It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

by Addario, Lynsey

  “What do you mean?” I honestly didn’t know much about Afghanistan, aside from the Times articles I had read while on the elliptical machine in New York.

  “You’re a woman, and you’re interested in photographing women’s issues,” Ed said. “There are few female journalists doing these stories there now. You should go.”

  I had never been to a hostile country. Afghanistan had been destroyed by war, first when the Soviets occupied the country in the 1980s and later when Afghan factions fought each other for power. By 2000 one of these groups, the Taliban, had taken over about 90 percent of the country, promising to end the violence, thievery, and rape. It installed Sharia, Islamic law requiring strict obedience to the Koran; forced the entire female population to wear the burqa; and outlawed television, music, kite flying—any form of entertainment. Men had their hands cut off for robbery, and women were stoned to death for adultery. But everything I had read was from an outsider’s perspective, from articles usually written by Westerners and non-Muslims. Were Westerners imposing their own set of values on a Muslim country? Were Afghan women miserable living under a burqa and under the Taliban? Or did we just assume they were miserable because our lives are so different?

  I didn’t know how I’d pull off such a trip. The only governing body was the Taliban, and almost all foreign embassies and diplomats had pulled out. I was an unmarried American woman who would want to photograph civilians. In Afghanistan women were not allowed to move around outside the home without a male guardian. Photography of any living being was illegal. According to one famous hadith, the Prophet Muhammad said: “Every image-maker will be in the Fire, and for every image that he made a soul will be created for him, which will be punished in the Fire.”

  But aside from a brief moment when I wondered whether I would be able to carry out my work, I wasn’t scared. I believed that if my intentions were for a good cause, nothing bad would happen to me. And Ed was not a daredevil journalist. I didn’t think he would recommend a trip that might end in my death.

  On Ed’s recommendation I immediately sent a bunch of e-mails to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and to several local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), introducing myself as a freelance photographer interested in photographing the lives of women under the Taliban. Almost immediately I began to receive responses. I was shocked: I didn’t have backing from a major publication—to them I was a nobody—but they still took the time to answer my e-mails and offer logistical support. Few journalists were covering Afghanistan under the Taliban, and they were grateful for my interest. I arranged to arrive in two weeks.

  The week before I was scheduled to go, I checked my bank balance. The remnants of my wedding money had dwindled to nothing, and most of my freelancing payments hadn’t come through. I couldn’t possibly cancel this trip because of money. In most war zones credit cards were not accepted: The only accepted currency was a wad of dollars. And I didn’t have dollars. Or rupees, for that matter. My mother couldn’t lend me money; I refused to ask my father and Bruce for anything beyond the wedding money, because they had repeatedly expressed their belief that I needed to make it on my own. I called my sister Lisa and her husband, Joe, and without hesitation—and without asking why I was traveling to Afghanistan or whether that might be a bad idea—they wired a few thousand dollars into my bank account that very day.

  • • •

  IT WAS MAY 2000 when I arrived in Pakistan, in transit to Afghanistan for the first time, with my Nikons, one panoramic camera, one suitcase, and four worries: I was from America (a country that had recently sanctioned Afghanistan because of sheltering the Islamic fundamentalist leader Osama bin Laden); I was a photographer (and photographing any living thing was strictly prohibited under the Taliban); I was a single woman (and according to the Taliban should be kept in my father’s house or travel at all times with a mahram, a husband or male relative who functioned as a guardian); and I was arriving at a time of extreme censorship by the Taliban.

  Pakistan was the country closest to India that had a working Afghan Embassy, where I could apply for a visa. Several colleagues at the Associated Press in New Delhi recommended that I contact the AP correspondent in Pakistan, Kathy Gannon, to help facilitate the visa process and brief me on the logistics of operating as a woman in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Kathy, like very few other journalists in the world, had been working there for more than a decade. Over a drink at the UN club in Islamabad, she casually navigated me through the process of working under the Taliban, offered me a place to stay at the AP house in Kabul, and put me in touch with Amir Shah, the AP’s local stringer. Her enthusiasm eased some of my fear.

