In the Danger Zone Read Online Free Page A

ignores my questions about women's rights under the Taliban and reminds me that the British were just one of many people who tried to conquer Afghanistan. He says it without malice, and when I apologize on behalf of my countrymen (you're not really supposed to do this, are your) he takes it with good grace.
    I ask if he sees me as the enemy. He says no. These days his responsibility is to the people he commands, and he has to try to get along with everyone. 'We can't fight the whole world,' he says ruefully, as though he wouldn't actually mind giving it a bash.
    The eating cloth is cleared away and we settle down to play cards. 'Put the camera away,' Haq says, 'betting is haraam', (forbidden by God). After playing a few hands we thank everyone for their wonderful hospitality and extremely lamby lamb, and leave. Marc is starving and ready to fall over. I am feeling giddy from this bizarre emotional rollercoaster of a trip, which lurches from terror to comedy without warning. But finally I feel as though I've made a connection with Afghanistan.
    On the way back through Masr-i-Sharif we pass the vast, stunning Blue Mosque. Surely a country that can build anything this beautiful can't be beyond hope. On the streets, men are going crazy, dancing and partying – all without the aid of alcohol. I stop occasionally to talk to the dancers, but there's a strong sense of hostility, so I don't hang around. It generally takes about an hour to arrange everything required for a decent abduction, so it's best to move on every 40 minutes.
    World Food Programme
    In contrast to the feast of the previous night, we visit a World Food Programme plant nursery, where women are offered food in return for work. The UN tries to avoid giving food away as this creates a dependency on aid that can be hard to break, so instead they create jobs within their own projects.
    I chat to a woman in a beautiful, finely-pleated, Yves Klein blue burka, who says she finds it very difficult to do weeding in her voluminous tent, but she wants to wear it. 'I'm very shy,' she says. 'I have no education, so I don't like talking to people. But I don't mind talking when I wear the burka.'
    Her husband was killed by the Taliban, but she's not entirely sure why. I ask her how she feels about his death. 'I'm sad because I have to bring up the children on my own and there's no one to pay for food.' I ask about her emotions several times, but she always answers with facts, as though revealing an emotional response would be as bad as revealing her face. I ask if it's unfair that women suffer so badly, and men seem to have all the power. She doesn't understand the question – even when I rephrase it several different ways. It doesn't occur to her that things can be any different. She says that if she were literate things would be so much better. Her daughter is married but she is young, so doesn't wear the burka, but when she gets older she will.
    She says that under the Taliban women weren't allowed to go out and work or tend crops, even if they were widows like her who had no one else to provide for their family.
    'But you'd starve without food.'
    'Yes. That didn't matter to the Taliban.'
    We wander around a few crumbling rural villages, followed everywhere by hordes of excited, beautiful olive-skinned kids. This is how most Afghans live, with no infrastructure, no jobs, living in houses made of mud, and completely reliant on outside help just to get enough food to eat. The trouble is that from the outside, this poverty is mesmerizing. Cherubic kids in rags, simple lives with basic needs, few material possessions and living close to the land.
    From the inside, it's very different, and I'm not sure if anyone in the world really has a simple life and basic needs.
    I meet Sabra, a widow with six beautiful, mischievous daughters to look after. They are easily some of the poorest people I've ever met, and they live in a single mud room with two small kitchen rooms beside it. Sabra