And I was ready.
I followed Sebastian’s instructions for having his belongings shipped home, and then returned his door-key to a confused, elderly woman who answered the bell at his landlady’s apartment.
I smiled and explained that Monsieur Hunter had left. She kept asking me if he’d gone back to America and, in the end, it seemed the easiest explanation to give her. I don’t know who she thought I was, but she shook my hand and kissed me on both cheeks.
My taxi dropped me at the airport ninety minutes before my flight. From Geneva, I’d fly to Frankfurt and then pick up a charter to Kabul with a Turkish airline. There were a few commercial flights to Afghanistan, and I expected that I’d either be seated with NATO servicemen and women, or private contractors, engineers, doctors and builders, who were trying to help put the poor, broken country together again, plus a few Afghans, bravely returning home.
By the time we touched down to land in Afghanistan, I’d been traveling for nearly 18 hours. I’d slept a little on the plane overnight, but I was exhausted, although keyed up and excited as well.
I got my first good look at Kabul. It was a sprawling, thriving city, squatting at the bottom of the Koh Daman Mountains of the Hindu Kush. Many of the ugly, boxy homes that had begun to creep up into the foothills were made from the same dusty yellow as the soil itself.
It was a city of contrasts where ancient palaces stood next to a few modest skyscrapers; small mud houses snuggled next to gaudy compounds; narrow alleys led out to wide, modern roads thronged with vehicles of every brand, age, and stage of decay; and modern opulence walked side by side with biblical poverty.
Men with Rolex watches had the windshields of their Mercedes washed by children who had no shoes. International aid had flooded the desperately poor country with money, but the distribution left much to be desired; and it was whispered that billions of aid dollars had flowed out of the country into private numbered accounts in Swiss banks.
The streets were full of people going about their business: women in blue headscarves; men in a mixture of traditional robes and western clothing. Cars coughed fumes into the hot, dry air, and motorcycles with carpets for seats roared around, ignored by the donkeys pulling carts, and herds of goats that seemed to roam freely. The ever-present sound of people talking, arguing and selling their wares poured from rows of dimly-lit doorways.
But everywhere were signs of war: bomb-blasted buildings; walls with bullet holes; and ugly, burned out patches where cars had been used as weapons, exploding to shower hot fragments of metal over the unlucky ones who had been too close.
The bulletproof car that collected me from the heavily guarded airport now dropped me in a secure parking compound at the Mustafa Hotel. I was escorted inside by a burly Marine sergeant who answered to the name of Benson. I didn’t know if that was his first name or last, but his comfortable bulk made me feel safer.