  The next morning I wondered what to wear to the Embassy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. I forgot to ask Kathy that most basic question. But I knew that modesty was essential. Afghan women wore burqas, but Western women in Pakistan did not. I settled on a salwar kameez (the traditional baggy pants and long shirt worn in the region) and a wide, draping head scarf, referred to as either a chador or hijab, depending on what part of the Muslim world one was traveling through. I opted for a large head scarf rather than the type of all-encompassing fabric that wrapped around both the head and the body. I prepared my papers, passport photos—ones I had shot with me wearing a heavy black head scarf—and made my way with all my paperwork to the embassy. For journalists, no matter who they are, there are few experiences filled with more terror than the infuriating, bureaucratic, often arbitrary, but necessary process of getting a visa.

  Ed’s advice rang in my ear: “Do not look any Afghan male directly in the eye. Keep your head, your face, and your body covered. Don’t laugh or joke under any circumstance. And most important, sit each day in the visa office and drink tea with the visa clerk, Mohammed, to ensure that your application will actually get sent to Kabul and processed.”

  The Afghan Embassy was a rudimentary, nondescript building in the diplomatic quarter of the city, and the visa office was a small, bland room off to the side with its own entrance from the outside. The other officials inside the embassy could see what happened in the visa office through a small window. The air inside was stiff with body odor. A youngish man with puffy cheeks and a white turban piled atop his head, a dark beard hovering above his chest, and a prematurely aged face—Mohammed—sat behind a desk across from a tattered couch and a few chairs. A steady stream of UN workers and their Afghan drivers shuffled in and out of the room. They were all men. When I entered, Mohammed registered my gender with a faint flicker of surprise, directed me with his eyes to the ratty couch, and proceeded to attend to every male in the room, whether they’d come in before me or not.

  He finally called me to the desk. He spoke simple English. I handed him my passport, wondering if he would eject me because I was American.

  “Are you married?” he asked.

  “Yes, married,” I said. “With two boys back in New York.”

  He took my papers and told me to return in three weeks. I nodded. I returned the next day.

  He didn’t seem to mind. I was careful not to speak to him unless he first directed a question to me. For the first two of what would be nine mornings, we sat in silence. On the third morning I decided to break Ed’s rule.

  “Are you married, Mohammed?”

  Without missing a beat, he replied: “No. No wife. My mother died, and there is no wife. I cannot find one. My brothers are looking, but it is taking too long.”

  His body language changed as he talked about himself; he lifted his chin and directed his eyes toward me. It was clear the woman issue made him fearful and sad. An Afghan man’s status depended in part on having sons.

  “But there must be a woman for you,” I said.

  “Too difficult … ,” he explained, suddenly seeming vulnerable. “It is impossible to meet a wife in Afghanistan without the help of mother, sisters. Men and women do not mix outside. I need my family to find me a wife.”

  At that point another
embassy worker walked in the room, and Mohammed shut down. I dropped my eyes to the floor and left.

  The next morning Mohammed grinned when I entered.

  “Your visa application has gone to Kabul.” He spoke to me in front of a fellow Taliban member for the first time. “You can remove your hijab here. No need to wear this—you are not Muslim.”

  I had come to appreciate the respect I’d showed Mohammed and his colleagues by arriving at the embassy in proper hijab (which generally means being covered and wearing modest, unrevealing clothing). The notion of revealing so much of my hair and face to two male strangers made me uncomfortable. I also feared that Mohammed’s comment might have been an obscene request from Taliban officials who wanted to take advantage of an American woman’s openness.

  “No, thank you. I will wear it.”

  • • •

  THAT WEEKEND I WENT to the Pakistani town of Peshawar to photograph the Afghan refugee camps set up to accommodate the thousands of Afghans who fled during the wars. When I returned to the embassy that Monday, Mohammed projected a strange ease, smiling and acting as if he had been happily anticipating my visit. We shared our morning tea.

