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NEWSWEEK.COM My visit earlier this month to the site of the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, in northern Germany, was nothing less than surreal. At this very place during the final months of World War II, over 50,000 prisoners, most of them Jews, died of typhus, extreme malnutrition and other virulent diseases. And now, on…
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The car bomb in Baghdad killed Ammar Al Shahbander in what has become an all too common occurrence of violence in Iraq. I first met Ammar in the late nineteen-nineties in London, Saddam Hussein then governed Iraq, and Ammar was a member of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group of exiles fighting to free…
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Jogging on the streets and up the hills of the Afghan capital was not something I wanted to do – not least because I dislike running, but it also wasn’t culturally appropriate. Getting fit proved a challenge for me in Kabul.  I found it was difficult to be active and difficult to eat healthily and…
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It’s a very odd experience being interviewed instead of conducting the interview, but I have enjoyed them all so far. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was surprised that a seasoned journalist who had interviewed me was fascinated by the life I had in Kabul. Although the reason I wrote the book was I…
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horripilation \haw-rip-uh-LEY-shuhn, ho-\ noun 1. a bristling of the hair on the skin from cold, fear, etc.; goose flesh. This is a word everyone should be familiar with!

Until now I have shunned the spotlight.  The idea of public speaking has long seemed to me quite possibly the worst thing that could happen to a person, a fear shared by so many of us. Hiding behind the printed word has been my cover.   So I had to channel my inner Angelina Jolie(…
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