Visiting shrines in Afghanistan (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
— Rumi
“You don’t need to wear your burqa here,” my driver said, as we entered Mazar-i Sharif–the capital of Balkh province.
On our drive through Afghanistan, we had played a perverse but necessary game of hide-and-go-seek, as I sat in the backseat in my burqa.
“Okay–put it on,” he would say, each time we entered a Taliban controlled area. And when we moved on to Northern Alliance territory, he would flick his wrist and say, “Now, take it off.”
If I’d been wearing my burqa when we arrived at this noble shrine and its adjacent mosque, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate each detail of its turquoise mosaics from behind the yarn cross-stitched over the thin slit covering my eyes. And I wouldn’t have been able to smile for a few pictures, to remember how excited I was to have reached the shrine in safety–unsure if I would ever make it back home…
