The start of the Journey

My journey in 1985 began while travelling in India. At an Afghan restaurant in Delhi I had a conversation with some Afghans who convinced me it would be interesting to visit Afghanistan and see what war was really like. Perhaps they were at first just interested in stealing my passport but over time they grew to trust me. When the time came for me to head to Pakistan they offered to meet me in Lahore if they could manage to cross the border into Pakistan. If on a certain day they did not meet me, I was to take a note to a person in a bazaar in Peshawar and he could introduce me to people who could take me into Afghanistan. They did not show up and so I searched the Peshawar Bazaar. In the end I found an old fur trader on the second story of a tiny store. Speaking no English he read my note in Farsi and called on numerous young children to take me deeper into the city. The children led me to the mujahideen headquarters of Jamiat-Islami (party of Islam). Their leader, Barhauddin Rabbani, became the president of Afghanistan with the fall of the Soviet backed government. The people who were once mujahedeen commanders later became the infamous warlords post 2001.

     For a couple of months I tried to convince the mujahideen to let me accompany them into Afghanistan but to no avail. Then one day they called me to a meeting at their headquarters. Before I knew it I was conversing with Massoud, poet laureate of Afghanistan. (He was assassinated on September 9, 2001 along with the mujahideen commander, Massoud). We talked of the progression of the war near Herat from where he had just come. Another person arrived and to the mujahideen's dismay, he turned out to be person they thought I was. It was too late to correct the mistake and I was allowed to stay. Other people at the meeting included French journalist Phillipe Gauthier and MSF doctors. They took pity on me and decided it would be informative to have a non-medical person accompany Doctors without Borders into Afghanistan. Their condition was that I carry a camera.  I quickly went to the Bazaar and purchased one. It was in that way I managed to achieve my goal of travelling into Afghanistan.

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