Bartholomew's Notes

A snippet from The Manila Bulletin:

THE renowned journalist Barbara Walters did a story on gender roles in Kabul several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked about five paces behind their husbands.

She returned to Kabul recently and observed that women still walk behind their husbands, but now seem to walk even further back and are now happy with the old custom.

Barbara approached one of the Afghani women and asked. “But why do you now seem happy with the old custom that you used to try and change?”

“Because there are still a lot of unexploded land mines left from the war,” said the woman.

UPDATE: Whoops, this one’s not true:

…During the Vietnam war, the story was presented as a joke about how the Vietnamese were handling the grim the reality of living in a landmined country. In the early 1960s, the tale starred the Burmese who were said to be reacting to the threat of leftover WWII mines, During WWII our tale was told about British troops musing the change in the bahavior of an unnamed desert people…

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