Sometimes rules have to be broken

They have that fearful and mischievous look of schoolgirls who know they are breaking a rule but aren’t really sorry about it. Before entering the room, they spent almost an hour preparing their transgression, talking each other into it and weighing the consequences. They know they are likely to be chastised for it, but they decided that it’s worth it. After all, there are these other three who are doing it and they will get away with it.

Mission impossible: disguising a western woman in a chadari

"Thanks" to a high-profile assassination, my supervisor decided that I should have a chadari, just in case of emergency. While that might sound like a smart disguise, wearing it on the street for just a few minutes confirmed that any man who wasn't blind could spot from some hundred metres that I was a foreigner. That thing is by far the most difficult garment I ever had to put on, and that includes my kindergarten costume party outfits! Of course, not being comfortable in your clothes shows, so men walking by me on the street were staring even more than when I go out without it. Later I was told that it was the way I walk and carry my body that gave me away more than the jeans which were slightly visible underneath.

On dating and proper dress code

For a few days, I am sharing my room with a colleague from another province, a university-educated woman in her twenties living in the southern province of Ghazni. She is a Hazara, a member of the ethnic group who has suffered the worst of the Taleban brutality and discrimination; long before the Taleban rule, however, the Hazara were considered second-class people, good only for working as servants and unqualified manual labourers. 

Come to my house, have some tea!

It's been a while since I wrote. Seems my eternal problem with writing rears its head again. So many times in my life, under the influence of strong emotions looking for a way out, I started a writing project, whether it was a diary, a blog or a novel, only to abandon it shortly thereafter, not because my emotions are gone, but because they found other outlets. Other times, I simply can't find the right words to express how I feel or what I've just experienced, so I don't even try.

Anyway, today it seems my writing mood is back, so here it goes:

I want to talk about hospitality, because the Afghan's approach to it has often left me humbled. In my work I sometimes travel to villages and meet some of the poorest people living in one of the poorest provinces in one of the poorest countries in the world. Lots of poverty, it seems, but not in spirit.