Free The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan by Paul Meinhardt Page B

and admiration.
    The border guards were especially pleased and laughed heartily. They understood the false pathos was solely for them and that revealing the technology behind the show was meant to convince them that they were privy to Gypsy secrets.
    The Gypsies wanted to assure the border guards that they could be trusted. The wedding party performance was captured on film with a spoken narrative added later.
    The journalists were convinced that the wedding party performance alone was worth the four months “traveling like the wind.”

9
SILK ROAD - FALL, 1975
    AUTHOR COMMENTARY:
    Lela wrote extensively about the stories she heard from the journalist couple. They met while studying anthropology at Oxford. She was a cultural anthropologist specializing in human migration. Her thesis was “Silk Road, Pathway of Humanity.” He was into physical anthropology. Both did two years of doctoral work at Çatal Hüyük, the prehistoric city on the Anatolian plain near the south-central Turkish coast.
    They were traveling on a branch of the Silk Road to Athens. Lela’s travels in Afghanistan, Middle East and Europe followed the Silk Road too. The Silk Road was a network of land, sea, and now air routes throughout the world. Its focal point seems to have been Çatal Hüyük.
    The Silk Road may have begun with the first human migrations out of Africa. By the time of the Roman Empire, the Silk Road extended from the cod fisheries of the Newfoundland Grand Banks, in the northwest Atlantic, to China, Japan, and Peru in the east. All branches crossed through Çatal Hüyük.

    Silk Road *
    LELA:
    I hoped to get a flight to Newark when we got to Athens. The airline brochures indicated daily flights to Newark with one stop at Frankfort, and this was going to be fine as I had business with museums and art galleries in the Frankfort area. There are direct flights to Kennedy from Frankfort, but it’s a hassle getting from Kennedy to Newark, and I prefer the stopover.
    The only mishap on the car trip with the journalists was a tire blowout just as we got to Athens. We easily put on the spare and had the tire repaired at a nearby garage. The garage owner turned out to have lived in New York for 25-years, developed a successful restaurant in lower Manhattan, and then sold everything to retire to his home in Athens.
    His English was perfect, and we spent an hour or so talking. During this time the journalist couple took photos and taped conversations with some of the Greek people they met. We tried to pay him for the tire and gas fill, but he would not take any payment.
    I gave him an Afghan tribal necklace, set with turquoise and lapis, for the “woman in your life,” and he was thrilled with such a fine gift. He told us that his wife managed the restaurant and that we three must be their guests.
    The garage owner had realized his dream of an American style bistro, sports tavern, and garage, all within a mile of each other. He insisted on taking the three of us to dinner at his huge stainless steel bistro that looked like some sort of futuristic diner.
    While the bistro featured Greek food, American dishes were prominently displayed in florescent lettering on black Lucite signs. Our host ordered wonderful appetizers. The main course was fresh tuna filets, slow roasted in parchment with fresh fennel, garlic, lemon, chalets in a yogurt sauce.
    Retzina , a wonderful dry resin wine, was served with the appetizers and main course. Fresh fruit and goat cheese followed with Mavrodafni , a black grape wine from the Ionian Islands. Our host’s beautiful wife joined us for dessert and coffee.
    As soon as she sat down, he put the necklace around her neck. She was a work of art without the necklace, but with the necklace she could have been Aphrodite herself. She was American born, of Greek descent. She managed the restaurant, and it was as lovely as she was.
    She said that they met at the NYU library twenty years ago. She was working on her doctorate in