By Sardar Ahmad
Kabul - Miss Afghanistan may have hit headlines for parading in a bikini in the name of a conservative Muslim country where most women wear head-to-toe burqas.
But in her homeland few even know what the title means, and even fewer have seen the pictures.
"What is Miss Afghanistan, can you explain?" asked a fruit vendor outside a mosque in bustling Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The crowds around his cart, piled high with ripe dates for breaking fast during the just-begun Muslim holy month Ramadan, were equally baffled.
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Nasir Ahmed, 15.
Vida Samadzai, 26, a dark-eyed brunette of the Pashtun tribe who fled Afghanistan with her family in 1996, stepped out in a red bikini at an international beauty pageant in the Philippines at the weekend, professing to make the world aware of "Afghan women's talent, intelligence and beauty".
She is the first Afghan woman in 30 years to participate in the Miss World contest. But she has incurred the wrath of the few Afghans who have seen her photos or read the international news stories.
"What this Afghan girl has done is not freedom but is lascivious," Women's Affairs Minister Habiba Surabi said.
Once the concept was explained, the men and boys embarking on the first day of their month-long fast in Kabul's bazaars were just as scornful.
"She is representing herself, not Afghanistan. It's her own idea," sneered Muhammad Yusuf, 26.
"It's wrong, for a country like Afghanistan," said Ahmed. Munir Shehzad, 22, concurred: "This is not a good thing."
Abdul Rashid, 47, said it was too premature for Afghanistan, where 99 percent of its 28 million people follow a conservative code of Islam, to accept a semi-naked woman.
"Since we are a Muslim country to show up naked is not good," Rashid said.
In the city's beauty parlours, more bafflement: "What is a beauty contest?" asked Sita, 18, who works in central Kabul's Waves Of Beauty salon.
The extremist Taliban, whose rule Samadzai escaped in 1996, forced women to cover themselves from head to toe and prohibited them from attending schools, working outside their homes or stepping out without a close relative.
Nearly two years after their regime was toppled, competing in a bikini in a beauty contest remains taboo.
Under Afghan culture women should not demonstrate their worth through their "beauty or bodies" but by their skills and knowledge, minister Surabi said.
Womens' rights activist Soraya Parlika also condemned Samadzai for flaunting Afghan taboos by appearing "half-naked".
Parlika, who ran secret girls' schools under the Taliban's repressive reign, said bikinis were "forbidden not only in Islam but also in Afghan culture".
While Samadzai competes with beauty queens from around the world, thousands of Afghan women begging in the streets watch the world through the narrow holes of their burqas. - Sapa-AFP