Waiting Games

Islamabad, Pakistan My first stop is the Afghan embassy where I, along with 800 other journalists, submit visa application forms for Kabul. We're told to check back in two weeks--i.e., forget about it. The only reason the Taliban might let hordes of journalists in is to use them as human shields against a U.S. attack. An ominous thought.

Peshawar On the road down from the Khyber Pass, TIME photographer John Stanmeyer jumps out of our car to take pictures of Pakistani soldiers marching to an old British fort on a craggy hilltop. A narrow-faced man from Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) happens to drive by in a pickup truck and accuses Stanmeyer of being a spy. The two of us are quickly taken to the fort for interrogation. An army officer intercedes and gains our release two hours later; he gestures apologetically at the ISI man, who is fuming over our good luck. The officer cautions: "You know, this intelligence man is quite ignorant--but dangerous. He could have taken you away and done great harm to you. Nobody would have known until it was too late."

Tribal Territory Since we're not allowed to reach the Afghan border, we decide to head north to Shakot, a village that makes guns--anything from a Kalashnikov AK-47 ($120) to Russian pistols ($80). They also sell a mind-sizzling hashish, and puff away while tooling the guns. "If it's complicated work, the hashish makes it easier," grins one gunsmith between tokes. He sells a lot of AK-47s to Afghans and local Pakistanis. "A gun is a man's jewelry," he relates, and assures us that the tribesmen on the Pakistani side--to a man--will join their Taliban brothers if America dares to attack.

That night, I set out to check my e-mails in Peshawar's old bazaar. The only Internet place is up a dark, winding stairway, past a group of Koranic students weaving mats for the wall of a mosque. At the Internet shop, my driver Raza unabashedly dashes from machine to machine, staring wide-eyed. "Mr. Tim," he pleads, "can you give me computer lesson?" Impressed by his new enthusiasm for technology, I agree. Then I glance over at the other Net aficionados. They're teenagers, wearing baggy salwar kameez outfits and prayer caps, and all of them are staring at porn sites.

Back in Peshawar Still no journalists are allowed up the Khyber Pass. I stroll through the old bazaar, past the street of songbirds and goldsmiths, and end up at a mosque where I'm invited inside to talk to the Imam. He assures me that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were carried out by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. But, I protest, the hijackers were mainly Saudis. "Ah," he says triumphantly. "How can you explain that all 4,000 Israelis working at the World Trade Center that morning were mysteriously absent from work?" I try explaining that the idea is ludicrous, that there weren't 4,000 Israelis employed at the World Trade Center, and that many Jews died along with Muslims and Christians. But this incendiary piece of misinformation has been circulated in the mosques and Urdu newspapers for days, steeling the local resolve to defend bin Laden as Islam's hero. One earnest youth tells me that when he joins the jihad against America, he'll rim his eyes with kohl so that the maidens in martyr's paradise will find him more handsome. This nutty zealousness rattles me; I start telling people in the bazaar that I'm a Spanish national.

Quetta Miraculously, I get permission to travel to Chaman, the last Pakistani outpost before Afghanistan. The border is no more than a chain. Rafiq Ahmed, a mustached Pakistani youth in his mid-twenties, hovers uncertainly, unsure whether he wants to cross into Afghanistan. "My elder brother left home to join the Taliban," Rafiq says. "I must find him and bring him back home before he is killed." But Rafiq has fears about his quest. He's worried he'll be beaten by the Taliban for not having a beard, or dragooned into fighting for them. Swallowing hard, he finally crosses.

I ask a border guard if he would arrest bin Laden if he tried to slip into Pakistan. "Of course," he laughed. "It would be a great service. That way, there would be no fighting between America and the Afghans." On the road back to Quetta, we pass a Koranic school where kids have constructed a row of toy antiaircraft guns to take shots at imaginary U.S. warplanes flying out of the desert sunset. I hope the border guard gets lucky: it might allow those schoolkids to grow up without training their sights on real U.S. fighter jets.