NONFICTION - April 19, 1992

NIGHT LETTERS: Inside Wartime Afghanistan by Rob Schultheis (Orion Books: $20; 160 pp.). Near the Panjshir Valley, mujahedin who had shot down a Soviet helicopter turned the fuselage into a ice cream parlor, using glacier snow and fruit syrup to make sherbet. Along the Islamabad-Peshawar milk run, a passenger plane survived routine engine fires only to fall victim to a Pathan marriage ceremony, where guests’ celebratory gunfire brought it to earth without survivors. On a Herat-bound bus, a passenger unhappy with the driver’s inability to stay on the road--he’s wearing sunglasses at night to keep the bugs out of his eyes--hits the driver in the head with the butt of his rifle before throwing the glasses out the window. This is Rob Schultheis’ Afghanistan, as compelling as it is outlandish, full of strange people and events that somehow seem all of a piece. Schultheis, a free-lance reporter, traveled with the mujahedin many times in the 1980s to cover their war with the Soviets. He’s got so many memorable war stories that one suspects he suffers (as Schultheis himself puts it) from “John Wayne on the brain”--the tendency to believe in myth more than reality. “Night Letters” is an entertaining book, but extremely short, and one ultimately wishes the author had wanted to do more than produce virile, romantic copy.