[Daryn Kagan, Cnn Anchor:] Now a story of a mother who had a different idea of how her son needed to get an education. In November of last year, an American photojournalist familiar with Pakistan took her six-year-old son there with her. Deborah Copaken Kogan and her son Jacob personally delivered food, school supplies and money that Jacob's school had donated to Afghan refugee children. And now, a glimpse of the experiences that she captured with her home video camera.
[Unidentified Female:] Well, what's going on in the country right now?
[Unidentified Boy:] There's a war.
[Unidentified Female:] Are you confused?
[Unidentified Boy:] Yes.
[Unidentified Female:] It's been a lot of flying. Do you know how many hours of flying it's been so far?
[Unidentified Boy:] How?
[Unidentified Female:] We've been traveling for over 29 hours. And you haven't slept for most of that time. This man's trying to find us a taxi.
[Unidentified Male:] Yes.
[Unidentified Boy:] We hope that the paper and pen bring color and happiness to your class. We send you our best wishes.
[Unidentified Female:] We have papers. And these are composition books. Yes. And this is writing paper here. We want peace. We need your and world support. We hope that the world will help to bring peace. We don't want war anymore. Did you write that yourself?
[Unidentified Girl:] Yes.
[Unidentified Female:] Very nice. We can take this home with us? Yes. Tell me what you thought about this camp today?
[Unidentified Boy:] Sad.
[Unidentified Female:] Sad? Why was it sad? What was hard and sad about it?
[Unidentified Boy:] Well, it was sad because some of their faces were really dirty.
[Unidentified Female:] Right.
[Unidentified Boy:] And...
[Unidentified Female:] Why do you think that is?
[Unidentified Boy:] Because they don't have, like, showers.
[Unidentified Female:] Right. Did you see any running water there at all?
[Unidentified Boy:] No.
[Unidentified Female:] What do you think, huh? Jacob... Do you like this one?
[Unidentified Boy:] I don't know.
[Unidentified Female:] I can't see a thing. I can't see anything.
[Unidentified Boy:] I'm from Afghanistan.
[Unidentified Female:] From which city in Afghanistan.
[Unidentified Boy:] From Kabul.
[Unidentified Female:] And when did you come here? Do you know what year?
[Unidentified Boy:] Yes. Four years ago, I came here.
[Unidentified Female:] Do you hope to go back to your country?
[Unidentified Boy:] Yes. I want because all of us, we want to go to our country. It is our country. There I was more happy because it was our people. We had a lot of fun there.
[Unidentified Female:] Tell me about his name. It's Osama. Do you think you're ever going to forget that name?
[Unidentified Boy:] No.
[Unidentified Female:] What was your favorite day that we had?
[Unidentified Boy:] The fun part was giving all the supplies because, like, you know, fun.
[Unidentified Female:] Do you think peace will ever come to their country and they can go back home?
[Unidentified Boy:] Yes. Do you?
[Unidentified Female:] I hope so.
[Unidentified Boy:] I hope so. But it might not, but I hope so.
[Kagan:] Deborah Copaken Kogan is the author of "Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War" based on her professional experiences years before her trip to Pakistan with Jacob. And she joins us now from our New York bureau. Hello. It's great to get to talk to you.
[Deborah Copaken Kogan, Author, "shutterbabe":] Hi. How are you?
[Kagan:] I have got to tell you, I was on the plane to somewhere a couple of weeks ago and I actually read your piece in "O" magazine.
[Kogan:] Oh, really.
[Kagan:] And I had to think, you know, in this day and age when a lot of mothers don't even let their kids in America play in their front yard, here's this woman who hauls her kid off to Pakistan and that part of the world. A lot of people must have told you that you were nuts to do that.
[Kogan:] Yes. Well, a lot of people did tell me I was nuts, but then again, we were living in New York City right after September 11 and it felt nuts to live there, too. So, safety is a relative term and it certainly felt very relative at that moment and time. And I guess the emotion of everything that was going on and, plus, feeling unsafe in my own home. I just thought, well, let's go. Let's deliver this money ourselves.