  “There is no word yet from Kabul on your visa.” He was busy, and there were many officials around, so I lingered until we were alone again. “How was your weekend?” he asked.

  “I went to the Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar.” I offered this but little else. I didn’t know what might offend him.

  “Where did you stay? A hotel? Where do you stay in Islamabad?”

  I skirted around the answers to his questions about where I was sleeping with a demure smile. It didn’t feel right to divulge such information to a young Talib.

  Mohammed suddenly leaned forward, glancing through the window to the inside of the main embassy, looking for anyone who might have been listening. There was no one.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he whispered.

  “Sure, ask me anything, sir,” I said, “as long as my answers do not inhibit my getting a visa.”

  He smiled nervously. “Is it true … ,” he started. “I mean … I hear that men and women in America go out in public together without being married.” He paused again, leaning in to look out the window until he was reassured no one was listening. “That men and women can live together without being married?”

  I knew he was taking a chance with the question. The Taliban insists its members renounce sexual curiosity; his anxiety flooded the room.

  “Are you sure my answers will not affect whether I get my visa?” I asked.

  “I promise you they will not.”

  “Unmarried men and women in America spend a lot of time together,” I said. “They go on something called ‘dates’ to movies, to the theater, to restaurants. Men and women sometimes even live together before they marry, and”—unlike in Afghanistan, where most marriages were arranged by and among relatives—“Americans marry for love.”

  Why was I saying this to a Talib at the Afghan Embassy? Given the cultural and language barriers between us, I felt certain that he understood no more than 10 percent of what I was saying. But he was enthralled.

  “Do men and women … Is it true that men and women touch? And have children before they are married?”

  “Yes,” I replied gently. “Men and women touch before they are married.”

  “You are married, right?” he asked.

  I smiled, finally comfortable enough to tell him the truth. I don’t know why I felt comfortable enough to tell him anything. Maybe because he felt comfortable enough to ask such racy questions? To admit that his mind went to a place forbidden to an unmarried man by the Taliban’s severe interpretation of the Koran? “No, Mohammed. I am not married. I lived with a man for a long time—like we were married.”

  He interrupted me. “What happened? Why did you leave? Why are you not married?”

  Mohammed was no longer a Talib to me. We were simply two people in our twenties, getting to know each other.

  “In America women work,” I said. “And right now I am traveling and working.”

  He smiled. “America is a good place,” he said.

  “It is.”

  Five days later I picked up my visa.

  • • •

  DRIVING THROUGH THE KHYBER PASS, along a road as rocky as the terrain, I watched the jagged Spin Ghar mountains slice into the cobalt sky. Some male employees of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, had agreed to drive me from the Pakistan border to Jalalabad and then Kabul. We rode in silence through the stunning, otherworldly landscape. Every few miles an old Russian tank sat, poised in its death and ridden with bullets—a stark reminder that Afghanistan’s beauty could not hide its bleak, troubled history. Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries in the world. Carcasses of bombed-out buildings lined long stretches of barren road. Ghostlike women shrouded head to toe in the traditional blue burqas wove in and out of the dust. Young boys filled potholes with shovels, and drivers pelted them with coins.

  Scenes of Afghanistan while it was under Taliban rule, May and July 2000.

  I stayed at the United Nations guesthouse in the decrepit clay city of Jalalabad for $50 a night—a sum that did not pass through most Afghans’ hands in a year. A laminated sheet listed the UN’s rules and regulations: “Curfew at 7 p.m. No interaction with the locals. Must be escorted at all times by a United Nations driver. This is an active war zone. In the case of shelling, the bomb shelter is located behind the house, and equipped with bottles of water, food, and supplies.”

  I removed my brown chador and my salwar kameez in the bathroom. My costume hadn’t shielded me from the Afghans’ heavy stares; few foreign women, women without burqas, traveled through the country. Only in the shower did I relax. The freedom, independence, and sexuality that I, as an American woman, held at the core of my being completely contradicted the Afghan way of life under the Taliban. I knew I had to shed my own views in order to work successfully here.

