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the wake of a troop withdrawal, started buying up vast amounts of U.S. dollars on the black market in Kabul, driving down the afghani further in order to make Western products prohibitively expensive for the Afghan population. So there I sat, sweating on a sagging jute bed with a draft at my back, stuffing stacks of possibly counterfeit money into my rucksack, just to pay for a mule in case I got sick.
    My room was on the roof of a house that overlooked an expanse of rice fields, through which the same water buffalos plodded home every day at dusk, as in a silk screen or bas-relief. On my last evening in Peshawar, my eyes were drawn to a shimmer of fire-red in the distance: the gossamer
chador
(veil) of the young woman driving the herd along a mud embankment.To me, that lone flash of a primary color symbolized the rich and voluptuous civilization of the Indian subcontinent that ended, literally, beyond those fields, where the landscape lost its watery, terra cotta glow and was replaced by a mass of corrugated, pie-crust hills, whose scarred, cindery gradients warned of heat and cold and all other means of physical discomfort. That was where the war was, and to understand who the mujahidin really were, you had to go there.
    On the bed I'd laid out the native costume I had just purchased for a total of 400 rupees ($25) from a Pathan merchant in the bazaar. It consisted
of a pakol,
a flat woolen hat from the Hindu Kush mountain region of Chitral, and the traditional
shalwar kameez
worn by the Pathans — a pair of baggy cotton pants held up by a string and a long, flowing shirt with a collar and deep side pocket. I tried the costume on, wearing no underwear as recommended, since among the guerrillas, the only opportunity to bathe would be in a stream with all my clothes on. Like Kim in Rudyard Kipling's novel, I “felt mechanically for the moustache” and beard that were just beginning to sprout on my face. Kim, too, had put on a native costume given him by a Pathan to espy the Northwest Frontier. And if I thought of Kim as I looked at the pathetic imposter in the mirror, it was not, I hoped, the effect of a romantic inclination but simply because, as in so many other instances, Kipling's writing offered the only sure guide to this war. (One of my colleagues, Jonathan Randal of the
Washington Post,
had told me, “Had the Russians read Kipling more carefully, they might never have invaded Afghanistan.”)
    In the side pocket of the
shalwar kameez
I placed my notebook, camera, and water purification tablets. My rucksack was small, since I might have to carry it everywhere. There was room inside only for the afghanis, a second
shalwar kameez,
a sleeping bag, towel, comb, toothbrush and toothpaste, flashlight, film, pocketknife, short-wave radio, toilet paper, flea powder, mosquito repellent, painkillers, antibiotics, and malaria pills. The canteen I would carry separately.
    Reporters permanently covering the Afghan war were tied to a wheel of psychological torture that never stopped turning. First there was the boredom and insecurity of waiting in Peshawar for the trip inside to materialize, something that didn't always happen, and when it did it was often weeks later than the mujahidin had promised. Then there was the attack of fear and dread when you suddenly found out — usually the night before departure — where exactly you would be going and that it was too late to back out. Finally came the loneliness, physical torment, and pure wonder of the trip itself. I was now in the second phase of that cycle, surrounded by four walls and a glimpse of desolation from my room, about to travel alone with a group of mujahidin into Afghanistan and feeling more scared and lonely than I ever felt before.
    The fact that I had a wife and son back in Greece only increased my sense of isolation. Among the journalists who regularly went inside, I knew of only one who had a family, and he had told me never to carry along pictures of loved ones