Then, in 1994, the residents of Kabul heard a rumor from the south. It seemed that a group of young men—Islamic students, or taliban—had risen up in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, which was then proverbial for its lawlessness. In the name of Allah the Beneficent, these Taliban, as members of the movement came to be known, had slain, captured, or driven off every criminal. Then they had [red]confiscated all weapons[/red], promising that they themselves would provide protection for the citizens. The streets secured, they applied Islamic law as they saw fit: they banned photographs, education for girls, and music. They demanded that women cover their faces in the street and leave home only in the company of a close male relative. All men found themselves required to grow beards and could be sent to prison for ten days if they shaved. In keeping with the Koran, the Taliban amputated the right hands of thieves. Kandahar was now so safe, it was said, that anyone could leave a bar of gold in the street and it would be there three days later.

We passed the time. I asked how I might go about interviewing a woman, and they said that they could arrange a conversation through a black curtain, but once I pressed them they retreated, and after some discussion they concluded that to speak with any female I would first need to get permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"You know how hard it is to take the weapon from Pashtun people," one Talib had said to me proudly. "Ninety per cent of the Afghan people now live in weapon-free areas."

In the opinion of a Kabuli boy, who resented this strictness—he could not get enough work and was the sole source of money and food for the women in his family—forty per cent of the people support the Taliban now, but only five per cent are true members.

"How can they keep control?" I asked.

"They have Kalashnikovs," he said.

I remember a sallow boy who hated the Taliban and whispered hideous details of punishments he'd witnessed in the stadium at Mazar-i-Sharif: a thief's right hand severed with a scalpel (by a doctor; it took ten minutes); the shooting of murderers. He claimed to have seen about thirty executions over the last two years—not because he had to but only "to see something new." Without music or movies or magazines, one might as well go to watch the punishments. Once he had seen a couple stoned for adultery. "They were in one bed, and Taliban see them. First, judge begin with one stone, then all of the people hit them with stone. They cry—they cry! Very high cry."

"How long did it take?"

"I think for one hour or one and a half hours, maybe two hours." He went on, "It's too bad, in my opinion. I feel the Taliban are wild. Please, I never tell any other foreigner these things. You are my brother. Please, dear brother, you will not tell them what I say? Because they will cut off my head!"

When the Taliban first came to Jalalabad, in September, 1996, they searched house to house, for televisions, videocassettes, and other irreligious items. They used the confiscated televisions for target practice. They required stores to remove labels from shampoo bottles wherever a human face was shown.