It was hot and stuffy. I felt claustrophobic. The cloth in front of my mouth was damp from my breathing. I had to walk slowly as I had no vision to my right or my left. I could only see out through the three-inch mesh opening in front. I felt invisible wearing this long blue shroud.
I only wore the burqa for 15 minutes, but it was enough. The air inside was beginning to get stale. I felt shut out from the world. I could see out but no one could really see me.
The owner of the long, flowing, Afghan woman's drape I had temporarily borrowed was 14-year-old Kalsooma. She started wearing the burqa three months ago, a signal of her transformation from childhood to womanhood. "You get used to it," she said, laughing at my discomfort.
Kalsooma wonders at all the questions and at my fascination with this dress. "It is part of our tradition. We have always worn it here. Why are you so curious?".
Then she points to my jeans. "To me those are funny. I would never wear clothes like that," she said, bursting into another fit of giggles.
Kalsooma lives in Jalalabad, an east Afghanistan city grounded in deeply conservative Pashtun culture and Islamic religious beliefs. The burqa has been worn here for generations, not just in Taliban times.
"I was very excited when I started wearing the burqa," said Kalsooma. "Most of my friends had one before me. I feel like I am a grown-up now. I feel that I am a woman." Kalsooma bought her burqa in the bazaar in Jalalabad. It cost $9, a lot of money here, the equivalent of a week's salary. Her parents have been saving for a while. This burqa will have to do her for about three years so she is careful with it. When I ask if I could try it on, she took it from the press in the living room where she had it carefully stored.
The "in" colour at the moment is midnight blue. Hamid, the owner of a burqa store in Jalalabad bazaar said there has been no drop off in demand for burqas since the Taliban left more than two week's ago. While many women in the Afghanistan capital, Kabul, are reported to have lifted the veil, there is no evidence in Jalalabad that women have abandoned the tradition.
"Our business is the same. I don't seeing women walking around the streets without a burqa. Women here have worn the burqa for generations. It is not something that was brought in just by the Taliban," Hamid said.
He explained that he sells two types of burqa, a summer burqa and a winter burqa.
"The cloth for the summer burqa is lighter." But only the better-off women can afford the luxury of having the two.
It is always special, he said, when a young girl comes in to buy her first burqa. "They are proud to wear it. It is a big occasion in their lives." Now that she is wearing the burqa life has changed dramatically for Kalsooma. She can now only mix with near relatives and women friends in private. She must wear the veil or the burqa in public. She cannot go out unaccompanied. She must be with her father or one of her brothers.
During the interview, Kalsooma's 23-year-old brother, Khalid, comes into the room. He glares at me, clearly disapproving of this jeans-clad western woman. He squats down on a carpet and listens. Kalsooma clams up. She changes from being chatty and open to giving me one word answers.
I ask Khalid to leave, and explain through a translator that I will go if he doesn't.
He gets up, looks at my camera, and warns me not to take a picture of his sister, with or without a burqa on. He leaves. Kalsooma was going to school until the Taliban came into power five years ago and her education stopped. "I am too old to start going again. I would be embarrassed," she said.
She works at home with her mother and sisters, and helps prepare the meals.
She will probably be married before she is 18. Her mother married at 14.
There is only one reason, she says, that she regrets not being born a boy and it has nothing to do with the burqa. "If I was a boy I would get an education."
She says given the choice, she would still wear the burqa. "My mother wears one, my grandmother wore one, and I hope if I have a daughter she will wear one. It is part of our culture." I ask her if she has any desire to visit the West, to go to America for example.
"Oh no," she said. "I would like to go to Peshawar (north Pakistan) because I could still wear the burqa there. If I went to America I would have to wear clothes like you."
Kalsooma is very pretty. She has long black shiny hair and striking green eyes. Her smile lights up her face. I feel sad that this beauty is to be kept hidden from the outside world. I ask her how she feels about this. "I don't mind," she says. "I will keep my beauty for my husband."
miriamd@163bj.com