We were knee-deep in freezing snow, walking over the Anjoman Pass at the end of October. It had been a three-hour hike out of the Panjshir Valley, and my colleagues and our mujahideen escorts feared death from exposure if we didn't reach the Northern Alliance base by nightfall.
One of the Afghans who helped us over the pass suddenly shouted "Af-ghan-istan Khar-kos". The imprecation bounced across the mountain walls and back to us " ... kharkos, kharkos, kharkos".
I knew the word could only be an expletive. I shouted it back and the mujahideen, some of whom wore sandals or running shoes without socks in the snow, exploded in laughter. Later I learned that "kharkos" refers to a female donkey's sexual organs and is the rudest word in the Dari language.
It was a rare moment of camaraderie in a country synonymous with hardship and tragedy. As I was leaving Afghanistan via Dushanbe, I crossed paths with Johanne Sutton from Radio France Internationale.
She was just arriving, and looked forward to her journey into Afghanistan with enthusiasm. Johanne, Pierre Billaud and Volker Handolik, a German free-lancer, were killed on November 11th. Riding on a Northern Alliance tank towards Taloqan, they were ambushed by the Taliban.
Pierre took the place of a radio reporter in the small group I travelled with, and I'd overheard their satellite telephone conversations about flea-spray and sleeping bags. When I ran into some of the same colleagues in the Israeli-occupied territories this month, they were a sombre and careful lot, still grieving for Jo and Pierre.
The word that recurred most often in interviews with Afghans was "cruel". The Taliban were cruel, the people in the next village were cruel, one's own relatives were cruel.
No wonder they regarded any kind of turmoil with apprehension. In the 1990s, Afghan warlords - some of them now back in power - specialised in barbaric executions: driving tanks over prisoners; locking them in freight containers in the desert; throwing them in wells and then finishing them off with hand grenades.
One militia leader, who now lives under an assumed name in Britain, kept a "human dog" - a former enemy whom he kept starved in a pit, tossing bits of human flesh to keep him alive.
High in the Hindu Kush mountains, I saw children duck when a friend took out a pocket camera to photograph them. They had never seen a camera and assumed it was a weapon. In Khoja Bahuddin, where the Northern Alliance had its military headquarters, a female colleague tried to talk to a woman wearing a burqa.
The tent-like form squatted on the ground, put its arms over its head and cowered, as if to ward off a beating.
In a country where a third of the population lives on the verge of starvation and the only sustenance is foreign aid, Westerners are seen first and foremost as a source of cash.
The old man guarding the girls' school at Golbahar sent me away to seek written permission for a visit. By chance, I met the Northern Alliance's "education minister" the same day. But I decided not to return after the interpreter told me that female teachers began arguing over the money I might give them as soon as I entered their roofless classroom. I had a similar experience in the Golbahar souk, where a pretty little girl with a green headscarf followed me around for half an hour, smiling constantly.
As I climbed into the jeep to leave, she rubbed thumb and index finger together in a gesture I will always associate with Afghanistan.
After the fall of Kabul, I read an interview with a construction worker who had been forced to leave his home to refurbish Mullah Omar's residence in Kandahar.
The Kabuli builder could not believe that such an uncouth peasant had become the most powerful man in Afghanistan.
Mullah Omar treated his wives badly and his flock of children wore rags. But he spent hours tenderly brushing the dairy cows he kept in an air-conditioned stable.
The Afghan interpreters I worked with were memorable characters. Orush had taught himself English, and it took time to decipher his translations.
When he referred to "the United Nations' eruption in Afghanistan", he meant "the US interv ention in Afghanistan". He spent hours in the jeep doing sums on a pocket calculator before presenting me with outrageous bills for tea and petrol.
Perhaps the departure of the Taliban has brought some happiness to Hamid, the interpreter who replaced Orush. Although he was young, refined and intelligent, Hamid was one of the gloomiest characters I ever me. A refugee from Kabul who was desperately trying to emigrate to Europe, his enthusiasm for the high-paying interpreter's job seemed to wane daily.
Everything was difficult; nothing was possible. There was no hope for Afghanistan, he repeatedly told me.
Afghanistan kharkos.