Last summer, Foreign Policy and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting teamed up to produce a series of e-books on the world's borderlands. I was commissioned to write about the volatile tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and decided that the best way to do so was to ride a Pakistani truck for 1,000 miles along the NATO supply routes that wind from the port city of Karachi to the Afghan capital of Kabul. Along the way, we faced Taliban attacks, Army checkpoints, bandits and breakdowns, and sundry adventures galore. Here's a excerpt from a scene in the tribal areas:
It was late now, and we prepared for bed. Jahangir returned to his wife and children. With no electricity for miles, the stars were alive and web-like above us. Despite the chill, I asked Afzal to pull the chairpais out into the courtyard so that Sardar and I could sleep in the open air. Our feet were pointing east; the moon rose above our toes as we settled under our blankets.
Not long after drifting off, we awoke to the sharp boom of an explosion and the concussion of a blast wave. Opening my eyes, I saw the sky above me turn orange with light. I instinctively pulled the covers over my head and curled into a ball on the charpai. The blast felt so close that I thought shrapnel and debris would rain down on us. After a moment, I let down the blankets and lifted my head. I could see the whites of Sardar’s eyes shining next to me in the moonlight.
“What the hell was that?” I whispered.
“A bomb blast,” he said.
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If you're interested, you can buy the e-book either directly from Foreign Policy as a PDF, or get it in Kindle format from Amazon. Either way, start here:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ebooks/bird_chaman_flower_khyber
This e-book format is a bit of an experiment for me, and so I'm counting on your interest and support to make it work. And if you do buy and like it, please share your sentiments on Facebook and Twitter, and consider leaving a review on Amazon. Who knows, this could indeed become a model for funding a lot of good long-form journalism that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day.
In other news, I was in Aleppo in northern Syria for most of March, working on an assignment for Wired Magazine. I'm now back in Karachi, where I'm researching the city's gangs. I'll have a couple articles out in the coming months in more traditional venues so do stay tuned.