At one point during the evening, the tribal leaders came and had a meeting in my room. They just sat on the floor and talked, but they brought me back the little silver cup I’d had in the first house. And they poured me several cups of that chai tea they drink and, I think, grow on a small scale up here. The ceremony included sweet candy, which you eat while you drink your tea. And that tasted great after my enforced diet of very, very dry baked flat bread.

Gulab stayed with me and was cheerful as ever, but he either could not or would not answer questions about his father and his immediate plans. I think the tribal leaders felt it was better for me not to know — classified, Pashtun-style, FYO and all that. The work of the elder was information provided on a need-to-know basis only. I was getting used to operating outside the loop, everyone’s freakin’ loop, that is.

Gulab spent much of the evening trying to explain to me the complex threads that hold together the Pashtun tribes and al Qaeda, still working in conjunction with the Taliban army. The United States had been busy trying to clear all of them the hell out of Afghanistan for four years but with only limited success.

The jihadists seem to have some kind of hammerlock on tribal loyalties, using a whole spectrum of Mafia-style tactics, sometimes with gifts, sometimes with money, sometimes promising protection, sometimes with outright threats. The truth is, however, neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban could function without the cooperation of the Pashtun villages.

And often, deep within the communities, there are old family ties and young men who sympathize with the warlike mentality of the Taliban and al Qaeda chiefs. Kids barely out of grade school — joke, they don’t have grade schools up here — are drawn toward the romantic cutthroats who have declared they’ll fight the American army until there is no one left.

I guess there’s something very alluring about that to some kids. You can see these potential Taliban recruits in any of the villages. I’ve seen dozens of them, too young to have that much hate and murder in their eyes and hearts. Christ, one of the little bastards had sat on my bed urging eight armed men to torture me. Nice. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

But there is another side to this. Sabray was obviously governed wisely by Gulab’s father. And there was a sense of law and order and discipline in an essentially lawless land. Al Qaeda effectively owns great swaths of land in Kunar Province, which had now been my home for the better part of three months. And this is mostly because of the terrain.

I mean, how the hell do you impose national government on a place like this? With no roads, no electricity, no mail, little communication, where the principal industry is goats’ milk and opium, the main water company is a mountain stream, and all freight is moved by mule cart, including the opium. You’re whistling Dixie. It’s never going to happen.

Al Qaeda are running around in broad daylight, mostly doing what the heck they want, until we show up and chase the little pricks back over the border to Pakistan. Where they stay. For about ten minutes, before launching their next foray into these tribal mountains, which their ancestors have ruled for centuries.

These days there are less gifts and a lot more fear. The Taliban is a ruthless outfit, with instincts about killing their enemies which have barely changed in two thousand years. They should somehow by now have frightened the bejesus out of my buddy Gulab and his father, but they had not succeeded, so far as I could see. There’s just something unbreakable about them all, a grim determination to follow the ancient laws of the Pashtuns — laws which may yet prove too strong even for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

But from where I was sitting, in the smoky main room of one of Sabray’s high houses, talking to the village cop, that’s not the way the tide was running. And until the United States decides to wield a very large stick up here in support of the elected government of the people, in Kabul, I’m not looking for any serious change real soon. The enemy is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve victory, terrorizing its own people, if necessary, and resorting to barbaric practices against its enemy, including decapitating people or butchering them.

We are not allowed to fight them on those terms. And neither would we wish to. However, we could fight in a much more ruthless manner, stop worrying if everyone still loved us. If we did that, we’d probably win in both Afghanistan and Iraq in about a week.

But we’re not allowed to do that. And I guess we’d better start getting used to the consequences and permit the American liberals to squeak and squeal us to ultimate defeat. I believe that’s what it’s called when you pack up and go home, when a war fought under your own “civilized” terms is unwinnable.

We’re tougher, better trained, better organized, better armed, with access to weapons which cannot be resisted. The U.S. Armed Forces represent the greatest fighting force this world has ever seen, and we keep getting our butts kicked by a bunch of illegal thugs who ought to be eliminated.

Look at me, right now in my story. Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: if you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.

Because that’s what happens. In all wars, down all the years of history. Terrible injustices, the killing of people who did not deserve to die. That’s what war is. And if you can’t cope with it, don’t do it.

Meantime, I was stuck in the house waiting for the old man to show up, when he was already miles away, walking through the mountains, the thirty or so miles to Asadabad. Once I wandered outside when no one was looking, and I tried to find him. But he seemed to have gone missing. Even then I never dreamed that little old guy was walking to Asadabad by himself.

I couldn’t really tell, but I sensed something was making my guys jumpy. And about ten or eleven o’clock that night, we moved. They had just brought me fresh water and bread, which I consumed gratefully, and then I was instructed to pack up and leave. By this time my leg was a little better, even though it hurt, and with some assistance I was able to walk.

We made our way in the dark down to a different house and stepped off the trail directly onto the roof. We had some kind of a sheet, and the three of us laid down close together for warmth. It was very, very cold, but I guess they felt there was some danger if I’d remained in my old spot. Maybe they had suspicion of someone in the village, worry that someone had tipped off the Taliban as to my precise whereabouts. But whatever, these guys were taking no chances. If Taliban gunmen burst into my old house, they would not find me.

I was up here on the freakin’ roof, huddled with Gulab and his buddy, freezing to death but safe. And once more I was amazed by the silence, that mountain silence. There was not one single sound in the entire village of Sabray, and for a Westerner that’s really hard to imagine.

Gulab and his pal made no sound. I could scarcely hear them breathing. Whenever we did anything, they were always telling me shhhhh, when I had thought I was being silent as the grave. It’s another world up here, so quiet it defies the logic of Western ears. Maybe that’s why no one has ever conquered these high lands of the Afghan tribesmen.

I slept on and off through the night, up there on the roof. Once I dared to change position, and you’d have thought I’d set off a fire alarm from the reaction of my new friends. “Shhhhh, Dr. Marcus...Quiet.” It just showed how jumpy they were, how nervous of the hushed killers of the Taliban army.