Long years after that day, the Afghan guerrillas I came to know as friends, on a mountain near the siege of Kandahar, talked for hours about Indian films and their favourite Bollywood movie stars. Indian actors are the greatest in the world, one of them said once, because Indian people know how to shout with their eyes. That back-street fried-foods cook stared at me, with shouting eyes, and stopped me as surely as if he’d pushed a hand into my chest. I couldn’t move. In my own eyes, there were words—I’m sorry, I’m sorry that you have to do this work, I’m sorry that your world, your life, is so hot and dark and unremembered, I’m sorry that I’m intruding