Digital extra

06/08/2002

The plane ride begins with a prayer.

I cannot understand the words, chanted over the sound system of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 718, as the plane taxis onto the darkened runway of New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, but I agree with the general sentiment:

Please God, get us there safely.

The well-worn 747 jumbo jet is filled with Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans on their way to visit family. Women doze on shabby seats, their heads and mouths shrouded in black. Men in polo shirts read golf scores in New York newspapers, next to older men wearing black-and-white checked turbans and fingering prayer beads.

I am flying to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, on my way to neighboring Afghanistan.

As the plane soars over the Atlantic Ocean, a woman sitting a few rows ahead motions for my attention. Razia Kundi asks if she can switch places because she's not feeling well and wants to lie down in the two empty seats next to me. I gladly accept, happy to have made a friend.

Kundi assumes, like most people I meet on the flight, that I am traveling only as far as England. I tell her I'm on my way to Pakistan on assignment.

"This is your first time?" she asks. "Be very, very careful. We are doing our best to make peace there, but the bearded ones are ruining it."

A graduate of the University of California-Berkeley, Kundi lives in Islamabad with her husband, a lawyer. She offers me dinner and a place to stay. Thanking her for her kindness, I tell her I already have hotel reservations. Kundi looks concerned. She gives me her phone number and address. "Call me if you need to," she says.

It's nearly midnight, 18 hours after the plane left New York, when we start our descent into Islamabad. City lights peak dimly through the darkness below, as the plane touches down, three hours behind schedule.

We file onto the tarmac and hit a wall of humidity. Two soldiers -- wearing red berets, blue shirts and gray pants and holding rifles -- scan the stiff-legged passengers heading to the terminal.

The first stop is customs. Families from my flight load their luggage through what appears to be an x-ray scanner. Kundi has already passed through the security check.

I pick up my three packs from the machine, haul them through large metal doors, and push into a sea of people. It's chaos. People clamor against metal barricades like fans at a rock concert.

Two young men with white tunics, black mustaches and bloodshot eyes, approach me. "Hello, Michael," one of them says, sticking out his hand. Confused, I shake it.

My head is numb from the long flight. Is this my ride? Wait, how does this person know my name?

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a lanky man in a navy suit waving his arms. He's holding a sign, with my name written in English in thick black marker.

I look up at the man in the tunic and let go of his hand.

Now, the man in the navy suit is yelling and waving his arms. "This way, Mr. Michael, this way." He motions for me to walk around the metal barricades. He's wearing a name tag that says Marriott -- my hotel.

I have to jog to keep up with this slight man, who is lugging my 80-pound sack through the parking lot. We climb into a Toyota minivan and he cranks the diesel motor. He reaches into a cooler in the front seat, pulls out a bottle of soda and pops off the cap. His hand is shaking.

"Pepsi?"

We drive through a gate and onto a dark, steamy highway. A brightly lit sign in English reads: Welcome to Islamabad.

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

The Marriott Islamabad caters to Western tastes. They turn down the bed, deliver fresh fruit to the room and post a soldier with a rifle by the pool.

I decide against a swim and spend the day arranging for a flight to Kabul on the United Nations Humanitarian Air Services.

Islamabad is hot and tense. My driver and guide, employees at the Afghan Embassy, travel past bank buildings, government offices and tree-lined streets. It appears to be a rather pleasant city, except for the graffiti outside a school, which reads: "Kill All Jews," and the soldiers guarding the intersections.

In the evening, I have dinner with Adela Gailani, whose daughter Fatima lives on Providence's East Side. Gailani lives in the exclusive Margalla Hills section of Islamabad.

I take a stroll after dinner with Myriam Gailani, Fatima's sister, and staff from the house, four older men carrying sticks. We pass the brightly lit Faisal Mosque, one of the world's largest. It was financed by Saudi Arabia, and holds tens of thousands of worshipers. A few doors down, Myriam points out the home of the scientist who developed Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

A foul odor bubbles from the sewer grates. Dogs cry out from their hidings in a nearby wooded area. Myriam tells me they are hyenas.

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

The flight to Kabul is filled almost entirely with Western journalists and humanitarian workers. It takes about 45 minutes and costs $600 one way.

I sit next to Ibrahim Parvanta, a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. Parvanta wants the window seat so his video camera can record the approach to his homeland, which he hasn't seen in more than 20 years. Since leaving Afghanistan, Parvanta raised a family and obtained an American passport.

"This feels strange," he says. "It's like going to your house and having to ask someone for the key."

The U.N. jet lifts off the runway and flies over Pakistan. Parvanta, 48, points his camera out the window.

He was in graduate school at the University of Maine when his father disappeared from Kabul in the late 1970s. The communist police took the elder Parvanta, a former cabinet minister, from his home one night. No one ever saw him again.

"I wanted to come back and fight," Parvanta says. "But I had a new baby, and my family begged me to stay put." He's returning now to research malnutrition issues for UNICEF.

Below us, the brown deserts of Pakistan give way to snowy peaks, stretching in every direction: Afghanistan.

We thread an opening in the mountains, veering so low it seems as if the wings might graze the jagged peaks. Kabul appears in the distance. The plane rocks gently with turbulence. The captain advises us to prepare for landing.

Parvanta never stops filming.

-- Michael Corkery