  The UNHCR team passed me off to two men from the Comprehensive Disabled Afghans Program (CDAP), an organization that, among other things, rehabilitated Afghans injured by the thousands of land mines buried throughout the countryside by the Soviets. The mujahideen—Afghan factions who fought the Soviet occupiers—also took up the tactic, and as a result millions of mines continued to blow off the legs and hands of Afghans innocently walking or playing in the fields. As a journalist I was supposed to register with the Foreign Ministry in Kabul, but I decided to risk a few days in the countryside first. If the ministry knew of my presence in the country, they might forbid me from visiting certain areas or put a Taliban minder on my tail. My two CDAP escorts, my driver, Mohammed, and my guide and interpreter, Wahdat, weren’t members of the Taliban and thought we could travel undetected. Wahdat, who insisted I also call him Mohammed, would serve as my mahram in the absence of a male relative. In order to bring my cameras into the country, I said I was photographing the physical destruction left by war, but the two Mohammeds had planned an ambitious journey through the provinces of Logar, Wardak, and Ghazni, where they could introduce me to Afghan civilians: land mine victims, widows, doctors, families.

  Afghanistan was a tribal culture. Women were cloistered inside large compounds that only other women or male relatives could enter, and I knew it would be impossible to get a candid interview with a woman the moment they saw Mohammed. My guide was in his early forties, with gray-streaked dark brown hair and the long black beard customary among Pashtun men. Their tribe is the largest in Afghanistan and widely considered the most conservative. The Taliban comprised primarily Pashtun men, though some Tajiks and Hazaras were also members. Mohammed’s wrinkled map of a face reflected a lifetime of war, repression, and poverty and obscured any trace of his youth. As my mahram, he had to accompany me, a woman alone, wherever I went. From the start of my journey, I struggled with how to skirt the Taliban photography ban: images burned my eyes and my soul, but I was too nervous about the consequences to dare sn
eak a picture as I looked out the car window and watched potential frames fade into the moving countryside. This was a country where a machine gun was more prevalent than a Nikon, and I knew that every picture I took would require an intricate process of negotiation—with both my mahram and my subject. Without speaking Persian or Dari, I had to rely on my guide to be my voice in a delicate situation. I was stripped of my ability to work myself into a scene, to gain access into people’s lives with the ritual of negotiation that photographers depend on. Over the last several years I had learned how to observe people by establishing that initial rapport through eye contact. In Afghanistan I could barely look at people. I had to constantly remind myself not to look men in the eye. There were so many rules and restrictions, especially against photographing women.

  But because the Taliban had banned TV, foreign media, and newspapers—any publications aside from religious documents—most Afghans knew the images I shot would never make it back into their country. They did not have to worry about Afghans seeing their women in, say, the Houston Chronicle. Much to my surprise, many Afghans, male and female, were open to being photographed.

  We drove for hours over the skeleton of a road, a patchwork of stones and gravel and dust, alongside herds of camels, and made our way into the provinces. Mohammed’s prayers rose above the hum of the engine as he fingered his tespih—Muslim prayer beads, similar to a rosary. I still didn’t take out my camera. On occasion I was so enraptured by the gorges and rivers and sharply sloping green hills that I allowed my scarf to slip from my forehead back to the nape of my neck, my sleeves down from my wrists to my forearm. When I refocused, I sensed Mohammed’s obvious discomfort with the sight of the skin on my wrist.

  Our first stop was a house in Logar Province; Mohammed wanted to show me normal family life in Afghanistan. A young child stood in the weeds in front of a clay compound built to house an entire Afghan family of forty or so. Mohammed sent for the man in charge. There were no telephones, and our visit was unannounced. Mohammed introduced me as a foreign journalist, interested in the state of Afghanistan and its people following twenty years of war, and soon the kettle for tea was lit.