Like a suit and tie, except if you don't wear it they kill you.

Wahida is the coordinator of the Fab Lab. She's an extremely competent english speaker, and has been teaching me the Pashto alphabet. On the third or fourth day we were here, she invited Adriana and me to come to her home and meet her family.

Adriana and I, hijabed to the nines, waited inside the gate of the Fab Lab for a taxi to arrive. Wahida herself arrived on foot, wearing a burka (what I have taken to referring to as "The Blue Blankie"). She was escorted by a much younger cousin or brother, who rode on her lap in the taxi.

Once inside the densely carpeted cab, she threw back the veil and greeted us with three kisses each. "I am so happy today that you are coming to my home." she said. She looked sideways at Adriana, and asked "Are you angry?"

"No! Of course not. I'm happy." Adriana is observant and sometimes reserved (though far from shy). Not what we'd think of as angry, but her pensive demeanor is sometimes off-putting to Afghans. People would spend the rest of the day asking, "Sister - why are you so upset?"

Wahida's father is the head of the Veterinary faculty at the local university. Their entire family lives in a sort of condo complex attached to the campus. We headed upstairs, through a courtyard with chickens and children, into a room lined with the pinkest curtains imaginable and comfy low cushions on the floor. This, Wahida explained, was the study where she and her sisters do their homework.

"Why are you so angry today?" She asked us both. "Please, this is my home and you are my sisters. You must be comfortable here." I guess we must have been a little high-strung, in our eagerness not to be rude. I got the message and explained, "It's an honor to be invited to your house, and we don't want to embarrass you. We're still learning how not to be jerky americans. We'll try to relax."

We first met her father, who had been translating English textbooks into Pashto for his students. He came and sat with us, welcomed us to his home, and asked about our mission.

"We are not bad people," He told us, apologetically. "We have had much fighting here, but only some Afghans are bad. They ruin things for everyone. There is so much destruction here, but we are not all bad." It's funny - I wanted to tell him the same thing about Americans.

We would come to learn that Wahida's family is very erudite and cosmopolitan by Afghan standards. Still, our next destination from the girly study (complete with exactly seventeen stuffed animals, Wahida told us) was the outside oven. Her mother and aunt were baking nan in the mud oven outside - pictures are attached. Her mom embraced us both like we had grown up next door and were coming home for the first time in a decade. We also met some small cousins and Wahida's youngest sister, who is a firecracker. I didn't have a chance to meet any brothers.

Heading back upstairs, we visited a next-door neighbor, the wife of one of the professors. She must have been about our age - What was interesting to me was, after Wahida introduced us, she felt compelled to explain that her neighbor had no children. They were both almost apologetic about it. Her neighbor even gestured to her womb, and made some explanation about possibly being sick. I wasn't sure what to say. She showed us the lovely view of the neighborhood from her patio. Overhead, helicopters buzzed. American? Blackwater? I'm not the expert. "A bird for every ghetto," I thought.

I was struck by the homey, open nature of the complex. Doors were open, neighbors were like family. This is almost impossibly precious and rare in Los Angeles. Here, it's the norm.

We headed back for tea and a sit with Wahida's female relatives. It was a delightful, girly day. One of her cousins, a tenth-grader named Soroyia, came to ply some english on us. Soroyia is an aspiring dentist. As we sat, drank tea, and applied henna, I asked questions about the subjective experience of females. "Wahida, what happens if you don't wear the Blue Blanket?"

"The Burka? People make problems for you. My parents don't want me to wear it."

"No?"

"No. There was a time when I did not, but people sent a letter to my father. He became very afraid. I was sent to Kabul."

Over the course of the afternoon, we heard more of her family's story. There are competing political factions at the local university: old-guard holdovers from the communist days (Wahida's dad and the University chancellor fall into this category) vs. the kind of militant extremists Faux News would have us believe Afghanistan is peopled with exclusively. What few moderates there are suffer the derision of both. Elections are coming at the end of summer, and tensions are high.

All of the girls in Wahida's family are attending school, and this is not easy for them. Their house has been set on fire. While there are surely more nuanced politics at work, the women are an easy target for the aggression of the "narrow minded religious people", many of whom are classmates and professors within the university community. People they know personally, and see on a daily basis. Even when you know exactly who the bad guys are, it's not so easy as just killing them, if they're your neighbors and you know their brothers and maybe their brothers are ok, but if you take out one extremist now his brother has your fucking number and if you have made an enemy of an Afghan, you have made an error.

These are old grudges, complicated by history and an endless parade of would-be colonists. The Greeks, the English, the Germans, the Russians, the Americans... As we sat eating an enormous spread of food, in which Adriana and I felt we barely made enough of a dent to be marginally polite, Wahida's mom talked to us in Pashto. She said many of the same things her husband told us when we arrived: We are not all bad people. We are happy you have come. People try to make trouble with us. They say because we allow our daughters to go out, we are not muslim. They make problems for us. Sixteen of my family gone in one day, to a Taliban bomb. I am so happy you are here today. We have slaughtered a hen for you. Please, you are my daughters now, you must eat more.

Wahida, why are your sisters so upset?