He wants to show me absolutely everything. He wants to betray the Taliban. He wants revenge because nothing was more precious to him than his little sister—neither religion nor fear nor money. The Taliban commanders are frequent guests at the house where he works as a servant. I break the first rule of every war correspondent: I take sides. I want to save Ibrahim, for if he acts alone he will die.

I stay in Kabul for a few weeks, and during that time Greg sends me the cover of Time with my photo on it, and Marie-France sends me a Polaroid of her positive pregnancy test at the pharmacy. “I want the baby, but I don’t want you,” she writes.

I beg her to let me meet our child, but she replies, “Please don’t go to war again after the child is born. I don’t want him to be scared for you.” She doesn’t respond to my request to see the baby, though. That’s the moment I decide to quit my job. I’m almost thirty-two.

I keep my promise and never report from war zones again. Yet Marie-France only lets me see our child once, shortly after his birth. She sends a photo of him—it’s a boy—sleeping with his little thumb tucked into his clenched hand. She calls him Samuel Noam, meaning “God has heard” and “ joy, delight.” I write back to say that I can think of no better names for the boy.

Marie-France never sends me another photo. Every month I mail a check that she never cashes. Initially I ask once a month, then twice a year, if I may come to Paris. She won’t let me. It seems Marie-France still resents the fact that I didn’t ask her at the airport if I should stay with her.

The story of Ibrahim’s sister is the first portrait of my career as a non-war-correspondent. From then on, I only write about people, what they go on to do and who they are.

The man who reads stories without pause to keep humanity alive.

The actress who decides to spend the rest of her life in a tree.

The eighteen-year-old boy who’d rather meet his maker than have a heart implant.

I travel around the world to listen to people, and gradually my obsession with never allowing a single war to go unwitnessed wanes.

At my request, Greg manages to bring Ibrahim to London. Greg and his wife, Monica, take the boy in and a few years later they ask him if he’d let them adopt him.

One day I hear from a female colleague that Marie-France had an affair for a few years with Claude, the editor in chief of her newspaper, but he wouldn’t divorce his wife for her.