In Lahore we dance with the Sufis; in Herat with the moon. In Bamiyan we dance with the Buddha and the children who live in caves beneath his crumbled ruins. We snaked up the slope and make choo-choo trains down to the sounds of a toy camera. At one point we pose like Egyptians – which is the biggest hit - and encourage our little cohorts to do the same, though they glance behind to make sure mama is out of site before they commit themselves to such salubrious moves. At one point, prompted by the little ones, we dance for mama herself, perched on a ledge above us. Dance done, we descend and find a group of schoolteachers wrestling and jostling amongst themselves. ‘Did you like our dance,’ we enquire – we were sure they would. ‘It is not our culture,’ they respond, ‘it is not Afghani culture!’ ‘Did we do something wrong?’ we ask. ‘The police, they watched you from the station. They did not like it- this moving.’ Distastefully, they move like us, constrained. ‘It is not our culture,’ they say again and smile, ‘Would you like tea?’ We drink tea and talk: geography, history, biography, physics; pains past and the future until the sun begins to sink. That night we dance the day again. Alone, and to the sound of silence, we circle a stupa of pakul. We know we did nothing wrong.

-KW, August 2006