Pakistan Kicked Me Out. Others Were Less Lucky.

But what makes Pakistan and the region an often hostile place for journalists is the difficulty of assessing the threat. While most fatalities last year occurred in random bombings and terrorist attacks, deadly incidents in years past remain shrouded in mystery. In December 2005, Hayatullah Khan, a journalist from North Waziristan, filed a story with photographs that gave evidence -- a piece of a U.S.-made Hellfire missile -- that the United States was conducting strikes against Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked targets inside Pakistani territory. The photos were undoubtedly an embarrassment to the Musharraf government, which had publicly insisted that U.S. military forays would not be allowed inside Pakistan.

Just a few weeks earlier, Khan had written a will in which he stated, "If I am kidnapped or get killed, the government agencies will be responsible." The day after his story and the photos were published, gunmen ran his car off the road and kidnapped him. Six months later, his body was dumped in the bazaar in Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan.

A couple of weeks ago, a spokesman from the Information Ministry said that "the media in Pakistan is the freest ever in the history of the country." In many ways, he was correct; drawing-room columnists can be as critical as they wish to be. But opinion-writing shouldn't be confused with reporting. And every journalist working in Pakistan knows that crossing certain undefined lines can become a risky, often life-threatening endeavor. Pearl and Khan were both doing serious investigative work when they were kidnapped and killed.

Hamid Mir, one of Pakistan's most respected TV and print journalists, watched as his TV channel, Geo TV, and his talk show were pulled off the air after Musharraf imposed a state of emergency on Nov. 3. (On Jan. 21, Geo resumed broadcasting, albeit without Mir's show.) Mir recently e-mailed me: "Musharraf believes in removing people from the scene. . . . He cannot remove us from history."

Journalism, as the cliche goes, is the "first rough draft of history." If that's the case, then Pakistan's history is suffering.

On that wet Tuesday night, I finally connected by phone with an influential friend, who placed a couple of calls and made the cops go home. But it was obvious that my wife and I were no longer welcome in Pakistan. My mobile phone had been tapped for weeks. For the first time in two years, I feared for our safety. The next morning, we bought two one-way tickets back to the States. Within two days, we had pawned off our cat and packed or sold the rest of our belongings.

On our last night in Islamabad, a half-dozen expatriate friends came over to send us off -- and help drink the rest of our wine. Yet saying goodbye to our expat friends wasn't nearly as emotional as saying goodbye to our Pakistani friends and those who had done everything to protect us in those final hours.

The day after my story about the Taliban appeared, our guard, a gruff, bearded man from the North-West Frontier Province, had rebuffed the ISI inspector who'd arrived on a motorcycle and demanded to be allowed inside to conduct an investigation. The guard, a former ISI commando himself, apparently told the inspector that he would never get past him and be allowed inside our house. Hugging this man on our last morning, as tears streamed down his face, was more difficult than bidding my family farewell back in February 2006 had been. Honestly, I don't know when I'll see him -- or Pakistan -- again. I miss them both already.

nickschmidle@yahoo.com

Nicholas Schmidle, a Pakistan-based fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs from 2006 to 2008, is writing a book about Pakistan today.