I knew very little about Afghanistan and even less about beauty school when I came across a story about an American-funded beauty academy in post-Taliban Kabul. The dangers of presuming to represent foreign cultures have been hammered deeply into my brain (I was almost an anthropologist), but I found the story irresistible: it was contro-versial, inherently aesthetic, and dealt with a part of the world which we need to try to understand. Our standard vision of Afghan women - oppressed, hidden, tormented -
isn't entirely wrong, but it's terribly narrow. The seriousness with which the students took hair and makeup amidst such tremendous destruction and poverty seemed, at first, anomalous; but beauty is big business in Kabul (giving lie to any equation of Islam with the erasure of femininity). And even in the grimmest circumstances, our humanity is preserved in the mundane. Maybe this is why the women so often, and so disarmingly, followed up their horror stories with laughter. We were in Kabul for almost ten weeks, and the exchanges that took place behind the camera informed my treatment of those we caught on tape. The students seemed as amused and touched by us - four women far from home with a lot of heavy equipment, bizarrely determined to film their every move - as we were by them. They had a lot to say, and back in the edit room the responsibility of conveying their message seemed impossible to meet. What I heard again and again was the fear that Afghanistan might be forgotten by the rest of the world as it has been in the past, used as a pawn in a bigger global game and then left to deal with the conse-
quences on its own. And so I hope in its small way this film will play a part in bringing their reality closer to ours, in reminding us that we're all part of the same fragile world and that only chance has kept some of us safe while others endure incomprehensible violence, and in keeping us thinking - and arguing - about what we need to do to make that world a happier place for everyone. I hope too that it will teach people something about the fine art of cutting hair.

-Liz Mermin