Liz Engle, a young British journalist covering the war in Afghanistan, is taken hostage by jihadists but finds an unlikely rescuer in one of her captors, Ahmed Quraishi, a twenty-two-year-old desperate to escape the horrors of what he's done at the behest of his mentor. THE JIHAD OF LOVE, my completed 95000-word novel, tells their story. Liz's self-designed special assignment is to investigate the fate of the children in the war-torn country. She teams up with three experienced American journalists for safety, but they're attacked on the road, and the American's are killed. Now hostage in a bunker complex deep in the desert, Liz learns that Ahmed lived the kind of childhood she wants to write about. Haunted by the stoning of a gay teenager in which he was forced to participate, and sickened by the atmosphere of hatred and intolerance that led to it, Ahmed escapes with Liz and falls in love with her. Together they journey to his childhood home in Peshawar, Pakistan, avoiding ! all combatants, wanting only to be together. Along the way they encounter the people of the country, who are caught between two militaries, trapped in poverty and scarcity, but thriving in spirit nonetheless. Their romance deepens along the way, and they finally settle into a home and plan to marry. But as their plans are about to come to fruition, British soldiers storm their house, believing that they're rescuing Liz and capturing Ahmed, a wanted terrorist. After being spirited back to the UK, Liz ...
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