The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan (2 page)

Buskaschi Polo with a leather-wrapped goat head as a ball
*

Trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology and The Parsons New School for Design, Lela was a skilled painter, sculptor, and photographer. With her business skills in bookkeeping and accounting, as well as her interest in the arts, some high school friends invited her to sell for their tribal arts business, Primitive Artisans.

Lela had the effervescent and charismatic personality of a natural born sales representative. Once she got her teeth into something of interest, she held on like a bull dog. Selling was her oxygen. Lela thrived in the sale of art objects, especially tribal art.

After she got the customer list from Primitive Artisans, she was off and running. In addition to tribal art from Africa and Latin America, Lela took on a line of Afghan tribal jewelry for a New Jersey importer.

Within the first year, Lela developed her sales accounts to the point where she was selling all she could get. In fact, that was the problem. The more she sold of a popular item, the more difficult it became to get supplies. As demand increased, tribal artisans increased their prices and reduced the quality of their crafts to the point of destroying demand.

In the early 1970s, Lela represented six tribal art importers. Tribal art was imported from Africa, Latin America, South Pacific and Middle East. It was a time when Islamic art was becoming popular in American and European museums.

Most of Lela’s customers were museum shops and exhibits, as well as retail venues. She represented importers providing one-of-a-kind tribal art. These provided her with 33% to 50% commission. Of the hundreds of items in her inventory, Afghan jewelry was the best seller, even though it only provided a 33% commission.

Lela’s main problem was an unreliable supplier, a one man operation Lela called Flake. There were also problems with the other importers, in addition to the diminishing quality.

In an effort to avoid poor quality and drug entrapment, Lela examined all imports with great care, especially Afghan jewelry. Lapis and turquoise stones were sometimes replaced with thin flakes backed with jeweler’s gum or lacquered gem stone grinding dust composites.

For these reasons, Lela realized she must deal with the artisan sources directly—no more distributors. She gathered information and took courses in jewelry making and gem stones. She was determined that the only mistakes made would be her own.

Her Afghan jewelry importer devoted less and less time to tribal art imports. As his main priorities were rugby and drugs, Flake became a rugby drug-addict. Half the time he was recovering from rugby injuries. During recovery, he was on drugs to deal with the pain, or so he said, so mostly he lived in a drug induced haze.

The only time he gave to his import business was during periods of injury recovery. The injuries became so severe that he was on crutches a good deal of the time. Lela was forced to go to his apartment to pick out jewelry and she took her husband, Paul, with her as protection.

The jewelry inventory that remained in old chests of drawers was of such low quality that Lela refused to sell it. Her supplier declared he was going back to Afghanistan for ‘better stuff.’

Lela insisted on going with him to help pick out saleable tribal art. The importer absolutely refused to take her with him. That ended their questionable business relationship. She suspected him of other business interests, and later she learned that he financed opium poppy farmers in Afghanistan.

Finally, Lela decided she would go to Afghanistan alone. She and Paul began to make plans. This was frightening for Paul. A woman alone in a tribal Muslim country seemed self-destructive; however, Paul knew that Lela was far more adventurous and enterprising than he.

Lela was a bookkeeper and accountant with a Gypsy temperament. She grew up on the Red Hook waterfront in Brooklyn. She was a Red Hook tough.
^v
Her uncles were union organizers, providing Lela with part-time accounting jobs with that other
Family
.

Lela and Afghan friends with kilems and brass (in background)

Lela carried a switchblade, even during 41 years of marriage. Yet, to those she cared about, and cared about her, Lela was a beautiful, graceful, soft spoken, gentle, kind, and brilliant woman.

Lela and Paul were constantly talking about Gypsies. From the point of view of Paul’s economic specialty, Economics of Tribe, Clan, Family and Household, Gypsies held a fascination for both of them.

Paul could not figure out exactly what it was, but he believed Gypsy tribes provided a bridge between ancient and modern households. Gypsy clans were living anthropology, he theorized. Gypsy migration was a survival skill maintained over thousands of years. Perhaps constant migration had become a genetic trait contributing to human survival, or so Paul speculated.

Lela usually found Paul’s theories entertaining, but she had a more romantic notion of Gypsies.

They each read everything they could find about Gypsies. They found a book about a twelve year-old Dutch boy, who with his parent’s consent, spent four years traveling with a German Gypsy clan in the 1940s. The boy related Gypsy customs, observing that the clan passed easily through European borders in the Soviet bloc. He believed the Gypsies were couriers to and from border guards throughout Europe.

The boy noted Gypsies received money from border guards for the packets they delivered. Perhaps their role as underground messengers provided income. The boy wrote down all his observations and experiences in a diary, which was the only condition his parents made before he departed with the Gypsies.

