Little Women of Baghlan
~ a soon to be published book by Susan Fox
When Joanne Carter landed in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 21, 1968, she didn’t bring much—a Peace Corps footlocker with her name painted on it, filled with skirts and blouses appropriate for a Muslim country, malaria medicine, and a diary, the pages still crisp and blank.
Over the next two years Jo's tiny handwriting filled the pages, spilling over into the margins. Woven among the daily entries—the move to Baghlan with coworkers Nan and Mary, the nursing school for Afghan girls, the bazaar, parties, fleas, dust, and dysentery—is a rare glimpse into a country that in 1968 had been safe and welcoming to the volunteers; a country with little religious fanaticism and on the brink of becoming a modern nation. Forty years after Jo’s departure, there is little evidence to indicate that such a country ever existed.
"Little Women of Baghlan” is Jo’s story, but it is also the story of the Afghan people, of a time and a place that has been forgotten; a story that begins, "Once upon a time in Afghanistan . . .”
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