"This house we have built new in the past two years, after our other house was bombed," Abdul Wahed explains. "This area is free as far as the Communist post at Ali Khel, but the planes come and bomb the villages nearly every day. They are trying to drive us all to Pakistan, so no one is left to feed the mujahidin." Rolling up the sleeve of his long shirt, he shows me a deep puckered scar on his upper arm: "I was wounded two years ago and was three months in a hospital in Pakistan. By the grace of God I recovered, and now my brother and I take turns going out to fight."

After dinner Abdul Wahed's wife sits down next to me, adjusts her veil over her shiny dark braids, and pours me another glass of tea. She is happy to talk to me, as it has been a long time since the family has had a female guest. Around me the children prepare for the night. A fluffy gray kitten slumbers under the stove, and for a moment I forget that we are in a land at war.

JUST AFTER DAWN the rumble of distant artillery fire shatters the frosted crystal morning. To my surprise, no one reacts. They have grown used to the sounds of war. But Abdul Wahed's eldest son, a handsome quick-minded boy of about 12, begins drawing on the side of the black metal stove with apiece of chalk: a jet, looking rather like a paper plane, and short dashes representing the bombs it drops.

My escorts take a chance, and we cross the open valley by day. Walking through the wide, flat valley is like walking in a bad dream of a deserted land. At this time of year the land is all gray and brown, except where odd patches of snow lie, and the trees are bare but for a few limp yellow leaves. Large bomb craters pock fields that this year bore no harvest. In deserted villages a few houses stand among heaps of rubble.

I walk with the two men who have been specially detailed to accompany me by Syed Ishaq Gailani, a mujahidin commander who has for several years been a close friend of my family. One of the fighters, Bahram Jan, is perhaps 40, a big man with a commanding voice who used to buy cars in Kabul and sell them in Jaji. He is a font of war stories: These ruins were an Afghan government post till the mujahidin took it last year. Over there, in the field, are three tanks the mujahidin destroyed. And don't step back for that photograph, the area is mined!

His friend Mustafa's manner is quieter, though at 29 he has been a fighter for six years. He is a Tajik from Jalalabad, a city on the road from Kabul to Pakistan. Until he joined the mujahidin, he was a clerk in a government ministry in Kabul.

On this dusty dirt road, one of the main supply routes of the mujahidin, we pass several parties of men coming from distant fronts. They exchange greetings with my companions and stop for a few moments to tell news of Kabul, or Kunduz in the north. Near the battlefields the mujahidin seem relaxed, unconcerned with the rivalries and disunity that plague Afghan parties in exile in Pakistan. Later Bahram Jan will tell me the story of Commander Mohammed Naim, from the nearby village of Ali Khel, who one week before had been severely wounded while leading an attack that had resulted in the capture of 50 Afghan government soldiers. Naim belongs to a different party, but, says Bahram Jan, everyone loves the legendary young hero who began fighting when he did not yet have a beard.

Outside a village, near a bomb crater, we talk to a group of battle-weary men from Kabul. The bombing is on the other side of Ali Khel today, one says stoically, but just two days ago this area was heavily bombed. Round a bend in the middle of the road are the fly-encrusted remains of a camel. "See, they are killing even the animals," says Mustafa angrily, "everything that they see, everything that can feed the mujahidin or carry supplies for us."