AUTHOR'S NOTE
I'd like to dedicate this story to a gentleman who died on 9/11/2001. His name was John F. Puckett. He was a freelance sound man, who happened to be setting up sound equipment for a meeting to be held later in the day in "Windows on the World," the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center.
Now, for the usual recap: As you can tell by the photos, the places in San Francisco are real, with the exception of the Legacy House on Angel Island. Pacific Beach is real, as is Seal Rock and Cliff House. However, the Musee Mechanique has moved. It & Laughing Sal are now located at Pier 45, Fisherman's Wharf.
There is an international airport at Bishkek in Kyrgystan. The US does lease a portion of that airport for an airbase, which serves troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is also an airfield at Chitral, in northwest Pakistan. The town of Arnawai is real. It lies in the Kunar Valley of Afghanistan. Nuristan is a very remote Afghan province in the Hindu Kush mountains. These areas were the scene of significant fighting during the Mujahideen's resistance to the Soviet invasion.
All the tribes named are real with the exception of the R'om, who are our invention. They are based on the K'om peoples and their language. The myths about descendants of the soldiers from Alexander the Great's army exist, but are usually applied to the Kalesh tribe of Pakistan.
Northwest Pakistan is a semi-autonomous area in which Pashtunwali & Islamic Fundamentalism flourish. There are madrassahs, or schools, which teach radicalism and funnel students to terrorist training camps.
Needless, to say the R'om Valley is fiction, and we hope the secret in the caves is also fiction. However, the USSR did have covert bases in Afghanistan. The biological & chemical warfare factories discussed were real. Today, as the Aral Sea continues to shrink and the dust of the dried seabed blows, it creeps ever closer to the island in the middle of the Aral Sea that is contaminated with anthrax.
;-Dubricus