I've been having really strange crying jags recently. About every other night, out of the blue, I cry really hard for 4 or 5 seconds,then it goes away. Bizarre. I'm curious what it means.

I haven't been able to write or talk much for the last 10 months about Afghanistan. Even at school (I'm doing a Masters right now) it's like my dirty little secret, which I'm conscious of all the time but only reveal with a furtive reluctance that belies its importance for me.

I wonder at the way I'm operating at two different levels, at the different faces I wear as I try to recapture 'normal.'

I tried to return to Afghanistan at the start of the bombing campaign last year to mount an operation to deter civilian casualties. I thought that if a number of young people from the countries backing the war found a way to enter the country and live with Afghan friends, it would be an unusual enough occurrence to gain some media coverage and generate discussion.

So, as a representative of a ragtag group of five (an American, a Spaniard, an Italian, one other Canadian), I went to Pakistan to consult with the incredible Afghan leaders from whom I had learned so much just a few months earlier.

I found the drastically worsened situation of everyone in the area very difficult to deal with, and wanted more than ever to do something. Everyone I asked very firmly disagreed with the operation I was proposing, however, as they felt that the warring factions would use foreigners in Afghanistan for their own ends.

So that was that. I left for Iran.

I wish I could describe what it was like to have committed mentally and emotionally to entering Afghanistan at that time, because coming back from it has been really hard. I kept trying to cross the border into Herat from Iran, too, until a complete loss of confidence in my worldview left me dazed and collapsed. I've been unable to get completely back inside my skin for months.

I don't think I had a death wish. I wasn't going to Afghanistan to deliberately die to make a point, the way some people imagined for reasons I don't fully understand. But I do know that I didn't care if I did die. There was no melodrama or struggle against the survival instinct - just calm. I don't think I've ever experienced that absolute feeling of indifference before.

Before attempting this project, I flew home to Canada for a week to tell everyone what I was doing and gather resources and contacts. My family, of course, had a really difficult time dealing with my decision.

I couldn't then and still now can't coherently explain why I was doing what I was doing. For a mathematician who prides herself on her clear analysis, I was a mess of murky reasoning and half-formed understanding - as though meaning that I glimpsed through my peripheral vision vanished when I tried to inspect it with trained eyes.

I wasn't particularly optimistic that I would be able to achieve anything, but I had a selfish need to try. I didn't convince anybody in my family that what I was doing was a good idea, but they stood back and let me be. They're wonderful.

For the month or two that I continued trying to enter Afghanistan across the Iranian border, I had long debates with my father over the wisdom of such action. Our discussions always ended in a stalemate -- we were two logicians who couldn't convince one another to budge. The irony is that it was my artist aunt with her circuitous reasoning who jolted me out of my narrow vision. During debates, I have the bad habit of paying close attention just so that I can foresee and block my opponent's arguments. My aunt's mind works in loops and spirals where I expect lines, however, and so as I was listening hard to try and understand where her arguments were leading (to then destroy them) I suddenly popped into her mind, her perspective, and I saw my actions the way she must have been seeing them.

My god, I thought. Sarah is crazy.

I shut up and entered a state of shock (if that feeling of numb fuzzy could clinically be called shock), my normal glib and ready answers scattered at my feet. She talked on, but I wasn't listening anymore.

I guess this moment could be called an epiphany of sorts, and a glimpse into how the understanding of every consciousness is right and perfect and true, all of the time. I didn't say another word about entering Afghanistan from that point onwards. That mute sense of urgency with its inexpressible inarticulate why got shut away somewhere that I haven't been able to touch since.

Funnily, it was the outpouring of grief at 8:45 on September 11th, 2002, (I'm based in the US at the moment) that released something inside me. Unlike Americans at vigils across the nation, however, I was crying at the inhumanity of ceremonial pomp and nationalism that so casually forgets the blood it has spilled.

It's strange being on this side of the border as war machinery rumbles ominously one year after the bombing began in Afghanistan. I find myself struggling with the need to express myself while trying to respect other people's right to their perspective, and my efforts at communicating my feelings and perspective end up being obvious, moralistic, and heavy-handed.

What to do? The stakes are so high. I am amazed again and again at the way war can be an abstract game to so many people. I hate the way that the bombing (endorsed by my government, theoretically perpetrated on my behalf) and killing of thousands of Afghans is swept aside as the world prepares for more state-sponsored violence. And I don't trust myself to be reasonable and objective when talking about it with others.

I have learned so many important lessons (the meaning of prison, suffering, endurance, courage, perseverence, sacrifice) from Afghans and have given back so little. This series of essays was designed to portray the lives of people I met in Pakistan and Afghanistan (except for Afg 2 and Afg 3), but it's turned into my emotional outlet, instead.

You guys should charge for therapy.

I'll get over my psychological baggage, no doubt, and reintegrate into Western society and succeed in my field. I'll learn not to bring up unpleasant topics, and get caught up in sprinting sprinting on my work-wheel like a good little citizen. And slivers of memory, half-formed understanding, and smiling promises to people of a far-off land can quietly drift away, as a soothing lap lap lapping and purring engine carries me onward towards the promised land.

There's nothing wrong with that, is there?

Sarah.