NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In the end, it was a signal fire started from a woman's head covering and robe that helped save eight foreign aid workers detained in Afghanistan since August on charges of preaching Christianity.
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Aid worker
Dayna Curry
AP
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Dayna Curry, 30, described the extraordinary rescue in a phone call Wednesday night to her father and stepmother in Nashville, hours after she and the seven others were airlifted to freedom in neighboring Pakistan by U.S. special forces who spotted their blaze in a dark Afghan field.
"Dad! I'm free!" she cried exuberantly on the phone.
Tilden Curry said he could hardly believe he was hearing the voice of his daughter, something he had prayed for daily since her arrest.
"We're thrilled to hear her voice," said Curry, dean of the business school at Tennessee State University. "It was like a miracle. It could have gone the other way."
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Aid worker
Heather Mercer
AP
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Curry, fellow American Heather Mercer, 24, and the six others had been jailed in Afghanistan for the past three months on charges of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, which can be punishable by death.
When the Northern Alliance opposition forces took over Kabul on Monday, the Taliban militia fled the city with the aid workers.
Curry told her father the aid workers thought the Taliban was going to free them early Tuesday, but instead the workers were put in a vehicle and driven to Ghazni, some 50 miles south of Kabul.
The six women and two men were left alone in a metal shipping container for several hours, afraid they would soon die.
Curry said it was cold and they had nothing but their body heat to keep them warm.
Before dawn, they were put into a squalid jail, the worst of five prisons during their captivity. Soon, they heard American bombs.
"Dayna said all of a sudden, the Taliban just disappeared and some people rushed up to them and said, `You're free,"' said Sue Fuller, Curry's stepmother.
She said people in the town came out of their house and started clapping and hugging them.
The International Red Cross sent word of the workers' freedom to the U.S. military. An arrangement was made for three U.S. special forces helicopters to pick up the workers in field while it was still dark.
The workers, carrying a single lantern, grew concerned as they waited. Curry told her family that one worker suggested they turn back, but Mercer refused.
She removed her burqa, the head covering and robe the Taliban requires females to wear, and lit it on fire from the lantern flame. The other women followed, and the U.S. soldiers spotted the blaze and rescued them.
They were airlifted to Chaklala air base on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, all apparently in good health.
Curry was reunited with her mother, Nancy Cassell, who had traveled to Afghanistan after her daughter's arrest but was forced to relocate to Pakistan for her own safety after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"They're fine but tired, going on adrenaline," Cassell told The Associated Press, speaking for her daughter and Mercer, whose father, John Mercer, was also in Pakistan.
"They've been to get their hair done and a few things like that," she said.
But before enjoying her first shower in three months, much less a hair styling, Curry called her family in Nashville, where she grew up.
"She was saying she could hardly wait to get home," Fuller said.
Joachim Jager, co-director of Shelter Now International, which employed the aid workers, said the workers planned to take two or three weeks to recover from their ordeal at a place he did not name. Shelter Now is directed from Germany but based in Oshkosh, Wis.
Yet Curry's family is optimistic that she will return home next week for the Thanksgiving holiday. They want to throw a big celebration but will wait to discuss it with Curry before making any definite plans.
"For a while, we need to just to listen to her and try to protect her from the media onslaught and let her make some choices," said Fuller, a psychology professor at Tennessee State.
Tilden Curry said he knew just what he would do once he is able to see his daughter.
"I think I'll just hug her," he said. "I just want to hold her."
AP-WS-11-15-01 1937EST
