Is This Your First War? by Michael Petrou Page B

that the Talib across the field was from Khodja Bahuddin, the very town where I slept and where some of the local Northern Alliance fighters grew up. It was a glimpse into the fraternal intimacy of civil war.
    It was also bad television. While we were talking, a Russian television crew had beaten its way up the path to the two bunkers where we were sipping tea. The crew’s producer evidently decided he hadn’t come this close to enemy lines to film teenagers gossiping on radios and an empty expanse of grass. I watched as he handed a thick wad of Afghan currency to a Northern Alliance machine gunner who was dug in behind sandbags and some brush above the two bunkers. The producer’s cameraman positioned himself just below the gunner so he’d have a dramatic shot of the shell casings as they were ejected from the gun and silhouetted against the sky. The soldier shoved the bills into his breast pocket and smiled. He swung the barrel toward the Taliban bunkers in the woods on the other side of the field and let loose.
    A young Northern Alliance soldier near the front.
    Within seconds we were under return fire. Zaid was caught exposed on the path outside the bunker when it happened. He bolted a short distance away, his body rigidly upright and his hands at his thighs, while his legs pumped furiously beneath him. His face looked panicked and embarrassed all at once. When there was a pause in the firing, he darted back into the bunker. Everyone calmed down. The gunfire tapered off. We finished our tea and got ready to leave. I gave Abdul Rashid, the commander, a postcard. Prairie grain elevators. He stuck it on the wall next to his photograph of Massoud.
    Another pleasure of reporting from Afghanistan — one that I think makes war reporting addictive for many journalists — was the reductive simplicity of it. There were only three things I recall worrying about most days. The first was staying safe, or at least not getting killed. I worried about it, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I didn’t want to stay away from the front lines, and once there danger could erupt so unexpectedly that there was little sense planning to avoid it. A firefight might break out. American bombers could appear overhead. There might be a moment or two of terror, but when it was over there was only deep, enveloping relief. And you’d be back again the next day. Sickness was another matter. You could at least try to avoid that by boiling or purifying your water. But usually you were too tired or careless or worried about giving offence to bother. And it would inevitably get you anyway.
    I also put more time and effort than you might imagine into finding food. Typically, the Northern Alliance provided flatbread and tea in the morning. I’d usually be miles away by midday and ate nothing. At night there would be rice, usually fortified with beans, sometimes with meat. This meant that there were mornings when, instead of interviewing a local warlord about troop movements from another section of the front, I’d be in the market shopping for carrots. Another journalist had found or made a rough stove that he heated with diesel fuel. Thick, toxic smoke bellowed out when we lit it, but it could boil water and therefore cook the soup we made by dumping everything we could find at the market into the pot. I also paid one of the boys who hung around the compound to scrounge for me. One morning he found eggs. I wanted to kiss him.
    Finally, there was the journalism — writing a story to send back to the newspaper. I list this last for a reason. Writing was what I did when everything else was taken care of. It would be late at night. Any danger I might have dealt with earlier in the day was past. I would sit outside, or in my Red Crescent Society tent, or in one of the buildings where I eventually secured a place on the floor to sleep, and I would squint at my notes by candlelight and type on the knockoff laptop