Pomegranate

I was just standing on the cold white tile floor of my bathroom barefoot eating a pomegranate in Afghanistan winter while listening to Barenaked Ladies on my iPod. Heaven! (For those of you who are unfamiliar with this great fruit, they are very juicy and stain like crazy and I didn’t have a plate.) Pomegranates grow well here and this one was ruby red, sweet, aromatic and delicious. But the joy of the pomegranate extends beyond the flavor and a lot of the appeal comes from the fun of digging out each little carmine segment from the overlapping layers of perfectly shaped cushioning walls. The treat is that much sweeter because you have to work to get it.

It’s only my second day in country, but I am finding it difficult to understand Afghanistan and the Afghan people. While the city of Kabul appears normal and I do not feel any palpable tension (like I did in Ethiopia before and during the rioting), I think the city is far from normal. There are plenty of people walking on the streets, and lots of traffic jamming the roads, but something is just not right. Maybe it is because the city has been a theatre of war almost continuously from 1979 to 2001. Maybe people don’t know what normal is like. But it is more than that.

Under the Taliban regime (1996-2001) women were required to wear burkas. These are garments that in Afghanistan are almost always of a serene sky blue color and completely cover women from head to toe. They have a small grill over the eyes and nose that allow the wearer to see (only straight ahead) and to breathe as the burkas are made of suffocating polyester. Women were not allowed to go in public without their husbands or a close male relative. These rules were all banished in 2001 with the fall of the Taliban, but change is coming slowly. Interestingly, I see burkas that are only waist-length in front – meaning a woman’s legs are visible from the front. I see far fewer women who have tossed off the burka in favor of the head scarf (which is what I am wearing). But to be honest, I do not see a lot of women. There are few on the streets and still fewer in the offices I visited today. It makes me unsure of myself as I really do not understand how I am being perceived. I am also struggling to find a balance between the desire to be respectful of local custom, but at the same time to stand in favor of women’s rights and hopefully serve as a positive example as an educated professional woman.

Tomorrow I have four meetings (compared to today’s two) so things are heating up.