Status Updates From The Warlord's Son

[Osama Bin Laden puts in an appearance:] Toward the rear was a new arrival on horseback, this one tall and lanky, almost abnormally high in the saddle. He wore a green camouflage jacket around a white kameez. Salt-and-pepper scraggle of a beard, and the long face everyone knew so well, topped by the white pillbox that he wore in every poster in every bazaar.

A rusting signpost on the edge of town said 'Drug Free Happy Life' in English, the remnant of some long-gone aid organization. On the wall of a small store a faded mural depicted a variety of land mines above a red warning in Pashto. Someone had recently sprayed it with gunfire.

What on earth would Carol once she heard he had reached Afghanistan? He should have called Janine instead, but he was too tired now to do anything but crawl beneath the raspy sheets. Shut everything off and dream of redcoats and tribesmen, of brittle old empires shattering upon the stony floor of deep ravines. Of anything except home and family.