"Lord Roberts-do you know something, Lin, my first teacher, my dear Mackenzie Esquire, always said this thing, Bobs your uncle, all the time, and it became a thing that I also said, to imitate him. Then, one day, he told me that the saying came from him, from Lord Frederick Roberts, because, you see, the man who killed my people in hundreds was so kind to his own soldiers that they called him Uncle Bobs. And they said that if he was in charge, everything would be well-Bobs your uncle. I never said that again, not ever, after he told me that. And something that is very strange-my dear Mackenzie Esquire was the grandson of a man who fought in the army of Lord Roberts. His grandfather and my kinsmen fought each other in the second British war against Afghanistan. That is why Mackenzie Esquire had such fascination for the history of my country and such knowledge about the wars.

And, thanks be to Allah, I did have him as my friend, and my teacher, while men were still alive who bore the scars of fighting the war that killed his grandfather, and killed mine."

He paused again, and we listened to the wind, feeling the first sting of the new snow that it was bringing to us: the shivering wind that began in distant Bamiyan, and dragged the snow and ice and frosty air from every mountain all the way to Kandahar.

"And so Lord Roberts went from Kabul, with a force of ten thousand men, to relieve the siege of Kandahar. Two-thirds of his men were Indian soldiers-and they were good fighting men, those Indian Sepoys. Roberts marched them from Kabul to Kandahar, a distance of three hundred miles, in twenty-two days. Much more than the distance we covered, you and I, from Chaman, on our journey-and you know that took us a month, with good horses, and help from villages along the way.

And they marched, from freezing snow mountains to burning desert, and then, after twenty days of this unbelievable march through hell, they fought a great battle with the army of Prince Ayub Khan, and they defeated him. Roberts saved the British in the city, and from that day, even after he became the field marshal of all the soldiers in the British Empire, he was always known as Roberts of Kandahar."

"Was Prince Ayub killed?"

"No. He escaped. Then the British put his close kinsman Abdul Rahman Khan on the throne of Afghanistan. Abdul Rahman Khan, also an ancestor of mine, ruled the country with such a special wisdom that the British had no real power in Afghanistan. The situation was exactly the same as it was before-before the great soldier and great killer, Bobs your uncle, forced his way through the Khyber Pass to fight the war. But the point of this story, now that we sit here and look at the fires of my burning city, is that Kandahar is the key to Afghanistan. Kabul is the heart, but Kandahar is the soul of this nation, and who rules Kandahar also rules Afghanistan. When the Russians are forced to leave my city, they will lose this war. Not until then."

"I hate it all," I sighed, sure in my own mind that the new war would change nothing: that wars can't really change things. It's peace that makes the deepest cuts, I thought. And I remember thinking it-I remember thinking that it was a clever phrase, and hoping for a chance to work it into our conversation. I remember everything about that day. I remember every word, and all those foolish, vain, unwary thoughts, as if fate had just now slapped my face with them. "I hate it all, and I'm glad we're going home today."

"Who are your friends here?" he asked me. The question surprised me, and I couldn't guess at his intention. Reading my baffled expression, and clearly amused, he asked me again. "Of those you have come to know here, on this mountain, who are your friends?"

"Well, Khaled, obviously, and Nazeer-"

"So, Nazeer is your friend now?"

"Yeah," I laughed. "He's a friend. And I like Ahmed Zadeh. And Mahmoud Melbaaf, the Iranian. And Suleiman is okay, and Jalalaad - he's a wild kid-and Zaher Rasul, the farmer." Khader nodded as I ran through the list, but when he made no comment I felt moved to speak again.

"They're all good men, I think. Everyone here. But those... those are the men I get on with the best. Is that what you mean?"

"What is your favourite task here?" he asked, changing the subject as quickly and unexpectedly as his portly friend Abdul Ghani might've done.

"My favourite... it's crazy, and I never thought I'd ever say this, but I think tending the horses is my favourite job."

He smiled, and the smile bubbled into a laugh. I was sure, somehow, that he was thinking about the night I'd ridden into the camp hanging from the neck of my horse.

"Okay," I grinned, "I'm not the best horseman in the world."

He laughed the harder.

"But I really started to miss them when we got here and you told us to stable the horses down the mountain. It's funny-I sort of got used to them being around, and it's always made me feel good, somehow, going down to see them and brush them and feed them."

"I understand," he murmured, reading my eyes. "Tell me, when the others are praying and you join them-I've seen you sometimes, kneeling behind them and not very close-what words are you saying? Are they prayers?"

"I'm... not really saying anything at all," I replied, frowning.

I lit two more beedies, not for the need of them, but for the distraction they provided, and their little warmth.

"What are you thinking, then, if you're not speaking?" he asked, accepting the second cigarette as he tossed away the butt of the first.

"I couldn't call them prayers. I don't think so. I think about people, mostly. I think about my mother... and my daughter. I think about Abdullah... and Prabaker-I've told you about him, my friend who died. I remember friends, and people I love."

"You think about your mother. What about your father?"

"No."

I said it quickly-too quickly, perhaps-and I felt him watching me closely as the seconds passed.

"Is your father living, Lin?"

"I think so. But I... I can't be sure. And I don't care, one way or the other." "You must care about your father," he declared, looking away again. It seemed such a condescending admonition to me then: he knew nothing about my father or my relationship to him. I was so caught up in resentments, new and old, that I didn't hear the anguish in his voice. I didn't realise, as I do now, that he, too, was an exiled son talking about his own father.

"You're more of a father to me than he is," I said, and although I felt it to be true, and I was opening my heart to him, the words came out sounding sulky and almost spiteful.

"Don't say that!" he snapped, glaring at me. It was the closest he ever came to showing anger in my presence, and I flinched involuntarily at the sudden vehemence. His expression softened at once, and he reached out to put a hand on my shoulder. "What about your dreams? What are you dreaming about here?"

"Dreams?"

"Yes. Tell me about your dreams."

"I'm not having many," I replied, trying hard to recall. "It's weird, you know, but I've had nightmares for a long time-pretty much since the escape from jail. Nightmares about being caught, or fighting to stop them catching me. But since we've been up here, I don't know if it's the thin air, or being so damn tired and cold when I get to sleep, or maybe just worry about the war, but I'm not having those nightmares. Not here. I've had a couple of good dreams, in fact."

"Go on."

I didn't want to go on: the dreams had been about Karla.

"Just... happy dreams, about being in love."

"Good," he murmured, nodding several times, and taking his hand from my shoulder. He seemed satisfied with my reply, but his expression was downcast and almost grim. "I, too, have had dreams here. I dreamed about the Prophet. We Muslims, you know, we are not supposed to tell anyone, if we dream about the Prophet. It is a very good thing, a very wonderful thing, and quite common among the faithful, but we are forbidden to tell what we have dreamed."