Down and Out With Mahboob Shah and His People: There Are No Foreigners Here

KABUL -Here's a photo of some the people I was hanging out with yesterday. And here's the sort of story everyone else in the world has been reading about this city. Apparently, it's "as dangerous as Baghdad at its worst."

There are more than four million people in Kabul - nobody knows for sure. I've been rambling around the backstreets for several days now, buying apples and bananas at the bazaars, getting invited in for tea in mud houses and collapsed buildings and old tarp-and-canvas hovels, and filling up my notebooks.

The poverty here is absolutely savage. But for a foreigner like me, it's much safer to be visiting among the poor of this city than it is to be rolling around in a swish Toyota in the swanker parts of town, with armed guards.

Funny, that. Works the same way, all over the world.