I escaped from Kabul long before the arrival of the lotus-eating hippies, the Soviets, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the American Marines. At the time, I tried to tell my American college friends about some of the awful sights I had seen: women in ghost-like sheets (burqas) who were forced to sit at the back of the bus; servants who slept on dirt floors and were treated as slaves; the considerable downside to polygamy; the normalization of cruelty towards women and children (sons too) which, when challenged, was met with utter indifference or fury, not because of the cruelty but because it was shameful to discuss or expose it.
Link: Chesler Chronicles » A Lesson Learned in Kabul
