Afghanistan
Mazar-e-Sharif, near Uzbekistan border, 1977
Afghan Doves
While a PCV in Ghana, I read James Michener’s Caravans. The book inspired me to make Afghanistan a major goal in the rambling route I took home. This photo, taken during my month in Afghanistan in 1977, was a peaceful moment beside the Blue Mosque at Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan, just south of what was then the USSR.
The freedom of these doves in flight was a stark contrast to the restrictive world behind the women’s chadors. Female PCVs serving in North Yemen told me of their more positive impressions. They were allowed into a world that I, as a male, could not enter. Under the dark cloaks and veils were sometimes ornate clothes, which could only be seen by other women and their own male family members. The women enjoyed a separate world, a world I would never see.
