Late November 2001. I step on a tugboat with four other journalists and we start across the river that separates Uzbekistan from northern Afghanistan.

The current is fast and deep. For the first time in weeks, I relax.

I breathe deeply.

I feel the line being crossed, and yes, I want to go.

I've been afraid I wouldn't get in.

Afraid I'd have to stay home and watch the war on television

and listen to everybody say,

God is on our side.

Watching the news scares me. Crossing the river feels good. If we're going to kill and

destroy, I want to see the killing and destruction because my guess is God won't have

anything to do with it. My guess is God doesn't care one way or the other.

On the shore of Afghanistan, a man in a worn out sport coat and scarf stamps my passport,

no problem, and I cram into an already full Toyota microbus going into the town of

Missouri-Sherif, 60 miles to the south. We drive on a ribbon of asphalt across a desert of sand dunes and

drifted snow, empty except for some nomads with a bactrian double hump camel and a dog that looks like a cross between a mastiff and

Newfoundland. As we approach this city, the road is lined with metal shipping containers, all left

behind by the Soviets. Now people are living inside them, a rusted steel cube shanty town on top of a garbage heap, plastic bags blowing in the

wind as we drive by. The women are covered in burqas, the men are wearing long shirts and

pajama pants held up by a string around the waist. They wrap blankets around their

shoulders, but they have no socks, and their shoes are plastic

slippers.

Masari Sharif sits on the flatlands before the northern slope of the Hindu Kush.

...