August 31 THE ROAD TO KABUL..VIA JALALABAD Torkham, the border crossing and its very few buildings was packed with people. Shortly before the bus came to the crowds of men, burqas and wheelbarrows transporting all sorts of goods (also the elderly that weren..t able to walk), other people in the bus wanted us to pull up the curtains, so that nobody would see our pasty white faces. Torkham witnesses violence and shootings quite frequently. Smugglers, random armed men, tribesmen, Pashtuns, the heat, the endless waiting hours sometimes bubble up, and seeing westerners passing through occasionally arouses anger. Especially since all officials want us to pass through as quickly as possible, for fear of something happening to us, some locals see it as an insult. So peeking through the yellow curtains we crawled past the ocean of
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