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A Passion for Freedom
| Article
# : |
15302 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1989 |
2,608 Words |
| Author
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Robin Parker
Robin Parker, Life editor of THE WORLD & I, was formerly a
health-care professional. |
"When I tell you to close the curtains, close them!" commanded Afghan resistance leader Gen. Rahmutullah Safi. He knew that smuggling three Americans from Pakistan into Afghanistan to view his mujahideen training camp was dangerous. If his red jeep was searched at the Pakistani checkpoints, Safi hoped that dark-haired, olive-skinned Mary Spencer-Morin and the CBS journalist and cameraman who accompanied her, all attired in the Afghan dress, might pass as his countrymen.
Other foreigners caught in this no-man's land had been cruelly paraded through the streets, accused of being CLA agents, jailed, or deported. Worse, if Safi's jeep was attacked by bandits or stopped by Soviet or Afghan KGB agents, and Safi's pistol wasn't enough, his guests would probably share the fate of other Americans captured in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan--death.
From the back seat of the laboring, overheated vehicle, Mary peeked out and saw the "greenest of green fields and the bluest of blue skies" roll by. Her eyes moved up from the eight-foot-tall reeds, growing in clumps along the road, to the rough, gray, snow-topped mountains. Then, thousands of tents came into view; here near the freedom fighters' training camp, lived the families of new volunteers.
The soldiers awaited inspection in military file, wearing makeshift uniforms of gray drawstring drawers and pajamalike shirts. In the 104-degree heat, the muhajideen insisted on performing maneuvers until many of them passed out. At the camp, Mary learned to make Molotov cocktails from dish soap and pieces of pipe. She examined the captured Kalishnikov machine guns and Safi's prized Arabian stallions.
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