Uploaded February 2016 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
1) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Today is my first day in Mazar. In my first day seeing Afghanistan which I haven’t gone out except in a burqa. The burqa was so strange. The women are almost ghostly. They don’t talk and they are silently with all these men everywhere, merchant faces. Are they really women under there?
My name is Serena Orloff and I’m in a long way from home in California. I’ve come to Northern Afghanistan to help make a film about the lives of women 3 years after the fall of the Taliban.
And I hope that you will have a nice memories because it’s a big change.
I will live with Hasina Hassuvi and her family in Mazar-i-Sharif. We are both 27 and with Hasina’s help I hope to learn about her culture.
Hasina is an unusual Afghan women – she is literate, just finishing medical school and works to support her family as a journalist. An American colleague once calls her – the closest thing Afghanistan has you’re radical feminist!
We can be good friends, I hope.
So please wear your burqa now. We are Afghan girls.
My dad and stepmother are the filmmakers. That’s my stepmother Olga who does most of the filming.
So because I’m old, I don’t have to wear the scarf?
No, who said this?
Olga has wanted to make a film of Afghan women since her first trip to Afghanistan in 2002. Under the Taliban was illegal for women to walk outside without a burqa. Schools for girls were closed and women were not permitted to work. But now the Taliban are gone, so Olga wondered “Why do women still wear the burqa?”
I want to thank your father and mother for hosting my daughter.
Hasina’s says her family is open-minded. Her father has lived outside the country and it’s important to him that the girls in the family all go to school.
You know, in Afghan culture, it’s really important for the girls, to keep them secure.
All of this is so different and we will talk more about this.
This is the room I share with Hasina. We are fortunate to have it. All 6 are for unmarried brothers and sisters sleep in the same room downstairs. Her family is wealthy by Afghan standards. Hasina has arranged interviews with Afghan women and we will also keep video and journals of our own impressions.
We went out to the market place to buy a burqa. There’s only two types of burqa – there’s blue and there’s white and they all look exactly the same.
Some of them, the hat is big. Some of them the hat is tight. So, you need to check it.
When I’m here I can see very little. Basically I feel like someone just threw a smock over my head. There’s not much dignity under here.
1) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Today is my first day in Mazar. In my first day seeing Afghanistan which I haven’t gone out except in a burqa. The burqa was so strange. The women are almost ghostly. They don’t talk and they are silently with all these men everywhere, merchant faces. Are they really women under there?
My name is Serena Orloff and I’m in a long way from home in California. I’ve come to Northern Afghanistan to help make a film about the lives of women 3 years after the fall of the Taliban.
And I hope that you will have a nice memories because it’s a big change.
I will live with Hasina Hassuvi and her family in Mazar-i-Sharif. We are both 27 and with Hasina’s help I hope to learn about her culture.
Hasina is an unusual Afghan women – she is literate, just finishing medical school and works to support her family as a journalist. An American colleague once calls her – the closest thing Afghanistan has you’re radical feminist!
We can be good friends, I hope.
So please wear your burqa now. We are Afghan girls.
My dad and stepmother are the filmmakers. That’s my stepmother Olga who does most of the filming.
So because I’m old, I don’t have to wear the scarf?
No, who said this?
Olga has wanted to make a film of Afghan women since her first trip to Afghanistan in 2002. Under the Taliban was illegal for women to walk outside without a burqa. Schools for girls were closed and women were not permitted to work. But now the Taliban are gone, so Olga wondered “Why do women still wear the burqa?”
I want to thank your father and mother for hosting my daughter.
Hasina’s says her family is open-minded. Her father has lived outside the country and it’s important to him that the girls in the family all go to school.
You know, in Afghan culture, it’s really important for the girls, to keep them secure.
All of this is so different and we will talk more about this.
This is the room I share with Hasina. We are fortunate to have it. All 6 are for unmarried brothers and sisters sleep in the same room downstairs. Her family is wealthy by Afghan standards. Hasina has arranged interviews with Afghan women and we will also keep video and journals of our own impressions.
We went out to the market place to buy a burqa. There’s only two types of burqa – there’s blue and there’s white and they all look exactly the same.
Some of them, the hat is big. Some of them the hat is tight. So, you need to check it.
When I’m here I can see very little. Basically I feel like someone just threw a smock over my head. There’s not much dignity under here.
