Having lived and worked in Afghanistan, Beryl Jonseng spoke to Gazette reporter JEREMY PRICE about the time she described as a "renaissance" for the country

Kabul in 1959 became home to newlyweds Beryl and Cyril Jonsen. Mr Jonsen secured a job in the British Embassy, so the pair moved to Afghanistan and over the next two years Mrs Jonsen, 66, taught in the capital.

After getting used to life in the country, and a short spell working in an international school, Mrs Jonsen began working at the Jashan secondary school for girls.

During a time when things were changing for women in the country, Mrs Jonsen prepared the first year of girls who attended the city's university.

"It was a period of renaissance, of great modernisation and liberalisation," said Mrs Jonsen, who is still a teacher, now at Monkwick Junior School, Colchester.

She said one of the most noticeable things was the changing of attitudes towards the wearing of the traditional purdah dress and bhurka veil.

Now, having lost touch with everyone she knew in the country, Mrs Jonsen knows some of her girls will now be mothers and grandmothers themselves.

"I feel pain for what's happening out there. I feel for the people very deeply," she said.

"The Afghan people were unfalteringly kind, generous, courteous and respectful. It's such a beautiful country and there's nothing there to bomb."

She said terrorists who committed the inexcusable acts in America had to be dealt with.

"But I question whether blanket bombing is the answer," she added.

"I just want the people rescued and cherished, and I want them to re-emerge as they were doing when I left the country in 1962.

"Things were happening but then darkness fell. I would like to see the light dawn again on Afghanistan."

After all the Afghan wars, and everything the country has been through in the past, nobody has beaten the people, she said.

"The people are hardy. I don't see that this conflict will beat the Afghan spirit."