The Taliban Check Point. A short story
PROLOUGE The Checkpoint In a searing summer, when the heat melted the asphalt, the smell of it hung in the air. A line of trucks and buses and passenger cars inched along, waiting to pass the Taliban checkpoint. A group of young boys ran alongside the moving traffic, tapping on windows — some offering bottled water, others chewing gum and maswak toothbrushes. A tall man with a long beard and long black hair resting uncombed on his shoulders, half-naked, wrapped only in the Taliban banner, ran up and down the line, tearing at his own hair, his face bloody, the blood dripping down and staining the white banner red. He had been fine a few days before. He was the commander of this checkpoint. Later, one of his mujahideen brothers described the story this way: The road between Kabul and Kandahar ran straight through Maidan Wardak, and on that stretch stood a checkpoint that had been there long enough to look like it had grown out of the ground — half mud...