Free It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario

prospect of meeting a Talib, I now knew the rules. By the time Mr. Faiz called me in, my nervousness had disappeared.
    He was a burly press minister no more than twenty-eight years old, wearing the customary turban and beard. He welcomed me to his country. Our words ricocheted off the twenty-foot-high ceiling. Intricate patterns danced on the tattered carpet beneath our feet. I thought of the men and women who were shot and stoned to death for adultery and murder in the soccer stadiums across Afghanistan on Fridays.
    “Thank you,” I said, eyes lowered. “It is an honor to have the opportunity to come here. To see Afghanistan with my own eyes. I am doing a story on the effect of twenty years of war on Afghanistan.”
    I did not mention that I had already spent almost a week in the provinces of Ghazni, Logar, and Wardak and that I had spent several nights in the homes of warm, generous Afghans who all reinforced my belief that Afghanistan was much more than a terrorist state governed by unruly, women-hating Taliban, as much of the media portrayed it.
    “Your country is beautiful, Mr. Faiz. I am grateful you approved my visa.”
    Through an interpreter, Mr. Faiz and I discussed what I was interested in seeing in Kabul. He showered me with questions about my background and intentions, each one eliciting a purposeful response from me. I thought I had won him over.
    “I want you to move from where you are staying at the Associated Press house,” he said, “to the Intercontinental Hotel.”
     • • • 
    T HE INFAMOUS I NTERCONTINENTAL was where most foreign correspondents met their dreaded fate: isolation and scrutiny by loitering and watchful Talibs who gathered in front of the hotel. High on a hill overlooking the city, the Intercontinental was the one hotel still functioning in the city, and the Foreign Ministry racked up large sums of money from the few foreigners, many of them journalists, who passed through Kabul and were sent there.
    The lights flickered and the lobby remained dark most of the time. The elevator did not run during the day. A chipped enamel plaque announced the directions to the pool and the spa—a harsh joke for those who remembered a time when visitors could actually wear bathing suits. Stores sat eternally locked in the lobby, their interiors lined with dust. Half the hotel had been destroyed by repeated rocket attacks during fighting between mujahideen factions, leaving one side partially collapsed, though no one paid attention to the rubble. Only the bookstore and a restaurant stayed open to serve the few guests. There wasn’t a single other guest while I was there.
    I browsed the bookstore and found a tattered 1970s edition of Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream , George Orwell’s Penguin Classics, inaccurate histories of Afghanistan, and glowing chronicles of the Taliban movement. There were a couple of discarded books from departing guests in German, French, Italian, and Russian, along with a few English-Urdu and “Learn Dari in a Day” handbooks for ambitious journalists who thought they might actually get that much access to local Afghans without a guide. Later the same bookseller grew confident with me and offered up an entire selection of books banned by the Taliban—his secret stash.
    I returned to my room, disheartened by the prospect of reading as my sole option to pass the time until I fell sleep. Everything was silent. I took off my clothes and stood naked on the balcony of my lonely room, under the stars. A woman. Naked. Outside. Under the Taliban. Definitely grounds for a public execution at the soccer stadium on a Friday. But I couldn’t resist. The air was chilly. We were hours deep into the public curfew across the city, and people were at home, asleep, dreaming of or dreading sunrise.
    I crawled into bed and stared at my meager collection of books.
     • • • 
    O VER THE NEXT WEEK I managed to visit a women’s hospital and a neighborhood bombed out by