As for the dress restrictions – leaving aside, for the moment, the burqa – they didn’t seem as oppressive of women as they do in Britain, because they applied equally to both genders. Afghan men also dressed modestly, in loose traditional clothing, with their heads and arms covered. There is equality in that, at least.
It was the women, far more, in Kabul who pushed at those boundaries. An Afghan actress, with her eyes outlined in black kohl, had piled her hair high, and covered it in a chiffon, polka-dotted scarf to match her stylish pink jacket. She looked like a classy Islamic Amy Winehouse.
An Afghan entrepreneur had dyed her hair magenta, swathed her body in hot cerise, vivid orange, and zippy purple, thrust her feet into four-inch heels, and perched punky orange sunglasses on her nose. She travelled out to the villages as a volunteer, this fabulous woman, to teach her receptive rural sisters there that they should love their bodies, and love themselves.
Clothing, generally, wasn’t seen as a pressing concern for the progressive Afghan women. What irked them, among other things, was Mehran culture, which decreed that wives had to travel with their husbands, or with men they could not marry – fathers or brothers.
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