Warlord Haji Zaman sat in the sunshine yesterday surrounded by hundreds of armed men in his walled compound base in Jalalabad.
Sitting on a battered sofa, the city's military chief and former mujahideen fighter held court, like a king receiving his loyal subjects.
One by one, men nervously queued up to have a quiet word in the ear of the second most powerful man in eastern Afghanistan.
A clearly impatient person, he dismissed some of his subjects with a wave of his hand and a cross utterance.
For others there was a quick embrace and reassuring words.
Just two weeks ago, Zaman was in exile, waiting for the Taliban to be banished from Jalalabad.
But he returned triumphantly to his family home - a large compound with a three-acre garden that had been commandeered by the fundamentalist forces.
Now that he is back in the capital of the eastern zone, Zaman is talking about leading a force of up to 2,000 local mujahideen fighters to Tora Bora, in the White Mountain, to flush out Osama bin Laden and hundreds of his loyal al-Qaeda followers.
"It is my right and my responsibility," he said.
He is dispatching a delegation of tribal elders to Tora Bora today, to issue an ultimatum to the al-Qaeda men - leave now, or face capture by the mujahideen.
He says up to 2,000 mujahideen fighters are preparing to go to the mountain to flush them out.
Three security men kept close guard on their master yesterday, looking nervously around for any attack. Sitting in the gardens were bearded men bristling with weapons.
Only this time, it wasn't the black-turbaned Taliban who had taken over this compound, but a force dedicated to keeping them out. Zaman spent years fighting as a mujahideen commander, during the anti-Soviet war between 1979 and 1989.
As former commander of the 11th Afghan division based in Jalalabad, he handed over the city five years ago to the Taliban, ordered his 4,500 soldiers to surrender their weapons, and fled into exile in Paris.
However, he returned to the region during the US air strikes, first setting up a base in the Frontier City of Peshawar, in North Pakistan. Last Sunday week, he was appointed military commander for the eastern zone by the Shura, the ruling council of elders. He is a friend of the new governor, Haji Qadir. They both have their own armies - comprising refugees from Pakistan and former allies who had gone underground during Taliban rule.
Zaman is educated and multilingual and is seen as an ideal candidate to lead the large ethnic Pushtun population of eastern Afghanistan.
He is noted for his impatience. And he is also famous for writing notes.
Yesterday, he was busy writing messages on a notepad for the men who quietly waited for a quick word. He wrote several in the time we were there, signing them with a flourishing signature before ripping them out of a notepad.
When the four journalists were murdered on the road from Jalalabad to Kabul, journalistic colleagues were initially unable to get any assistance from the authorities in sending a rescue convoy to the scene of the attack.
It was only after a note was written by Haji Zaman that the security and support needed for the rescue attempt was given.
Now he is promising to go over the White Mountain on horseback in search of bin Laden. Haji Zaman: believes it is his "right" to hunt down bin Laden