So I just tried on a shalwar kameez for the first time, and it has to be up there with the most weirdly designed outfits I've ever seen. It's essentially a very long dress shirt (although with only five or six buttons), and then the baggiest pair of pants imaginable. Seriously. The waist on these things has to be a good 60 inches, which seems to be just a waste of material (no pun intended). The standard shalwar belt is actually shorter than the circumference of the waist, and it has to be threaded through a tunnel of fabric painstakingly. And then once you get it all the way through, because it's too short, you have to bunch up the fabric to prevent it from slipping back into the depths of the waist.
But wait. There's more. The only pocket in the pants is a zip-up affair positioned directly over the crotch. And it's really not very big, either (although I'm not sure I'd want to risk putting too much in that pocket anyway).
The loose, billowy nature of this outfit might make sense in a warmer climate, and it does indeed get warm in Kabul in the summer. But in the winter, when it barely breaks 50 in Kabul (and doesn't get anywhere near that warm in the north), it really doesn't make sense to be wearing such a loose outfit. And yet they do. And therefore, so do I.
P.S. Sorry for the hiatus in posting over the last week - I've had a hellacious head cold (verging on the flu) that is just now clearing up after six days, and I've also been on deadline with a series of 4 reports for the Dutch government. And then a week from today, I'm off to the provinces. So posting may continue to be spotty. Apologies to my legions of loyal readers.
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