TEHRAN - Every day, Abdolqayoum opens his photography studio - a camera, a chair, a black curtain and a plastic pot - on a street in Zahedan and sits outside on the sidewalk to talk with locals about the situation in Afghanistan. He, like many of his countrymen, is unhappy that his homeland has been invaded and is not satisfied with any of the Afghan leaders.

Abdolqayoum is an Afghan immigrant who left Kandahar to come to Iran almost 20 years ago, right after Afghanistan was invaded by Russain forces, and has made a living for the past 16 years taking photos with his homemade camera, which is actually just a wooden box with a lens installed.

The procedure is very fast and easy: he asks his customer to sit down on the chair, adjusts the distance of the camera, uses a piece of cardboard to direct the sunlight, says "Ready", then lifts the lens cover and counts; to three for photos in shadow, and five for those in light. He uses the photo paper as the negative, and develops his prints in the same wooden box.

Mohammad Shafi', Abdolqayoum's son, works in the same trade and has installed his camera in front of Zahedan's immigration office, where his customers are almost exclusively Afghans in need of photos for their immigration documents. However, due to the recent closure of the border between Iran and Afghanistan and the limit imposed on the number of new immigrants controlling, his business has dwindled. Kamran Jebreili Duha, Qatar, November 8,2001