Even in 1973, Qandahar was known as a bastion of social and political conservatism. In the home of an Afghan family we visited there, I was never allowed into the inner quarters, where the women lived (forty persons lived in the household). School times were set so that boys and girls would not pass each other on the street. Villages in the area were built as mini-fortresses. Herat, about an eight hour bus ride to the west, once was home to some of the most spectacular architecture in the world, but most of it was destroyed by the British in 1885. Some hints of its past glory remained in 1973, however.