me.

He placed his hand on my head.

This old man who was in terrible pain.

And he prayed a blessing over me.

He prayed that God would protect me, guide me, use me to tell this story so that others would know what Jesus had done.

He prayed that I would reach safety and live a long life serving the Lord.

I could not speak.

I just wept as he prayed over me.

A knock came at the door.

Everyone went silent, frozen in fear.

Was it the Taliban? Had they found us? Hamid went to the door and spoke through it quietly.

A voice answered from outside.

Hamid seemed to relax.

He opened the door just enough for someone to slip inside, then quickly closed it again.

The truck driver had arrived.

A weathered man in his 40s with a thick beard and kind eyes.

He looked at us and his expression showed shock at our condition, but he did not hesitate.

He said his truck was parked in an alley two streets over.

Those who were going with him needed to come now.

Brother Rasheed stood with help.

Six people in total would go with a truck driver.

They wrapped themselves in shawls and chadars to hide their injuries as much as possible.

They needed to walk through the streets to reach the truck without drawing attention.

Hamid checked outside.

The street was relatively quiet.

It was still early morning.

Most people were inside eating breakfast or preparing for the day.

The group slipped out quickly.

Brother Rasheed turned and looked back at us one more time.

Our eyes met.

He smiled that gentle smile.

Then he was gone.

Shuffling down the street with the others, moving as fast as his injured body could manage.

I never saw him again.

About 20 minutes later, the taxi arrived.

Sister Mina and her group prepared to leave.

We hugged briefly.

Sister Mina whispered a prayer over each of us.

She said we would see each other again, either here or in glory.

Then they were gone, too.

Now we waited for our driver, my group of four.

Sister Paresa, Sister Laya, young Fared, and me.

We sat in silence, each lost in our own thoughts, our own fears, our own prayers.

Fatima brought us more chai and some different clothes.

She had gathered scarves and chers that we could use to cover ourselves better, to hide our injuries and look more normal.

The clothes we were wearing were torn and blood stained.

We could not walk through the city looking like that.

We changed clothes, helping each other because our hands were stiff and painful.

The new clothes were simple, ordinary, nothing that would attract attention.

We wrapped scarves around our heads and necks, covering as much of our faces as we dared without looking suspicious.

Then came the knock we were waiting for.

Our driver had arrived.

Hamid let him in.

an old man, maybe 70, with a white beard and a face like wrinkled leather.

His name was Gulam, and he moved slowly, carefully, like his bones hurt, but his eyes were sharp and alert.

He looked at the four of us and nodded.

He said his car was just outside.

We would get in quickly, and he would drive us out of the city, heading south.

He knew back roads that avoided most checkpoints.

He had driven these routes for 50 years.

He knew every turn, every village, every place where police or Taliban might stop cars.

But he warned us if we were stopped, if we were questioned, he could not protect us.

He would have to pretend he did not know we were Christians, that he was just giving strangers a ride.

He would do his best, but ultimately we were in God’s hands.

We understood.

We thanked him for his willingness to help despite the risk.

Hamid opened the door and checked the street again.

Clear.

He turned to us with tears in his eyes.

He hugged each of us.

This Muslim man embracing Christians who were hunted by his government.

He said, “May God protect you.

May you reach safety.

May you remember that not all Muslims hate you.

that there are those of us who see you as human beings, as fellow children of God.

I hugged him back, this stranger who had risked everything for us.

I thanked him and Fatima for their kindness, for their humanity.

I told them I would never forget what they did for us.

Then we went outside into the morning light.

The sun was higher now, warming the air slightly.

The street was still relatively quiet.

We moved quickly to Gulam’s car, an old sedan that had probably been white once, but was now a faded yellowish color with rust spots and dents.

We climbed in.

Sister Leila and I in the back.

Sister Paresa in the front passenger seat.

Fared squeezed into the back with us.

The car was small and we were pressed together, but we did not complain.

Gulam started the engine.

It coughed and sputtered, but finally caught.

He pulled out onto the street and began driving south through Kabul.

I looked back at the tea shop one more time.

Hamid was standing at the door, watching us go.

He raised his hand in a small wave.

Then he went back inside and pulled the shutter back up, reopening his shop as if nothing had happened.

returning to normal life while we fled for our lives.

The drive through Kbble felt endless.

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