Penguin, 2006.
Part war correspondent's memoir, part adventure-travel journal, this is the remarkable story of Terence White's exploits as a frontline photojournalist and the longest-serving foreign correspondent in Kabul.
Clandestinely visiting Afghanistan during the bloody Soviet occupation, Terence befriended the famous mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Masood. He survived the Afghan jihad only to be seriously wounded by mortar shrapnel during factional fighting for Kabul. On 9 September 2001 Masood was assassinated by al-Qaida. The author, who had been expelled by the Taliban, returned to Afghanistan to cover the post 9/11 invasion by the United States - and to find the female surgeon who saved his life.
In doing so Terence White came to understand his own infatuation with 'hot steel' and learned to abandon his Afghan alter-ego for the sake of his family.