Flying over Kabul

I wake up and the cabin is dark. Everybody seems to be sleeping. I am flying back to London from Sydney after calling on Bangkok. I look at the screen and I can see that we are roughly above the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I look out of the window. There is a full moon and no clouds. Below I can see the barren, mountainous terrain bathed in an eerie, silvery, slanting moonlight. There is no sign of life. We are flying over an alien planet. I am hypnotized. I glance at the screen, and the flight path suggests we are going to fly over Kabul.

Sure enough, the mountains give way to an endless plain. The first scattered signs of human habitation begin to show. A few dim lights here, and what seems to be a dirt road there.

After a while, here is Kabul itself. It looks deceptively peaceful in the night. I shudder as I see what looks like a brightly lit military compound. TV news video clips of death spring to my mind instantly. Down there is where it all happened. A minute later, I am overflying the outskirts of the city: an expanse of a million minute dim lights from the houses where ordinary Afghans live, die, kill.

A few minutes go by. Kabul is gone like a dream. Now the terrible, bleak, snow-capped mountains of this unforgiving country fill the view.

I look around me. Passengers sleeping or trying to or watching a movie. Down the aisle, two flight assistants are killing time chatting the night away. I think I will try and get some sleep myself.