The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan Read Free

Frankfurt. During her flight home, Lela learned that Kit was the Soviet KGB field officer responsible for Kabul, Afghanistan. Feeling betrayed and only wanting to be involved in family, people and business, Lela saw no need to remain in touch with Kit. After leaving Kabul, they had no further contact. iv

    Buskaschi Polo with a leather-wrapped goat head as a ball *

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HOW IT BEGINS - SPRING, 1975
    Trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology and The Parsons New School for Design, Lela was a skilled painter, sculptor, and photographer. With her business skills in bookkeeping and accounting, as well as her interest in the arts, some high school friends invited her to sell for their tribal arts business, Primitive Artisans.
    Lela had the effervescent and charismatic personality of a natural born sales representative. Once she got her teeth into something of interest, she held on like a bull dog. Selling was her oxygen. Lela thrived in the sale of art objects, especially tribal art.
    After she got the customer list from Primitive Artisans, she was off and running. In addition to tribal art from Africa and Latin America, Lela took on a line of Afghan tribal jewelry for a New Jersey importer.
    Within the first year, Lela developed her sales accounts to the point where she was selling all she could get. In fact, that was the problem. The more she sold of a popular item, the more difficult it became to get supplies. As demand increased, tribal artisans increased their prices and reduced the quality of their crafts to the point of destroying demand.
    In the early 1970s, Lela represented six tribal art importers. Tribal art was imported from Africa, Latin America, South Pacific and Middle East. It was a time when Islamic art was becoming popular in American and European museums.
    Most of Lela’s customers were museum shops and exhibits, as well as retail venues. She represented importers providing one-of-a-kind tribal art. These provided her with 33% to 50% commission. Of the hundreds of items in her inventory, Afghan jewelry was the best seller, even though it only provided a 33% commission.

    Lela’s main problem was an unreliable supplier, a one man operation Lela called Flake. There were also problems with the other importers, in addition to the diminishing quality.
    In an effort to avoid poor quality and drug entrapment, Lela examined all imports with great care, especially Afghan jewelry. Lapis and turquoise stones were sometimes replaced with thin flakes backed with jeweler’s gum or lacquered gem stone grinding dust composites.
    For these reasons, Lela realized she must deal with the artisan sources directly—no more distributors. She gathered information and took courses in jewelry making and gem stones. She was determined that the only mistakes made would be her own.
    Her Afghan jewelry importer devoted less and less time to tribal art imports. As his main priorities were rugby and drugs, Flake became a rugby drug-addict. Half the time he was recovering from rugby injuries. During recovery, he was on drugs to deal with the pain, or so he said, so mostly he lived in a drug induced haze.
    The only time he gave to his import business was during periods of injury recovery. The injuries became so severe that he was on crutches a good deal of the time. Lela was forced to go to his apartment to pick out jewelry and she took her husband, Paul, with her as protection.
    The jewelry inventory that remained in old chests of drawers was of such low quality that Lela refused to sell it. Her supplier declared he was going back to Afghanistan for ‘better stuff.’
    Lela insisted on going with him to help pick out saleable tribal art. The importer absolutely refused to take her with him. That ended their questionable business relationship. She suspected him of other business interests, and later she learned that he financed opium poppy farmers in Afghanistan.
    Finally, Lela decided she would go to Afghanistan alone. She and Paul began