nicarthyadventures: HOW THEY LOOKED THEN: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

I wonder whether this lovely building is now rubble

AFGHANISTAN

This poster against abuse of women might have been in the Seattle YWCA in the 1970s or '80s

I interviewed this impressive woman, a candidate for Parliament. She lost the election

This cosmetition lost the lease for her business after NGO personnel contributed to inflationary prices of real estate

Since she no longer had a shop to work in she brought her "shop" to her friend Mitra's house

This is a model for cosmetics

Mitra was an enthusiastic talker, especially about her micro loan, which allowed her to buy a second sewing machine and hire another worker.

The worker is happy too.

These men of "military age" are the staff gathered in our living room

This is what I could see from the burqa I tried on

Looking out my guest house window

Our group with two of our guides

More men of that dangerous age, the kitchen staff

The streets of Kabul were jammed but just a few minutes out of the center of town this was the traffic

Our guest house host, who was also a professor of French literature

School boys. Assuming they have survived the war so far, they are now be of miliatary age


Many girls wore hijab and many didn't

IRAQ
I was not supposed to take photographs without permission of a minder. But one day everyone, including our minder, went to an Internet cafe, while I planned to nap in hopes of curing my bronchial cough. But when I suddenly realized I was alone, I dashed out to the street, and forgot about the rule against photographs. I had a lovely time joking around with these guys, but when I look at them now I find myself worrying about how this "group of men of military age possibly planning to plant an i.e.d. Our war in Iraq is supposedly over yet last month (May, '13) over a thousand people were killed. I keep wondering how many of them are still alive.
I wanted to see how women and children and men lived in Iraq. Because I was nearly always was with the group with little opportunity to have conversations with the people I met. But there were exceptions.

This is Abida, the hotel lobby manager. She tried to protect me from being close to a group waiting for the elevator. They were Iranians, she said, and they smelled bad. A few days later the elevators didn't work and Abida had locked the doors to the stairs. I found myself warning her that her if the U.S. bombed the hotel people would not be able to get out. The irony was not lost on either of us.

I fell in love with this little girl and often wonder where she is now. She followed our group every step of the way on our only trip to a Baghdad. I tended to fall behind, always finding something or someone else to photograph. But she, in a gracious way would tell me I was lagging and would wave me back to the group, like a sheep herder keeping me with my group.

Ginny loaded with cameras and tape recorders, eager not to miss or misremember anything.

A mother and her newborn infant. Doctor Al -Ali says, "The first question the mothers used to ask was, 'Is it a boy or a girl?' Now they ask, 'Is it normal?'" The doctor showed us horrifying photos of babies and fetuses so deformed they scarcely looked human.

We visit a school. The children shout out the same message that is on their signs: Down With Bush! Down With Bush! Over and over, as their teachers look on approvingly.