UPDATE FROM THE FIELD: AFGHANISTAN

“I’m writing to inform you that a baby was born Saturday night in our Surgical centre for War Victims in Kabul.

That is war: you are 20 years old, expecting your first child, and you find yourself in the midst of the fighting with a thigh-bone broken by shrapnel. You realise that your body reacts in the most natural way to the bleeding, and you go into labour.

You find yourself in a hospital for war victims and undergo an emergency caesarian section. You give birth to Giuseppe (that’s right, that’s his name) – a beautiful, healthy boy who’s come into the world “Afghan style”, as our local staff say.