In the Danger Zone Read Online Free Page B

is lively and talkative and doesn't wear a burka. Unusually for an Afghan woman, she's happy to talk openly to me – she's fully aware of how gruesome her life is, she wants her story told and, crucially, she has no male relatives to beat her for talking to an unknown, unrelated man.
    For the first time I ask one of the questions I'm here to ask: What does it feel like to be constantly hungry? To be starving? It's a horrible question, and smacks of poverty tourism, but surely it's more dangerous not to know.
    Sabra is pleased that I've asked her – no one else ever has. It changes, she says, depending on how scarce food is. Today she's got food from the WFP, but when she can't work, the family goes without and she becomes lethargic, irritable, shaky and miserable. She says that she often lashes out at her kids when she's that desperate. When she says this, the kids all laugh and agree. Sabra is very aware of her poverty, and she laughs when I mention that people in the West sometimes romanticize the simple life of rural peasants.
    So what do the poorest people in the world eat? Often plain starches. Sabra and her family eat a pathetically small amount of WFP split peas that are boiled to maceration into dhal. It tastes surprisingly good, though not, I suspect, if you eat it every day of your life. She also makes unleavened naan bread using WFP flour in a mud-built tandoor oven that reaches a frighteningly high temperature, having been stoked for three hours using anything she can lay her hands on, including carrier bags, twigs and dried turds.
    The naans are dampened with a little water before they are slapped onto the side wall of the oven. In a few minutes they are ready and on the verge of burning, at which point they are slipped off the oven and left to cool.
    I taste Sabra's food, but can't bring myself to eat the whole portion that she offers me. It seems wrong for a Western journalist to take food from someone this poor. But she tells me off and I realize that I've done the wrong thing – she is offended by my rejection of her hospitality, and if I am to be able to write about the experience of the Afghan poor, I need to get involved.
    Sabra finds life tough, filthy, relentless, tiring and bleak. She hates the food that she has to eat, and both she and the kids yearn for rice and meat. I pull some modelling balloons out of my pocket and make some balloon dogs to amuse them, and as we get ready to leave, I ask Sabra if she thinks her daughters will have a better future. She says she just wants them to be able to go to school. I'm told it's not appropriate to shake hands with her, so I thank her profusely and put my hand on my heart in the Afghan custom. As I leave, I'm a bit of a mess: incensed at the desperate unfairness of her life, and wracked with guilt at being able to hop into a car and leave her behind. I tell myself that I'm here to expose and explain things, not to solve them, but my mood has undeniably darkened.
    I set off on a two-day drive heading back to Kabul, passing hundreds of burnt-out Russian tanks on the way. They are everywhere, constant reminders of Afghanistan's violent history. We stop at the equivalent of a motorway service station – a row of creaky wooden stalls all selling exactly the same foods at exactly the same prices.
    A man hears my voice and angrily accuses me of being American. I tell him I'm British and he roars his approval, produces a hellishly out-of-tune guitar and plays an extraordinary version of All You Need Is Love'. Or at least I think that's what he's playing. Whatever it is, it's great and about 40 men gather around to listen and cheer.
    I try sticky dried watermelon that's surprisingly strong and pleasant, the tart dried yoghurt balls, and the huge, sweet, bright yellow sultanas.
    That night myself, Marc and Aleem are guests of an Afghan Aid project. We eat another heady dinner of lamb and qabili rice (lamb, lamb fat and rice with a few sultanas) washed down with Coke.