PESHAWAR, Feb 1: How do people view Afghanistan? Some dub it as a land of the insolent and ignorant; others call it a home to warriors who can be hired, not bought.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a famous Iranian documentary-maker, termed it “a veiled country”, where women are veiled from everything. In his world-class documentary, Travel to Kandahar, he compares the burqasclad women with sun veiled by an eclipse. Solar eclipse is generally considered a bad omen.

Why don’t people react when they see women kept in multidimensional covers. The cover of diseases, poverty, ignorance, torture and many other abuses.

His characters, through their behaviour and gestures, explain to the world about a country which has been made a torrid landscape - a lifeless society - a fear-bound land - a bloodthirsty creature.

Here is the story line. A Canadian-Afghan girl arrives in Iran, where she contacts her relatives in a refugee camp. Here she seeks the help of an old man in finding her ailing sister living in Kandahar.

The old man, who has three wives — two Hazara and one Uzbek — asks her to pose as his wife. She accepts. He takes her to the border of Kandahar, and asks an Afghan boy — a fixer — to taker her to Kandahar for 100 dollars.

When they get to Kandahar city gate, Taliban’s security officials search her baggage for forbidden items like books or music instruments.

In Kandahar, she meets an America orthopedist (wears an artificial beard) who provides artificial limbs to mines victims.

No male doctor is allowed to see a female patient. When an ailing woman visits a doctor, sitting behind a veil, she talks to the him through her 10-year-old daughter.

One day a man visited the doctor’s clinic and asked him to provide him an artificial leg for his wife.

Makhmalbaf wonders why do people visit Iran to see the solar eclipse. Why don’t they go to Afghanistan: a veiled country. Where half of the humanity is eclipsed. He compares them through separate closeups - the solar eclipse and the jali (gauze patch) covering the face in a burqa.

A few months back, Makhmalbaf visited Peshawar and purchased Afghan clothing and music cassettes for his documentary.

Earlier, he made another film entitled Bicycle-rider, on the life of refugees in Peshawar. But, his Travel to Kandahar has proved a success in some European countries.