Page 325 - Leadership in the Indian Army

"I don't recognize Kabul."

"Neither do I," Laila said. "And I never left."

* * *

"Mammy has a new friend," Zalmai said after dinner later that same

night, after Tariq had left. "A man."

Rasheed looked up. "Does she, now?"
* * *
Tariq asked if he could smoke.

They had stayed awhile at theNasir Bagh refugee camp near Peshawar,

Tariq said, tapping ash into a saucer. There were sixty thousand Afghans
living there already when he and his parents arrived.

"It wasn't as bad as some of the other camps like, God forbid, Jalozai,"

he said. "I guess at one point it was even

some kind of model camp, back during the Cold War, a place the West

could point to and prove to the world they weren't just funnel ing arms
into Afghanistan."

But that had been during the Soviet war, Tariq said, the days of jihad

and worldwide interest and generous funding and visits from Margaret
Thatcher.

"You know the rest, Laila. After the war, the Soviets fell apart, and the

West moved on. There was nothing at stake for them in Afghanistan
anymore and the money dried up. Now Nasir Bagh is tents, dust, and