This idea was shamelessly stolen from Afghanistanica.
“What little I knew about the Border and the Pass was a smattering of romantic fact so closely mixed with romantic fiction that it would be difficult to disentangle the two. But that is inevitably true of information about the Border, even when it has become familiar. What is true is often so far-fetched and incredible that it picks up by a sort of magnetism a further encrustation of fiction, and the two are so indistinguishable that you can never presume to be sure just where one leaves off and the other begins. It is simplest to believe everything or nothing, and one usually alternates between the two choices.”
Context: Rosanne Klass, describing her first journey through the Khyber Pass and the border regions of Pakistan, now called the Northwest Frontier Province—in “the 1950s.” I haven’t been able to find the precise year she arrived in Kabul, though I know it was “around” the rather tender age of 20, and I’ve kicked myself several times over the last few days for not finding out when I met her earlier this week. Thankfully, her written storytelling is just as charming and engaging as her verbal storytelling, and I am so far greatly enjoying Land of the High Flags. (Fun insider note: Ms. Klass said she hates the title, and wanted it to simply be the subtitle: “Afghanistan When the Going Was Good,” but her publisher overrode her wishes; her friends sided with her publisher.)
Regardless, what was true then remains true now, which is why I tend to automatically disbelieve everything I read about the Waziristan War, and why my desire to travel these regions seems to grow stronger by the day, irrespective of the relative safety of such a journey.
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