Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything; height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.

To me writing was not a career but a necessity. And so it remains, though I am now, technically, a professional writer. The strength of this inborn desire to write has always baffled me. It is understandable that the really gifted should feel an overwhelming urge to use their gift; but a strong urge with only a slight gift seems almost a genetic mistake.

There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country - the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life.

apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud left over from chemical warfare.

Sunnis consider Shias a pack of unwholesome fanatics and Shias consider Sunnis a gang of lukewarm no-goods - there's nothing like religion for spreading brotherly love!

The more I see of life in these 'undeveloped countries' and of the methods adopted to 'improve' them, the more depressed I become. It seems criminal that the backwardness of a country like Afghanistan should be used as an excuse for America and Russia to have a tug-of-war for possession.

I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like; I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them.