Documentary: Afghan Impressions: - People

Afghanistan makes you tired. The need is bone jarring. It's raw and it is relentless. It wears you down.  

When I was last there in the Spring of 2007 there seemed still to be pockets of hope. I saw it mostly among women working for local NGOs that had been founded and were led by Afghan women. It was also apparent in the faces of street children going to school for the first time.  

But in 2007 hope in Afghanistan felt tentative, dwindling, and like so much else in the country, tired. 

I imagined it like a piece of gauze cloth stretched tight. You could see the misery through it, waiting on the other side.  

Everyone I met seemed to carry a sense, spoken or unspoken, that the cloth was tearing...