AMANULLAH

The owner of the little company described to me the
trials and tribulations of their journey. They had, of
course, been victims of the grasping officials who had
been appointed to see to their safe passage. Hence the
lorry instead of the private cars, and the various diffi-
culties at every Customs post and passport examination.
The curtain seemed to be doomed to rise on tragedy.

It did.

An hour before the advertised start, the property
trunks arrived. The gallant little company fought their
way through a gay and struggling crowd to the front
door of the theatre, and were conducted to the dressing-
rooms. The crowd followed them, and surged round
the windows and the doors.

The rumour had gone round Paghman. It was said
that the immoral theatre of the West was coming to
town. Women would posture and pose in view of the
public. They would wear comic clothes, sing before the
people, unveiled and unashamed, and enact in the
Western way the dramas that could be seen in the
brothels and lower caf^s of Kabul, The crowd, quick-
ened by excitement, struggled with the police and burst
through their ranks to over-fill the cinema long before
the curtain was due to rise.

The dressing-room windows were open to the public
gaze. The artistes protested to the police to remove the
gaping soldiery. The girls were ready to change. They
held their comedy clothes in one hand and waved away
the jeering troops with the other. Nobody stirred.

Then came the police. The police moved away the
soldiers with blows of their staves. Then the girls
tried to wave away the police, who had secured for
themselves the best positions. Paghman had gone
crazy.

Amanullah arrived, and the show began, with the girls

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