During the journey, Khan changed, according to Nilsson, from a modern person to a man more and more aware of Afghan customs the closer they came to his homeland.
She was forced to wear a veil (hijab) and was not allowed to leave the house except with her husband's permission, nor look out of the windows, or to talk when she visited a shop (purdah).
With the help of Khan's aunt, who was a lady-in-waiting to the queen, she visited the royal court in Paghman and Darullaman,[1] and includes descriptions in her book of queen consort Soraya Tarzi, a Syrian-educated moderniser, and the mother of the king, Ulya (Ulli) Hazrat, whose name she spells as Ollja Hassrat.
[2] She befriended the king's mother, who she describes as influential and dominant, demonstrated dance and gymnastics for her and acted as her photographer.
[2] According to Nilsson a German woman, the widow of an Afridi man named Abdullah Khan, had fled to the city with her children from her late husband's successor, was sold at public auction and obtained her freedom by being bought by the German diplomatic mission for 7,000 marks.
[2] The German diplomatic mission helped her to get a room in a hotel while she waited for money from Sweden to leave the country.
The officials denied her divorce on the grounds that she was a Muslim despite the fact that she had never converted, claimed she needed an Afghan passport to leave the country, and offered her money to return to her former husband.
The divorce reportedly caused her ex-husband to lose face in Afghan society, and prevented him from gaining any political post.