Edward Grazda

Two women and a child are pictured walking past the Shrine of Hazrat ‘Ali, also called the Blue Mosque. The central woman wears a chadari, or burqa, with an embroidered face panel and long pleats. The other woman is partially veiled, wearing a chador and smiling broadly. The Taliban imposed dress restrictions on Afghan women in the mid-1990s, making the chadari required in public.

Previously, veils of all types and colors were sometimes worn according to individual belief, social status, and geographic background. Mazar-i Sharif-a cosmopolitan city near Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan-was for centuries home to overlapping cultures, ethnicities, and religions.