‘Here we can forget our worries’: Weddings provide solace at a difficult time for women in Kabul

Women have received most of the restrictions since the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan 17 months ago, but weddings offer a small chance to relax, writes Pamela Constable

Sabrina reenters the reception hall in her third dress of the evening as hundreds of guests look on (The Washington Post by Elise Blanchard)

The spacious ballroom glitters with lights. Young women in chiffon and satin gowns sashay among the tables or twirl slowly on the dance floor to tapes of rhythmic music. Amid “oohs” and “aahs,” the bride and groom are lowered from the ceiling in a golden cable car and escorted to a lotus-shaped throne. Tiny drones whir in the air, recording every moment.

Outside the high-tech fairy-tale setting, the Afghan capital remains firmly in the grip of a strict religious regime that has barred teenage girls from school, prohibited women from travelling without a male guardian, required them to wear shapeless Islamic robes in public and most recently banned them from all universities.

But on this chilly December evening, in the ladies’ hall of the newly opened White Palace wedding hotel, several hundred Cinderellas are free to pirouette, compare hairdos and briefly leave behind the restrictions of Taliban rule that had disrupted their plans for college or careers, and left them brooding at home.