Saira Shah visited the Afghanistan her father had loved, but found only desperation and disintegration in the bizarre world of the Taliban.

I would have felt foolish if I hadn't been so scared. Dressed in high-heeled plastic shoes and veiled in a garment with more than a passing resemblance to a tablecloth, I hobbled across the border into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with my foreign passport and $3,000 strapped under my bra. What I was doing was entirely illegal. For me, however, going undercover into Kabul wasn't just the only way to get the story — it was a personal odyssey.

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