Last Friday night, millions of Afghans tuned in to Tolo TV in Kabul to watch a 21-year-old teacher named Naweed Forugh win the fourth edition of the country’s most popular reality song contest, “Afghan Star.”

At the end of a long night of song but not dance — that was banned on Afghan television after a female contestant not only strutted about the stage but also pushed back the scarf from her head last year, leading to calls for her death and a spell in hiding — Mr. Forugh prevailed in text-message voting from the show’s fans despite the eye-catching Web site of his rival, Mehran Gulzar, a 19-year-old who moved back to the country from Tajikistan to take part in the contest.

Mr. Forugh’s victory however was clouded by the fact that the show’s popular host, Daoud Sediqi, was not there to witness it. As Jonathan Miller of Britain’s Channel 4 News explained last Friday in a blog post and video report (embedded below), Mr. Sediqi flew to Park City, Utah, in January to help promote a British documentary about “Afghan Star,” which won two awards at this year’s Sundance film festival.

After the festival, Mr. Sediqi failed to turn up for his flight home and he is now presumed to be somewhere in the United States. Havana Marking, who made the documentary about “Afghan Star,” told Channel 4 News that she expects Mr. Sediqi to try to get asylum and stay in the United States.

Mr. Miller’s report shows Mr. Sediqi at the Sundance festival and features scenes from this year’s edition of “Afghan Star” and from the documentary about last season. Given the context, the video of the young woman named Setara deciding to add a few tentative dance steps and expose her hair during her performance is tremendously dramatic:

The National, a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, reported on Saturday that Mr. Sediqi’s boss back in Kabul was not happy with his apparent decision to stay in the United States.

“Daoud gave his word that he would come back,” said Saad Mohseni, the director of the Moby Media Group, which owns the station that broadcasts the show, speaking from Kabul. “It is not like his life was in danger here, he had a pretty good lifestyle.”

The National also reports that the young man who was thrust into the role of the host of “Afghan Star” in Mr. Sediqi’s absence — Omaid Nezimi, a former flight attendant who was discovered during the show’s third season — now recalls that Mr. Sediqi dropped a hint about what might happen at the start of this season. Mr. Nezimi says that at the start of his training to be the show’s co-host: “Daoud was saying: ‘Pretend that next year I am not here. You will be the host. What will you do?’”

While Mr. Sediqi’s current whereabouts are unknown, one can only imagine what an immediate shock his first trip outside Afghanistan must have been to his system. During the first hours he ever spent outside his homeland, Mr. Sediqi — who was interviewed by my colleague Barry Bearak for an article on Afghan television in 2007 — was whisked onto American television, for this interview on the Sundance Channel, which was recorded just after he got off the plane in Park City:

A report on Mr. Sediqi’s disappearance by Al Jazeera English notes that he isn’t the only high-profile Afghan to not return from a trip abroad in recent months. According to Al Jazeera, some better-off Afghans who have left the country include a former presidential press officer, who disappeared during a trip to the United Nations in New York last year, and the governor of the province of Khost, Arsalah Jamal, who “went on a trip abroad and stayed away, sending a letter of resignation by e-mail.”

The National notes that some Afghan athletes have also taken their chance to escape during trips abroad. But it also reports that Raees Ahmadzai, a member of the national cricket team, has come out against Mr. Sediqi. According to The National, Mr. Ahmadzai said Mr. Sediqi’s apparent defection is “bad for the whole country,” because “when someone like him runs away because it gives our country a bad name.” Mr. Ahmadzai added: “We need to work together to solve our problems, it is not just the job of the government.”

In one interview during the Sundance festival, Mr. Sediqi said that Afghan people are “not different from other people.” Evidence of that can be found on the Web site of “Afghan Star,” where Mr. Sediqi’s disappearance is not the main subject of discussion in the aftermath of the show’s season-ending episode. At least on the English-language section of the site, the comments threads are dominated by fans bemoaning the great injustice done to the people’s choice, an 18-year-old heart-throb named Naweed Sabirpur, who was cruelly eliminated before the final round.