Nacima and her husband had been driven from their home by the U.S.-led war on the Taliban into an Iranian refugee camp near the Afghanistan border in the town of Zabol. They were the only members of Zubaida’s family who lived there, but Nacima’s hometown of Farah was so remote that it was actually easier to communicate with someone inside the camp than in Farah. Zabol is enough of a city to have some small municipal services and a few telephone lines that functioned sporadically amid the ebb and flow of insurgent combat. The town is located alongside the ancient caravan roads winding through the region and only about a third of its residents have running water or electricity, and farming and grazing are difficult to sustain there because of the lack of available water. The presence of huge rock surfaces on the ground prevent farming and drilling, but at least the camp was relatively safe from military battles. Existence for the refugees there was as bare bones as it can get. In the month of December, 2002, Peter and Rebecca used a telephone number that Mohammed Hasan had given Zubaida during their first telephone call, reaching Nacima inside the camp through indirect means.
