The old city: a street scene in Kabul's Shari Kuhna photo: Barnaby Hall

July 22

I think I have found a guest house to stay in for the next week. It is in a safe location and is the cheapest that I have found.

I am still learning. To the shock of the guards at the U.N. compound, I went out for dinner one evening wearing shorts. I was not aware that this was a cultural faux pas, but luckily nothing happened. Afghans are likely to get irate over such cultural "mistakes." My two pairs of trousers will have to serve me well, and one pair is already filthy.

The other day, the United Nations Population Fund Association took me along to photograph their meeting with the minister for Women's Affairs. What I found interesting about my visit to the ministry was watching all of the women walk through the entrance and immediately remove their burkhas. Underneath, they wore makeup, nail polish, and smart clothes. I asked someone why Kabul's women still wore burkhas. His answer was that they still feel incredibly vulnerable and uncomfortable. There have been, and continue to be, acid attacks made against women who do not wear them. Many of the women I spoke to complained that the burkhas give them headaches. It's an impractical, uncomfortable garment, and dangerous to wear, they say, because they have no peripheral vision to help deal with Kabul's traffic. But, it is perhaps more dangerous not to wear one, so most do.

July 22

A Kabul baker wraps himself in cloth to withstand the heat from the oven photo: Barnaby Hall

I share the Haseeb guest house with two C.I.A. agents, two Korean photographers, and some U.N. employees, one a very kind doctor from the Sudan.

I had taken a roll of film of the marching band, and yesterday presented them with the pictures. I had stumbled into one of their practice sessions a week earlier and had since become close friends with Colonel Mohamad Alam Kohstany, commander of the Central Army band. They are delighted by their images on the prints, and have invited me to a party at their barracks. One would think this a safe proposition, but they have only one gun, which probably does not work.

I am visiting during the melon season, and have managed to stay away from some of the less-savory-looking platters. I bought a melon in the market and this has lasted me for the past couple of days--cheap and delicious. The food here is very greasy, though tolerable if one doesn't mind mutton. Meat, to the Afghan, is quite a luxury. Many families eat only vegetables.

I continue to be amazed by the hospitality of the people and a little fatigued by all of the children trying to get into a photograph. I am routinely followed by a whole bunch of them. Eventually, I give in and, as the camera is lifted, they assume their poses, very stiff and unsmiling, folding their arms and huddling close together.

I plan to stay in Kabul this week, making a couple of day excursions to the refugee camps and to the area north of Kabul, supposedly completely decimated during the civil war, and later up to the Panjshir Valley. Next week I will look into going to Masr-i-Sharif.

July 30

It was quite an incredible drive to Masr-i-Sharif, remarkable because of the number of destroyed Russian tanks and armored vehicles remaining by the road. The ground was littered with the carcasses of burnt-out vehicles, some having tumbled thirty feet down into a gorge, almost certain death for the Russian crew. The Russians responded to these attacks by destroying much, if not all, of the villages on either side of the road in an attempt to prevent the mujahadeen from blending back into them.

At some points along the road, there were mine-clearance personnel painstakingly clearing the ground inch by inch a foot or so off the road. I could clearly make out the tops of the land mines these men were working on. Our driver, seemingly oblivious to all of this, would casually swing off the road in order to pass the vehicle in front. My heart was often in my mouth. Just last week a bus was blown up.

One becomes very familiar with landmine markings: Red stones outline the mined areas and white stones designate the boundaries of a de-mined area. On street corners in Kabul, notices in both English and Dari warn that between twenty and twenty-five people are killed by landmines in Afghanistan each day.

The landscape itself was one of indescribable peace and beauty: lush valleys set against red hills, high snow-covered peaks, a spectacular limestone gorge near Kholm, and the flat high plain of the Uzbek border, where camels and sheep graze and the land disappears into a hazy line of horizon.

a Hazara refugee in Bamian Province photo: Barnaby Hall

Things did not go quite to plan. I was surprised to learn that my guide had never been to the North and, further, was a Pashtun in a city and province with heavy Uzbek and Tajik populations. The first day, I spotted some Uzbek women sitting in the shade of a tree. I sat next to them and, after a few minutes, began to take their photographs. A crowd grew around us. As I continued to photograph, I felt a firm hand on my shoulder; it was my guide pulling me away by my collar. From the start, he had been nervous, but as he watched me take the women's photographs in public, he had become increasingly agitated, worried that my actions might bring recriminations from the watching crowd of men. By the end of the trip, he preferred to stay in the hotel and let me explore the city on my own.

I took the opportunity to visit a hospital. Though I only gained permission for the men's quarters, it was a moving experience. Mahmod Akbar, a young doctor overwhelmed by the volume of cases, took me around. In one room in the mental ward, I encountered a man who was asleep, perhaps drugged, and chained to his bed. His contorted body struck me as rather harmless. As the doctors jockeyed to be photographed, I felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow.

Later that day while I was walking around the city, a vehicle driven by four U.S. Marines stopped me. They asked me my business in Afghanistan, then, quite unexpectedly, asked if I or someone I knew was writing a biography on John Walker Lindh. I replied that I was not, nor was I familiar with the author, and asked what they wanted: "No, no, we just want to find him for ourselves and ask him some questions."

July 31

I managed to check my e-mail for the first time in a week. I laughed at the stories from my friends in the States, my brother's glum complaint at being "sent away" on holiday, and rather more worryingly, the frantic e-mail messages from my mother. She had decided enough was enough and that she wanted me out of Afghanistan. But it is easy to disobey one's parents a couple of thousand miles away, so I quickly concocted a tale and a reason to stay--that unfortunately, I could not change my air ticket.

The security position here is much safer than it's portrayed to be by the press. In fact, it is hard to imagine that just a few months ago these very skies were the backdrop of firefights between anti-aircraft guns and coalition jets. When the driver of the taxi points at a house and tells you that is where bin Laden lived or Al-Qaeda trained, it is hard to believe that these buildings were used for such sinister purposes. Already a tourist trade has begun selling access to the compounds.

August 5

a schoolgirl attends class in Bamian Province photo: Barnaby Hall

I am slightly fed up with kebabs and rice, which have formed my diet for the past straight three weeks.

Bamian, where mammoth statues of Buddha once stood, was a sight. The Taliban destroyed the statues, but there are tremendous ruins. It took nine hours to travel 150 kilometers, which should give an idea of the state of the roads and now my back. At one police checkpoint, our driver continued straight through, hoping to avoid giving anyone else a lift. We assumed that all was well until bullets ricocheted off the asphalt and all around us, even hitting our car. Obviously the policeman had woken from his nap and was rather angry. In any case, we did not stop.

The statues were erected under Kanishka the Great as part of a major commercial and religious center. At the same time, thousands of caves were dug out, sanctuaries exquisitely adorned with plaster friezes and colorful frescoes, and inhabited by Buddhist monks. The site drew pilgrims from all over to come and worship. Since those days, though, the caves have been robbed of their dÈcor. They have served as hideouts for mujahadeen fighters during the civil war and as lonely outposts for centuries. Now scores of refugees are making homes of them.