‘I Haven’t Seen A Day Of Peace In My Life’

IN A CRUMBLING ONE-ROOM APARTMENT IN Kabul’s Old City, two 20-something sisters and their 45-year-old mother are smoking cannabis laced with heroin. They don’t look up as we enter awkwardly, following our translator to sit on the far end of the carpet.

I count eight children, the youngest of whom is just three years old. Much to the amusement of the smoking women, one of their daughters, a 12-year-old, takes a few puffs of a discarded joint to show us that she too knows how to smoke.

The Chindawol neighborhood was once home to educated and elite Afghans. But over the years since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979, its streets and alleyways have been swarmed by mostly illiterate and low-skilled people.

There is no central sewage system and the putrid smell of waste drips from tired buildings. Outside, donkeys gnaw on bits of trash lying in the streets and snotty-nosed children dip buckets into dirty water that runs down the sandy pavements. They use the filthy liquid to wash parked cars in a bid to earn a few pennies. Not one traffic light works in the