Where is Afghanistan really?

My parents gave me the Golden Book World Atlas or something like it when I was 8 or 9.  They also gave me a lot of onion skin paper (tracing paper) and some colored pencils.  My task was to trace all the countries in the atlas.  Now it was a simple atlas with mountains depicted as  ^^^ and rivers as squiggly lines.  The capitals had a bull's eye mark and I had to include them.  I kept the tracings in a folder that my mom threw out (of course) shortly before she died and when I looked at them last I was a bit amazed at how well I did - also amazed that I didn't tumble on the fact that she gave me the task to occupy me and not bother her.

Afghanistan was obviously at the front of the folder - followed by Albania and Algeria.  I knew enough about Kipling and India and Hillary had climbed Everest about then (flash report in My Weekly Reader) so I had some idea that it was - well - over there somewhere. The truth is I can find it on a map but would be hard pressed to tell you much more than it is a major source of opium, has lithium deposits for a lifetime, the Russians were there and had a bad time of it, the English were there and had an even worse time of it, Bin Ladin was there and left some time back and we have troops there now going on 9 years fighting and dying.  We have also poured billions into a country that has a population that survives on a few dollars a day.  Oh, and it costs us 1 million dollars to send one soldier there for a year.  Otherwise I got nothing.

There is little western music that depicts Afghanistan. No "Song of India" or "In a Persian Market" type of thing. I guess we could call it Central Asia generically and then the Borodin piece would apply or Polovetsian Dances perhaps.  But for our knowledge of the hell that is visited on earth this country is as remote as our imagination permits.