From a letter from a few years back.......MyTaliban friend reminded me of Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's tales--with his teasing.....

We arrived late on a windy night in a Vietnam War vintage C-130 turboprop. The temperature in Kandahar was 15 degrees celsius, and in clear visibility the landing was without incident as our pilot put the old workhorse down safely onto gravelly pavement, stirring up a swirl of dust. We planned to only stay briefly--just to unload our cargo and proceed immediately back to U-Tapao Airport in Thailand.  The NGO supervisor had asked me to join him on his delivery run. We would be bringing in building supplies for schools and hospitals and "such" I was told. 

I left the plane and followed my party into a Quonset hut where we sat down to eat beans and rice and flat bread with a couple of workers and a few of the other NGO's. Three men wearing black turbans joined us, and we all ate for the better part of an hour enjoying our meal and exchanging stories. The three guys in black turbans (interestingly enough) were Taliban. They left us shortly and bade goodbye, the last one, named Omar, lingering back and advising me to "not walk by the van parked down the road on the right." He winked with a smile, patting my back saying, "Allah Akbar."

Our plane would not be ready for departure until the next afternoon, so we slept in the hut, awaking the next morning to coffee and cornflakes. After breakfast we strolled around the airbase for a couple of hours before taking a pickup truck through town. Omar drove with me up front on the passenger's seat beside him while the others sat in the back on the bed of the truck.

As we rounded a turn, Omar pointed out a little boy alongside the road and said, "Only eleven years!  He loves to fight, he loves to fight more than anything. We let him carry a Kalashnikov and he follows us into the hills. He is a good Muslim boy. His mother and father were killed in the war. His father was a good fighter. He wants to be like his father. I think he has already killed more men than his father. He doesn't like school. He just likes to fight."  With that he smiled at me, patted me on the back again and said, "But I will tell him not to kill you." My Pashtun friend could not stop from laughing.

We drove around until late in the afternoon. I must have worn a look of hesitancy the entire day and Omar seemed to notice, because he would pause from time to time and comment on my fears. Once, in a town square, he stopped the truck and pointed to a throng of onlookers and remarked, "Don't worry about these people (men in black turbans standing in front of a local market). Since you are a good Muslim you need not worry. They will not bother a good Muslim. You are a good Muslim aren't you?" He would smile after such comments.

We toured the busy town (large, dusty, bleak and crowded with bearded men in traditional garb, the women in their black chadri covering their entire body, their faces heavily veiled) before circling back to catch our return flight to Thailand. Near the airport we stopped at a small road-side shop and Omar hollered out, "Faruk!" The same little eleven-year-old who Omar spoke of earlier peered out shyly from a burlap flap. Omar called out something in Pashto to him. The boy smiled back and nodded to Omar. We drove on.

We made it back to the airport, said farewell to our friends and hurried to make our flight back to Thailand. I stopped momentarily and looked back at Omar. 

"What did you say to the little boy?" I asked.

"Oh, I asked him not to kill you. He agreed not to, but would like for you to bring him a pack of cigarettes next time--he likes Marlboro Reds in the box."  Omar smiled at me. "Allah Akbar," he said.

"Allah Akbar," I replied back. "Shalom," I  added with a smile.

He drew back and laughed and laughed. "Shalom" he nodded.

I turned and headed towards the old plane, its props whirring in the wind.

We arrived back at U-Tapao in the wee hours.

Jeab greeted me with a smile.

Whew!  :-)

From Pattaya,

Dan(ny)