After a grueling 10-hour drive from Kabul to Islamabad, I met a diplomat friend in the lobby of my hotel. I was tired, covered in dust, and looking forward to a hot shower.

My friend asked a seemingly innocent question: “What’s it like in Kabul?”

Me: “Fine, great stories, the weather’s fantastic, the city seems pretty safe.”

Him: “But did you hear about the bomb blast at the Internet café? Two dead, five injured.”

Me: “No.”

I ran upstairs, turned on the BBC, and gaped at video images of shattered glass and Afghan policemen standing in the rain. The Internet café, Park Net Café in the busy upscale Shahre-Naw district of Kabul, was the very place I had gone the day before to read my email and file my stories to Boston. Now it was a crime scene.

Beyond the expected sense of horror and relief – horror that the blast had claimed lives, relief that I wasn’t one of them – this was a lesson in how quickly perceptions of safety can change in times of asymmetrical warfare.

For two weeks, fellow Monitor journalist Ben Arnoldy and I had walked and driven around a country where we generally felt safe. True, there were attacks in far-flung districts, and there were a few cases of kidnapping attempts on foreigners. One enterprising American, kidnapped by three uniformed Afghans in a ritzy district of Kabul, managed to extract himself from the trunk of a moving car with a tire-iron. But our own experience was a place that was slowly, impatiently returning to normalcy.

Afghans told us again and again that the country was safe, safe enough for foreigners to come out into the countryside to dig wells, rebuild schools, create hospitals -- and strangely, the foreigners weren’t coming.

We absorbed their confidence. We drove out into the countryside and talked with ordinary people and tribal elders and security chiefs, something that many Western diplomats and policymakers don’t have the luxury, or the permission, to do.

We had seen the country with our own eyes. And things seem to be improved. Were we wrong?

Details from the news are sketchy, but it appears that a suicide bomber walked into the cafe at 6 p.m. on Saturday and blew up himself and several others. One of those killed was Burmese, the others appear to be Afghans, including members of the Internet cafe staff.

Perhaps reporters are not the best people to ask about safety. When gunfire erupts, we run to see what happened, while more sensible people run away. We take vacations in beautiful places that have turned into military camps, places like Kashmir and Nepal and Sri Lanka. Our parents scratch their heads wondering why we didn’t become accountants. Our spouses remind us that no story is worth our lives.

We tell ourselves that, statistically speaking, there are more murders in New York City or Washington, D.C. than in a war-zone like Kabul. As long as you don’t do something stupid, you’re probably going to go home in one piece.

But with a single terrorist attack, that confidence can evaporate. A bombing at an Internet cafe in Kabul will always get more attention than a murder in, say, New York’s Central Park. One is a symbolic attack on The West; the other is just a senseless death.

With this attack, Kabul will change. Humanitarian workers will take more precautions and stay away from public areas. UN officials and diplomats will issue new safety guidelines, and staff members will follow them. The gossipy social fabric of Kabul will be torn, as yet another meeting place becomes too dangerous or spooky to visit.

When an event like this happens, it’s easier to understand why the international community must take extra precautions in their development work. But if the work slows, it won’t be the West but Afghans who suffer. Can’t these people ever get a break?