In my father's library, when I was young, there was a book The Kaffirs of the Hindu Kush. I never read it, attractive and redolent of adventure as the title may have been.
It is now, inherited, stored in one of the boxes in my cellar, and perhaps my son or grandson may read it when they find it, by and by.
I know not if it was a novel or a history, but the evocative title is imprinted on my memory and now, with that part of the world the focus of attention, it often comes to mind.
The Hindu Kush is the backbone of Afghanistan. It is a massive mountain range, a westerly continuation of the Himalayas, that rises in places to well over 20,000 feet.
It divides the country into two, separating the fertile plains that lead down to the Amu Darya river, the country's boundary to the north, from the arid, often scorching deserts along the Iranian border in the south. Afghanistan is a slightly bigger country than France, and climatologically, as in many other ways, it is a country of extremes.
The summers are hot, dry and virtually cloudless with the temperature in lowland areas rising daily to a searing 48 degrees.
But as the English historian Arnold Toynbee has remarked, altitude makes Afghanistan somewhat resemble a Turkish bath: the steam room comprises those regions of the country at 3,000 feet or lower; the cold room is to be found at elevations above 7,000 feet.
The summer monsoon rains that bring welcome relief to the plains of nearby India, hardly affect Afghanistan at all; from May through September, in many parts of the country, rain is virtually unknown. Afghanistan's precipitation comes largely in the form of winter snow and spring rains, borne on the bitterly cold winds that sweep down over the country from the northwest.
Snow lies over Kabul for several months each year, and this harsh continental winter, where temperatures of -20C are not uncommon, is accentuated over much of the land by high altitude.
With recorded extremes of +50C and -52C, Afghanistan has a higher annual range of temperature than any other country in the world.
And there are other even harsher elements to the Afghan winter. It is said that in the recent civil wars, the mujahedeen guerrillas would refer to the large hailstones that fell in the mountain regions as being "Allah's minesweepers"; the impact of the large, falling lumps of ice was often enough to detonate the landmines planted by the retreating Soviet army.