A U.S.-trained Afghan pilot was talking to Reuters on a smuggled cellphone from Tajikistan, where he is being held, when something strange happened - his voice started looping, repeating everything he had just said, word for word. His fiancee, an American nurse in Florida, was on the line too and started to panic. She shouted his name, but his words kept cycling back. "I was freaked out," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect him. "The worst things came to my mind." Whatever the reason for the telephone glitch, which only happened once, it added to a deep sense of anxiety for the couple. It also came amid growing feelings of impatience and uncertainty among the Afghan pilots and personnel who have been held by the government in Tajikistan since fleeing there on Aug. 15. There are 143 Afghans detained at a sanatorium in a mountainous, rural area outside of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, waiting and hoping for over a month for transfer by the United States. After flying there with 16 aircraft as their military's ground forces crumbled before the advancing Taliban, the Afghans say they had their phones taken away. They were initially housed in a university dormitory before being moved on Sept. 1.