In a Pool in Morocco With an Afghan Woman

(First appeared in The Progressive Populist)

Nadeem, from Afghanistan and wearing a burkini, was already in the pool at the hotel, the Riad Jona, in Marrakech, Morocco, when I arrived. She was in the middle of the shallow end. Her swimsuit, designed for modesty and respect for Islam, splayed out, making her look like a black lily pad.

She was smiling easily.

In Afghanistan, women are banned from visiting parks, gyms, and, notably, swimming pools, especially when men are present. I didn’t have to ask her permission to join her in the pool. But this is Morocco, a country that’s 99 percent Muslim — and I’m not being hyperbolic — and I’m a guest.

I asked anyway.

“Do you mind if I come in?”

“Not at all.”

She now lives in London and has just finished her master’s in architecture.

After niceties about travel and vacations and work prospects in London (hint: they’re bad), I brought up the Taliban.

“Is it as bad as it is in your homeland as we hear?”

“The media sometimes . . . I don’t know,” she said, speaking of the period before and after the Taliban — a time with elections and democracy after the American invasion. “They overstate how bad it is in Afghanistan.”

“Surely, though, things are worse now, yes, since the Taliban returned, right?” I asked. “For starters, it has cut off educational opportunities for women, along with basic rights and freedoms, didn’t they? It seems women are now, essentially, chattel.”

“It was never OK for women, though,” she replied. “It really wasn’t. When the Taliban were out of power, women who went out were told to go home because it wasn’t safe. The Taliban may have been gone, but there were many who still supported them. Now we know not to go out.”

“That’s an improvement?”

“Yeah. Things are better.”

“How can they be better?”

“It’s safer. Before the Taliban, we’d hear bombs. My house shook. The house doesn’t shake anymore. The economy is improving. There are Taliban in the government who are trying to do good work.”

Thing is, she’s not entirely wrong — though not even close to being right.

According to the World Bank, Afghanistan’s economy continues to grow modestly — with real GDP growth estimated at 4.8 percent — but that doesn’t mean living standards are better or incomes are higher. Corporal punishment is up, mostly lashing, for “crimes” such as sodomy, running away from home, and illicit relationships. The country has no constitution. Further, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), in its annual Democracy Index 2024 report, ranked Afghanistan as the most authoritarian country in the world, placing it last among 167 nations. Worse than North Korea.

“I’m not really very political,” she said. “But there isn’t much difference.”

That phrase — “But there isn’t much difference” — struck me.

Is that what’s going on in America?

The GOP’s largest bloc, aggrieved white men, many of them older, are not vexed by the same issues that annoy those who read publications like this one. The Republican base is not having abortions. Their children are not being slammed to the ground by ICE or frog-marched out of Home Depots. They don’t care that reporters have to work for Bari Weiss. They don’t get into a lather because Bill Maher is kind to, and respectful of, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K.

Their America is better — certainly no worse — than it was under Biden. Immigrants, people like Nadeem and her family, are staying away from (and are afraid of) America. Transgender people are banned from women’s field hockey in most places and now have to choose a gender for their driver’s licenses. DEI and political correctness are institutional poison.

They hated their health insurance under Biden. They still hate it. They can afford their EpiPens, anyway, so why all the bitching? Uninsured immigrants and the lazy are flooding the system anyway. The media, which they never trusted, is running scared. University professors are afraid to teach. Trump is bullying those effete, supercilious Europeans. Elon Musk tried to corral the American bureaucracy and makes cool cars. Jeff Bezos brought them Amazon Prime. Zohran Mamdani opens up socialist grocery stores and Ilhan Abdullahi Omar wears one of those things on her head and hates the United States.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles rates in the United States have reached a 35-year high, with 2,318 confirmed cases and 35 outbreaks reported during the first seven months of 2026. David Hill, MD, a spokesperson with the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “It’s striking how many fewer parents are vaccinating their kids since Kennedy took office.”

But the GOP base, these older white men, is not getting measles.

Their president paid E. Jean Carroll more than $5 million in damages after he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her in a civil case.

But didn’t Bill Clinton do something similar to Paula Jones and get away with it?

Qatar gave the president a plane.

What does that have to do with the rank-and-file GOP base? If someone offered them a plane, they’d accept it.

It’s a sign of respect. Nobody gave Biden or Obama or Clinton a plane.

The American house — correction: their American house — is no longer shaking.

They don’t blame Trump for what’s wrong; they give him credit for what’s right, even if what’s right is an illusion.

Somewhere, in a pool at a resort in some part of the world, a GOP supporter is explaining, perhaps to someone like Nadeem, that things aren’t so bad in America.

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