Meinhardt - The Afghan queen : a true story of an American woman in Afghanistan

It has taken nearly 40 years to write the Afghan Queen. While Lela, the Afghan Queen, traveled in Afghanistan between 1975 and 1979, her life in the world of tribal art began years before and continued until her passing in 2000.

Lela made fifteen trips to Afghanistan during this five year period, spending half the year with her Afghan families and half with her family in New Jersey. Typically, her flights took her to London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Basle where she developed substantial business with museums and boutiques.

Switzerland became a lucrative outlet for Lelas tribal art purchases, second only to the U.S. market. Early in her travels she connected with a group of Swiss Sannyasins. This Hindu sect made a pilgrimage to an ashram near Delhi every six months. The leader of this group, Dharma, befriended Lela in the first year of her Afghan business.

Dharma owned a prominent boutique in Zurich and became the first of Lelas Swiss customers. Dharma organized the Sannyasin caravan at her boutique. The caravan began and ended at Dharmas family farm outside of Zurich.

Lela was recruited as a passenger on Dharmas bus as a way of making business contacts along the route to Kabul, Afghanistan. The bus led a caravan usually consisting of six vehicles. The caravan stopped at campsites near major cities along the route. Athens and Istanbul were major business stops for Lela and others in the caravan.

On each caravan trek, a week or more was spent in Athens and Istanbul both for business and at the insistence of local friends. Satya and Versant were Dharmas close university friends, also from Zurich. On their caravan treks, Lela, Dharma, Satya and Versant became a sisterhood insuring the safety, logistics and behavior of passengers.

To her many Afghan families and to her family in the U.S. she was truly the Afghan Queen. Lela helped popularize Afghan tribal art in the museums of the U.S., England, Germany and Switzerland, as well as other areas of the world.

In the 1970s, tribal and Islamic art was in great demand, especially handcrafted jewelry. Afghan jewelry and clothing provided the politically savvy and fashion-conscious with an awareness of a larger world.

Wearing tribal art allowed people, women in particular, to feel and look like they were part of the global village. In addition to providing substantial employment and cash flow to many Afghan families, Lelas international enterprise raised the global consciousness of thousands of influential leaders throughout the world.

The Afghan Queen is a complex fabric of romance, sensuality, travel, enterprise, politics, global economics, familyclan-tribal practices, and the hunger for oil. The following true life story is a labor of love weaving a colorful and engaging tapestry of all of the topics touched on above.

Map of Afghanistan