It’s my former translator, Ahmad Zia Masud, now a negotiator for Afghanistan’s hastily formed Ministry of Defense. He calls me often by satellite phone from mountaintops, villages, and caves where he is meeting with resisters to reform—Taliban fighters, independent warlords—who, after decades of war, are reluctant or unwilling to lay down their guns. Sometimes Masud and other negotiators are threatened and forced to retreat. Soldiers then move in, and the hills resound once more with war.

“This is a very dangerous time for my country,” Masud tells me. “Every day I see disaster. The young boys, they know only war, nothing else. What will happen to them? I believe food will come, factories will come, but now the people are suffering. Even if peace comes, so much has died.”

From last October into December, Masud and I worked together day and night in the parched hills and plains of northern Afghanistan, where I was on assignment as a photojournalist for the Washington Post. Masud was in his eighth year of forced exile from his home in Taliban-controlled Kabul, working mostly for Northern Alliance leadership. When hundreds of foreign journalists began descending into Khodja Bahauddin, site of the Northern Alliance’s government headquarters, the foreign ministry assembled an army of translators. Masud, with halting English but well connected, wound up with me.

He is a devout Muslim and father of three; I an unveiled, single Western woman. Neither of us imagined how our minds and lives would mingle—and be forever changed.

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Pashtun are the largest group and have traditionally held most of the political power in the country. Their lifestyle has been mainly nomadic and tribal. The Pashtun are known for their fighting prowess. Pashtun culture is based on Pashtunwali, "a legal and moral code that determines social order and responsibilities." Values such as honor, solidarity, retaliation, and hospitality are held in high regard. Elements of this code are often in opposition to sharia law, the Muslim code of ethics, which the Taliban has attempted to impose. The resulting processes of detribalization and Islamization have led to a weakening of the practice of Pashtunwali.

Tajiks, the second largest group, speak Dari and live mostly sedentary lives as farmers, traders, and government clerks. Not organized by tribes, Tajiks refer to themselves most often by the name of the valley or region they are from. As a community Tajiks tend to be better educated and more modernized. While Tajiks are sometimes referred to as "men of the pen," Pashtun are known as “men of the sword.”

—Marisa Larson