Friday night Prayers Porn

Thank God her face is covered.

Porn for the Taliban.

In a dark tea room amid the dusty Kandahar, 23-year-old Latif stares with mouth agape.

A young boy smiles and giggles nervously as he stares at a pair of nude breasts; he has never seen anything like this as far as he can remember. Satellite receivers arrived to the conservative town Kandahar in northern Afghanistan with the allied troops and, along with them, documentary films from Lithuania, Polish educational program and Catalan soap operas. All this is utterly new to the residents, as is pornography.

It is therefore no surprise that the first encounters with satellite channels that offer 100% hardcore porn are the equivalent to the close encounters of the third kind. Men from Kandahar, cut off from the outside world for decades, accustomed to conflicts and uncompromising Taliban laws, have never seen anything like this, even though it is in fact exceptionally soft porn by western standards, usually aired between hotline ads.

A strange discomfort can be felt everywhere: This is not good for our society, says a 26-year-old man; people should not watch things like that, it is not right.

There is, however, no shortage of curious glances. A group of Taliban wearing overgrown beards are sitting in a bar with their eyes riveted to the screen. A western woman enters the room and one of them frantically changes the channel.

Hah! This is just begging for an Iowahawk style parody. Anybody want to give it a go? Scott?