Our reporter stumbles through a shrouded world

Mustafa whips a deflated ghost off a nail on the wall and, before I know it, I am expected to plunge headfirst into the great wide ocean of fabric better known as the burqa.

I instinctively search for an exit for my head and hands and, finding none, thrash like a child. The women in the burqa shop burst into laughter. Soon, four pairs of hands yank the burqa tight around my temples. My head immediately feels uncomfortably compressed.

"It's too tight!" I protest.

"No, no. Not too tight," says Marzia, my companion for the afternoon. "If it's not tight, you'll be in trouble." That means it would hang too low, leaving the mesh through which I will view the world near my nose and mouth.

After five years under the Taliban-enforced burqa, these women are waiting, they acknowledge, for someone to announce that it's OK to take off the once-mandatory covering, popularly known as chadori, which means tent.

Realizing that I am a beginner, the women help me find my way into each new selection Mustafa produces, fitting me like a lady-in-waiting with a bevy of handmaids.

Marzia looks disapprovingly at the length.

"Isn't it too short?" she asks. The burqa only comes to mid-calf, an offense which might have earned me a few lashings in the Taliban era had I been wearing stockings.

They flip on several longer versions. At first, the quick covering of my head gives me the panicked feeling of being hooded like a hostage. But gradually, I become more acclimated. Some burqas sit irritatingly on my eyelashes. Sometimes the intricate embroidery around the crown is fraying or discolored. Others have clearly been used, stained with dirt, or like Marzia's, smudged with a bit of peach-colored makeup.

Sometimes I find a shade of azure or cobalt that I like, but many of these are not up to Marzia's standards.

"You see this," she says, stretching out the accordion pleats that make up the back of a burqa. "These will come out when you wash it," she says, warning me not to be fooled into buying a cheaper burqa - prices start at $15 - because it won't wear well.

It proves tough to explain that durability is not a burqa quality I am particularly concerned about. But for Marzia, who has been wearing the same burqa for the past five years, sturdiness is king. Regardless of how worn hers gets, Marzia is, on principle, not buying a new burqa.

She hopes that by spring, the weather will grow warm, Kabul will grow more secure, Afghanistan will grow more peaceful, and women will start showing their faces in public again. For this reason, she's ready to drive a hard bargain for my burqa, convinced that demand is dwindling. She says no one is paying top dollar - or Afghani, that is - for a burqa that is sure to be out of style next season.

That makes Mustafa laugh nervously. He doesn't think that the burqa will go the way of his beard, which he promptly shaved off when the Taliban left town. "People here like to see women wear it," says Mustafa, who, while helping in the fitting room, sees more faces of strange women than most men in Kabul.

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