Days of Fear Read Online Free

transforms it a little more each day. Modern buildings, skyscrapers, shopping malls made of glass and cement. And then, the big hotel, the Serena in the center of Kabul, a few steps from the Blue Mosque, built to the tune of millions by the prince, Aga Khan.
    We first stop by the offices of Ariana airlines. I want to buy our tickets for Kandahar right away and check the departure times. We learn that there is only one flight a week, on Saturdays. We reserve two seats—there will be time enough over the following days to buy the tickets.
    We are back out on the street. It has rained and there is mud everywhere. My shoes have lost all their color. Ajmal’s, on the other hand, black moccasins with thick soles, extremely popular among Afghans, are like new. We head in the direction of the hotel my newspaper booked for me. My interpreter starts to joke around. A light black beard that ends in a pointed goatee frames his face. He strokes it and looks over at me, bemused. He’s reminding me of the pact we made years ago. We’ll let our beards grow this time as well. It will be necessary, especially in my case, to mask my decidedly western appearance, the color of my hair, my eyes, and my face. “You never change,” adds Ajmal good-humoredly as he slaps my shoulder. “You look just like an American.”
    This fact is not encouraging. To be singled out as American, or English, or Dutch, one of the foreigners serving in the coalition forces, rouses too many suspicions. Afghans respect you, but the way they look at you betrays an easily understandable hostility. They feel they have been invaded. Protected by soldiers who incessantly patrol the center of town and the outlying suburbs, but also oppressed by a presence that they tolerate with great difficulty. I have noticed the same thing in every country in which foreign troops are present, from Iraq to Somalia.
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    As we bounce over the craters that open before us along the road, I ask Ajmal the question that has been haunting me for five months: Why haven’t the Karzai administration and the coalition paved the Jalalabad road? It is a large artery that connects Kabul to Peshawar, in Pakistan, along which thousands of semis and hundreds of foreign military vehicles travel. But there it is, perpetually in ruins, left to its own devices, devastated by truck wheels and tank treads that devour the earth and dig potholes that fill with water and mud.
    Ajmal has no answer to my question. He smiles, because it’s a question that I ask him every time we see each other. I am convinced that even via these kinds of simple but vital measures a relationship based on trust can be built with a population that has never tolerated the presence of foreign armies on its soil.
    I check into my room, open the window and am immediately assailed by a dense smoke, acrid and bluish: car and truck pollution squats over the entire city like a low fog. Kabul is suffering from its leap towards modernity. It willingly accepts the advantages offered by the rich and opulent West, but it advances blindly, unable to keep pace. More often than not, it buckles under the weight of the changes, and it grasps desperately at rituals, customs, and sentiments belonging to a tradition that is slowly disappearing. Traffic is a problem, an environmental emergency, as are space heaters, which, despite bans, the Afghans insist on fueling with diesel.
    West and East, a love-hate relationship, cultures that are different but interdependent, struggling to co-exist.
    Ajmal and I make an appointment for later that afternoon and he leaves me in my room. He has to take care of a few things, confirm the final details of our trip to Kandahar and Lashkar Gah, and organize the timing and the format of the interview. It’s Wednesday, we have only a few days. We need to confirm our flight reservation and call the hotel, the only safe one in Kandahar, where we’ll be spending a night. I call my