It is Christmas 1965. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kabul, Afghanistan. My roommate, a devout Roman Catholic at the time, wants to go to midnight mass at the chapel of the Italian Embassy. Sounds good to me so off we go on our bicycles riding across Kabul city from Karte Char to Shash-Darak, about 4.5 to 5 miles. Now think on this. We are young women. I am 22 and she is 19. We are wearing American clothes, winter coats with gloves and hats. No veils, no head scarves, no perhan tumban etc. At the completion of mass it is 1:00 a.m. Christmas morning. As we exit the chapel, it is snowing! Lovely light snowflakes are drifting from the black sky. The houses of Kabul, many of which go up the mountain sides, are adobe and look like houses of the Holy Land 2,000 years ago. It is amazingly beautiful and Christmasy. We ride our bikes back across the city, singing O Holy Night, Silent Night, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, O Little Town of Bethlehem - shouting at the top of our lungs. We see no other people all the way home. No one objects to any of this nor do we expect them to.
Photo by Luke Powell
You know, these snippets from another Afghanistan could be made into a lovely short movie, especially if one could capture the mood of both your writing and Luke' s photos.
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