Lela’s interest in Gypsies ended abruptly on a Saturday night in New York City. She and Paul had gone to a Broadway film premier with a couple of high school friends from Red Hook. After the film, walking with the theatre crowds on Broadway, a woman too well dressed to be a hippie or street person, approached them.

Lela knew that pickpockets tended to be well dressed and this woman wore a beautiful new tan leather long skirt, matching leather pumps and long open leather jacket. Peeking out of the open jacket, Lela saw a lovely Russian peasant blouse. With her well-developed skills at observation, Lela also noted that the woman had no handbag. A well-dressed woman always carried a handbag; a pickpocket would not.

When the woman took out a pair of scissors to cut Paul’s back pocket to take his wallet, Lela reacted. Paul was not aware of what was happening until he saw Lela’s high heel on the pickpocket’s neck. With her switchblade, Lela cut off one of the woman’s pigtails, then grabbed the woman’s scissors, pulled her up, jabbed her lightly in the rear end with her own scissor, and shoved her into the gutter. The woman ran away as fast as she could, howling.

Paul was awestruck as Lela’s friends, Gin and Bob, laughed and patted her on the back. None of the Broadway crowd took any notice as Lela then led them into a café. The Red Hook friends explained that this was nothing compared to the things that happened growing up on the Brooklyn waterfront. Paul’s background growing up in the South was genteel compared with Lela’s early years.

Thinking about this experience, Paul realized that Lela was better equipped for Afghanistan than he imagined, but were the Afghans ready for her? This was a woman who still insisted on wearing her red satin Red Sharks gang jacket years after high school.

When they got home that night, Paul had other questions to ask Lela about their Broadway experience. He had been walking a few feet ahead talking to Bob and was curious to know why Lela and Gin were walking behind them in the first place. Lela replied that it was because Broadway was so crowded but also because she had some personal things to discuss with Gin.

Lela went on to explain that they were exchanging information about their erotic preferences. As she told him what these were, she and Paul became quite flushed as they remained fixed on each other’s eyes. Lela said that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Paul told her he was quite happy with their sex life. She loved to have her feet and back massaged and so did he. They both studied Murphy Massage and were keen on mutual practice.

He knew from the look on her face what was coming next. “OK,” she said, “I told you all the girl talk; now you tell me the guy talk. You can massage my feet while you tell me. He massaged her feet while telling her what Bob and he had talked about.

“After describing his preferences, Bob launched into an erotic description of how some classical music, especially Mahler’s
Resurrection Symphony
, affected him and Gin. They liked to make love as the intense base decibels washed over them. He had told Paul that he loved the firm, springy feel of Gin’s flesh, especially her legs.”

Paul told Lela that guys rarely talk about such things, but he was sure women were far more open with each other. Lela kissed him passionately and said, “Paul my love, you are definitely learning more about gals than about guys.”

His eyes glazed over as he launched into another epiphany:

“I suggest that sex stimulates and shifts the human mind into over drive. Without male and female hormones, would people think and plan any enterprise? Does human activity depend on the prospect of sexual satisfaction?

“The prospect of finding hidden knowledge, especially about sex, leads us on interminably. We cannot help ourselves. Just as the planets revolve around the Sun, males revolve around females. Women are our stars. Women energize us; they light our sexual fires. Sex drive, I believe, drives the human mind and intellect.

“You’ve heard it said, ‘I had to light a fire under him before he did such and such.’ And you, Lela, love of my life, have lit a fire under me. You are my star, around whom I will rotate until our fire burns out.”

“Paul, that’s beautiful. I’m touched by your poetry. I know how much we need each other and understand your sexual craving and mine. That’s why I need this upcoming Afghan adventure. It’s sexual, I’m sure, this craving for adventure. I’m certain it’s something I need to do. We both need this solo adventure. The search for hidden knowledge will be an adventure for us both.”

Lela and Paul discussed resolving their sexual needs while she was away in Afghanistan, and they came up with a solution they could both agree on. Lela would choose lovers exclusively outside the U.S. Paul would do the same in the U.S., but outside the home. When she returned to their home in New Jersey, they would resume spousal sex exclusively. They agreed to exchange details of their sexual adventures in letters.

Paul was also concerned about their teenage sons. They solved the problem by finding Dan, a teaching student at Montclair State University. He needed a room and Lela needed a housekeeper and big brother for the boys as Paul did a lot of corporate traveling and was in the process of completing an economics doctorate at the New School in New York.

The deal they arrived at worked for everyone. Dan received room and board, plus $25 per week in exchange for minding the teenage sons and the house. The men and boys all shared the house cleaning on weekends.

LELA AND PAUL – FIRST MEETING:

Lela’s and Paul’s practical experience with family formation began in September 1958, with a train ride from Forest Hills to Manhattan.