April 17, 2009 | Pulitzer Center
Donate Now Sarah Stuteville, for the Pulitzer Center
Pale columns of smoke are rising from a sea of blue tents stretching into the distance of the flat khaki plain that is Jellozai, a refugee camp eight miles outside of Peshawar, home to an estimated 43,000 people fleeing violence in the tribal regions not far from here.
It's late in the day. Nearing evening actually, and I'm nervously checking the clock on our taxi's dashboard as we bounce on the rocky dirt road past the crumbled mud remains of Afghan homes, the last refugees that occupied this forgotten feeling landscape. We don't have permission to be here and had promised ourselves we'll be back on the road to Islamabad by 5 pm. Which was now fifteen minutes ago.