A Vacation from Ambushing People: Inside a Peshawar Refugee Camp During the Bombing of Afghanistan

In late 2001, as American bombs rain down on Taliban positions across the Afghan border, Hank Cooper boards a flight to Peshawar, Pakistan — the same week New York Times reporter Daniel Pearl departs on the same route to chase a very different story. While Pearl's assignment ends in a kidnapping and execution that shocks the world, Hank is welcomed into a refugee camp built in the shadow of a bombing-run airport, where he lives alongside a General's family — and, on occasion, a Taliban fighter home on leave. What begins as an act of extraordinary hospitality — a massage, shared hashish, photographs traded among new friends — turns into a fight for survival when dysentery and a raging fever nearly finish what the war never could. A gripping true account of trust, danger, and the strange kindness found in the middle of a warzone.