[Kagan:] And we should explain. I don't know if we did a good enough job at that, but that Jacob's school was raising money to try to help Afghan children have school supplies and such and you just kind of figured, well, let's go deliver it.
[Kogan:] Right. Well, it became a little bit controversial in the school where some of the parents were saying why are we raising money for Afghani refugees? Isn't that like raising money for the enemy? And I just thought, having covered wars myself, my God, that is really the wrong way to think about war. The real victims of war, as always, are the women and the children, the society, the schools. Everything that's normal about a place becomes abnormal and we, you know, why not reach out and help them?
[Kagan:] And you never really know who you are going to meet along the way and not necessarily know the significance. I understand through your travel with Jacob you actually came across Danny Pearl.
[Kogan:] Yes. It was one of those odd circumstances where Jacob happened to be in the bathroom of the hotel in the men's room and he'd been in there for quite a while. So I grabbed the nearest person I could find and it was Danny Pearl. And I said can you just go in there and check on him, see if he's OK.
[Kagan:] Did you know him or you just recognized him as an American?
[Kogan:] No. He was just an American guy. Go in and check on my kid. And he came out and he said, oh, he's fine. He was laughing. And we had this strange 20-minute conversation about, oh yes, we're here covering the Pakistan side of the story, the safe side. Kabul had just fallen. All the journalists were running into Kabul. And here we were, the journalists staying in the hotel to do something safe. And the irony, of course, is crazy.
[Kagan:] So how long would that have been before Danny went missing?
[Kogan:] Well, that was November. I remember him telling me that his wife was three months pregnant at the time. So, he went missing in, when, January?
[Kagan:] Yes, January.
[Kogan:] So three months before hand.
[Kagan:] It must give you chills when you first heard the news and later how it ended.
[Kogan:] Yes. It doesn't make sense. This is not a man that was running to be a cowboy journalist at all.
[Kagan:] And certainly what you were trying to do, I don't imagine you trying to be a cowboy mother or cowboy journalist yourself. You had another thing in mind, not just to help the children, but I think to open your own child's eyes to the world.
[Kogan:] Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, growing up in America, we have borders on either side of us. We don't really know what's going on outside our borders as much as let's say a French kid or somebody growing up in Africa. We as a country can be very isolationist and I really have always thought as a mother, it's important that I show my child what's going on in the world, how he can help.
[Kagan:] And so you were trying to teach him. I'd be interested to know, since you were a photojournalist who has traveled this part of the world long before you became a mother, what did you learn through your child by revisiting?
[Kogan:] What I learned was, when I used to cover wars, I used to cover what we call the bang bang, running off and shooting the gunshots and the bombs going off. And really, what you focus on when you're with your child is the trauma that happens to mothers and children throughout the world in war zones. And you really focus on it and you really feel it because you are also a mother with a child. And going in there, mother to child, talking to other mothers, especially some of the women who had just gotten out of Afghanistan after the American bombing campaign started, women who lost their children, five-month-old babies on their way out because of the cold, one little girl who had lost her mother in the American bombing, you really start to feel what it's like for these kids.
[Kagan:] And what about Jacob? What's his next assignment?
[Kogan:] His next assignment is second grade.
[Kagan:] Cleaning his room.
[Kogan:] Yes. Exactly, cleaning his room.
[Kagan:] Very good. Which might be more difficult for some six- year-olds than making it to Pakistan.
[Kogan:] He did, indeed. He kept a journal. Well, you know, I yanked him out of school to do this so I thought, well, I better be a little bit of a teacher and make him do some sort of assignment every night.
[Kagan:] Very good. All right, cracking the whip even in Pakistan.
[Kogan:] Exactly.
[Kagan:] Deborah Copaken Kogan, thanks for joining us.
[Kogan:] Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Daryn.
[Kagan:] I appreciate your story.