Dressing Between Worlds: From Kabul to California

Afghan Threads in a California Night

There is something grounding about wearing Afghan traditional clothing in the heart of the Bay Area. The jewelry, the embroidery, the mirrors, the color—it is a language my body has spoken since childhood. In a Berkeley living room or a backyard gathering, my dresses carry stories: of women stitching in courtyard light, of markets alive with color, of mountains that have watched over us for centuries.

When I walk into a party dressed this way, I am not trying to make a statement. I am simply arriving as myself—a woman whose heart never fully left Kabul, even as her life unfolded between Kabul and California.

I have lived a colorful life. My wardrobe has always been both a quiet rebellion and a love letter to where I come from. At a party in Berkeley, you might find me in a fully traditional Afghan dress, mirrors catching the light as if the Bay has borrowed a little of Kabul’s sun. On other nights, I arrive wrapped in Indian fabrics that move with their own music, vibrant and unapologetically alive. And sometimes, I slip into my own Western designs for a café in Paris or London.

I have been called “flamboyant,” as if color itself were a crime. I take it as a compliment.

People often ask, “Did you bring that from back home?” I smile, because the answer is both yes and no. The memories are from there. The designs are from here—by me.

A Breakfast Conversation in Portugal

At a recent non-dual meditation retreat in Portugal, I found myself in an unexpected conversation over breakfast. A Nordic meditator looked at me carefully and said, “Do you know you are pretty without makeup? I think you are better with less.”

He was gentle, almost hesitant, as if offering a kindness. He truly believed he was helping. I wasn’t offended in the way he expected. Instead, I recognized something familiar—the quiet danger of mistaking personal preference for truth.

Nothing about me had disturbed the silence. What was unsettled was his idea of what silence should look like.

My clothing, my colors, my makeup, my jewelry—none of it disrupted presence. It simply challenged an internal aesthetic shaped by culture and spiritual conditioning. When preference disguises itself as wisdom, it begins to correct what was never wrong.

True kindness does not erase another’s artistry. True humility does not assume that “less” is more awakened than “more.”

In a real spiritual field, form is free. It can be simple or ornate, muted or radiant, bare or adorned. Awareness is not threatened by lipstick. Presence is not diluted by silk.

What hurt was not his preference. Everyone is allowed their taste. What hurts is when that preference becomes a quiet authority, suggesting that another’s natural expression needs refinement.

My “too much” is not excess. It is simply how life chooses to move through this body.

Falling in Love with Another Language of Fabric

Perhaps this is why I have never belonged to only one aesthetic language.

When we lived in India in 1985, I fell in love with Indian clothing. The drape of a sari, the rhythm of a lehenga, the quiet elegance of a kurta—they spoke a sister language to my Afghan roots. There is a shared heartbeat in the textiles, in the way fabric both honors modesty and celebrates presence.

In Indian clothing, I feel as though I am visiting a neighboring home—everything new, yet deeply familiar. The borders between “Afghan” and “Indian,” “here” and “there,” begin to soften, until they dissolve into one continuous fabric of belonging.

My Everyday: Western, But Not Quite

And then there is my everyday life, where I appear in what most would call “simple Western clothing”—jeans, tunics, long cardigans, scarves. Nothing remarkable at first glance.

Yet most of these pieces I design myself, shaped by years of watching women move through Kabul, Tehran, Berkeley, Paris, and London. These are the clothes that draw the most questions. In a grocery store, a café, a retreat, or along the Seine, someone inevitably asks, “Where did you get that? Did you bring it from back home?”

I laugh and tell them, “No, I made it here.”

They are Western in form, but softened by Afghan ease, touched by Indian fluidity, and shaped by a quiet elegance I absorbed in Tehran—where even simplicity carries a sense of presence, almost like a daily ceremony.

Dressing as Homecoming

For me, clothing is not just style. It is a living conversation between identity, memory, and freedom.

Some days, I need the boldness of a traditional Afghan dress.

Some days, I reach for the vibrancy of Indian fabrics.

Some days, I sit in silence at a retreat in Portugal wearing exactly what my soul wants—even if it appears “too much” to someone else.

Most days, I live in the in-between.

Western silhouettes carrying whispers of East and West, past and present.

To dress this way, especially as an Afghan woman in the diaspora, is to refuse the idea that I must choose one version of myself. I can be the girl from Kabul and the woman in Berkeley, the traveler in Paris, the meditator in Portugal—all at once.

My wardrobe is not for display. It is an expression of intimacy with life. A quiet celebration. A way for life to move, to shimmer, to take form.

I am not dressing for others. I am dressing as an act of belonging—to myself.

And perhaps that is what this has always been: a homecoming.

One Afghan dress, one Indian fabric, one “simple” design at a time, I am gathering the selves that war, migration, distance, and opinion tried to scatter—stitching them gently back into one body.

In joy of being authentic,

Anosha Zereh

About the author

Anosha Zereh is an Afghan‑born author, poet, and contemplative educator whose work explores exile, identity, and spiritual embodiment across cultures. She is the author of The Afghan Mona Lisa and Sufi meditation offerings that weave together Afghan heritage, Sufi‑inspired inquiry, and contemporary life in the global diaspora.