Last October I found myself on a broken down train in southern Egypt, listening over and over again to Nick Cave's masterpiece The Boatman's Call. The train was heading to Aswan, where my friend and I hoped to catch a convoy travelling to the mind-blowing Pharaonic remains at Abu Simbel. Unfortunately, by the time the train resumed its course, it was looking unlikely that we would make it in time to catch the bus. Thankfully, an alternative came in the form of two Egyptian businessmen who suggested we join them in getting off at the next town and taking a cab for the final two-hour stretch of the journey.

Since the Luxor Temple massacre of 1997, foreigners have been banned from travelling on the roads of southern Egypt, for their own protection. Despite this, we disembarked, and sipped tea at a roadside cafe while our Egyptian guides attempted to persuade a cabbie to take us. This is what I wrote at the time: "Here insecurity crept in ... we stuck out like the proverbial pork pie at a Bar Mitzvah. Bug-eyed locals sat watching the television, while eyeing us with suspicion. Our eyes were, literally and figuratively, firmly on the clock."

Eventually one cab driver agreed to approach the police and ask if they would permit him to take us. "We talked among ourselves while waiting for the phone call to come through. Here my imagination got the better of me. I was agitated that Ahmed was not translating all of the plans he was making. I saw signals that were not there, I became increasingly agitated, and I began to have visions of orange boiler-suits."

I was reminded of this while watching Michael Winterbottom's brilliant film about the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, A Mighty Heart. The film has been curiously neglected by movie-goers, and hasn't attracted the critical acclaim it deserves. Winterbottom deals in complexities; he manages to show the barbarity of Pearl's killers while at the same time beautifully depicting the Karachi which spawned them. This has led to the unfair accusation that Winterbottom is concerned with drawing "moral equivalence" between Pearl's murderers and the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Of perhaps even more interest, however, is the very clear suggestion that Pearl's naivety was crucial in allowing the kidnappers to get him.