In Afghanistan

They were able to see the sun at last, to look all around, finally breathe without burqas begin a new chapter. Their words held more confidence. Is respect too large a word, perhaps not when whispered with laughter. Wearing smiles and proud faces, their daughters went to school like the boys, was their future assured? Was learning numbers and their alphabet fulfilling their dreams, or just making them more obscured? Women could greet each other on the street not be beaten with a pole, but never look in the eyes of a man. They could have paying jobs, wear sharp clothes, let lovely faces be exposed, never once looking back before freedom began. That all went away on a terrible day when planes left and men bled out of hills with rage to rule again with knife-sharpened hands and women once again destined to hide inside their dark cage. So, what was accomplished: a taste of freedom that rested on whims of people living far away? Is it perhaps worse to have known and then lose or never to have known-- who can say? As life uncertainly shifts backward again to religious rule and sin will minds and lives be what's left blowing in the wind in Afghanistan...