My good friend and Terp Shoaib visited Mezr-e Sherif last week.  He brought this Chapan (Traditional Coat) and kolah-e Uzbeki (hat) back as a gift.  I look like a dork, but, it’s pretty cool.

Journalist Christina Lamb on Hamid Karzai:

It was very odd to go to Kabul in early December 2001 and see him sitting in the palace, shivering by the single bar electric fire that was the only heat.

I laughed to see him in traditional dress. He explained that his long striped silk coat, or chapan, and astrakhan hat had been given to him to keep warm as he’d been flown in there from the south with no clothes. Later, when Tom Ford described him as the “chicest man on the planet”, he had little choice but to adopt that as his look.