Today I guided a Dutch architect researching urban developments in Kabul. After fixing the roaming internet connection on his Apple computer in a record time – praise be to the helpfulness and tech savviness of Afghan shopowners – we drove up TV mountain to take some pictures. He had the good camera, I my phone. The weather was heavily overcast with occasional sunbursts.

We took the wide road that starts at Salang Watt. At the bottom it was very muddy – that’s where yesterday’s rain had collected. This is also where all commercial activities are concentrated. On the flat stretches between the Salang Watt and the mountain slope many ‘palaces’ have been built, each with its own color scheme.

The road leads to a pass. One can descend to West Kabul there or take the road that winds up TV mountain on its eastern flank as we did. Here’s a view from the pass westwards. The mosque and shrine below, Hazrat Ali, is the center of the Shia new year celebrations on 21 March. The large cemetery next to it then becomes a picnic place for families, kites are flown and there’s a fun fair. Below is a picture of that festive event by the Afghan photographer Najibullah Musafer

From higher up the mountain I realized what an amazing construction boom the city is undergoing. I used to come up here occasionally when I was living in Kabul, 2000-2006. In that period only a handful of tall buildings emerged around Hajji Yacoub and Chara’i Ansari. There was a large tract of land between the center of Kabul and Khairkhana in the North that was mostly fields, with an occasional building. This area is the lowest of Kabul, draining all rain water from the surrounding mountains, and used to be a bit swampy – therefore unfit for building. I don’t know how or if they’ve solved this problem.

The development I saw today, in a mere seven years, is astounding. Now the separate elements of the city have joined up, tall buildings are arising everywhere and the city is creeping up the mountain flanks that surround it.

We walked towards the top of the mountain, covered in hundreds of telecommunications masts. Around it is a security zone. After a pleasant exchange with the guards they allowed us inside to take pictures of southwest Kabul, from the other flank.

Above is the view of Darulaman Road, stretching from Deh Mazang to Darulaman palace, invisible in the haze. When I first came to Kabul this area was 90% destroyed by rocket fire, hardly a house was intact. And now it’s booming. I nearly cried.

After declining cups of tea and an offer to share the police officers’ lunch, we partially walked, partially drove back down the mountain. Below is a picture taken in the opposite direction from the one above, towards the North.

Most of the settlements built on the mountainsides are not planned, and technically ‘slums’. But that doesn’t make them uncomfortable or unsafe. We might have to rethink the concept ‘slum’, because through media and movies we have very negative ideas about any unplanned, self-built and therefore ‘illegal’ urban neighborhood.

Yesterday my driver and close friend Qassem invited us for dinner. He lives in a self-built house on the slopes above Bagh-e Bala (far to the upper right on the picture above) with his wife and six kids. He had paid a large sum of money for the land but was happy with its central location. It was cosy inside, small but comfortable.

According to the architect I was accompanying many of the ‘slum’ dwellings we saw are actually quite well built. Sometimes they come in clusters, with houses sharing similar features and with their own vehicle access path, indicating a somewhat planned development. See for example above. The lack of utilties is of course greaving, but inhabitants seem to get along with generators and  unofficial power lines, and can obtain water from tankers driving up the mountain to service the police base at its top.

Other dwellings we passed on the mountainside are more modest. At least the family living here, above the old oil tanks, has a beautiful fighting quail.

On these Eastern slopes of TV mountain Panjshiris are a majority. This driver is obviously a fan of Ahmad Shah Massoud. The size of Massoud’s head in this studio photo is larger than those of the customers posing in front of their hero. It’s like the graves of Afghan great saints and warriors: they can be up to five meters long. As if ‘great’ was to be taken literally, out of respect.

On that same slope, but much nearer the bottom and towards the city center, is the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society where I used to work. We had lunch there and had a look around the early 20th century stately building afterwards (see my blog with pictures of the cultural center here). The place has become a bit like a museum, remaining similar to how it was when I left in 2006, but gathering dust and deteriorating. But a new feature was this sculpture exhibition, showing work by female students of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Kabul University. The works had been placed in the FCCS hothouse, alongside the potted plants.

All these works (the three men and the three women) are made of plaster (gach).

We then visited a fort hidden in a part of central Kabul, rarely visited by non-residents. It’s called Qala-ye Shahrara. There was a non-sensical guarded entrance where one of the guards, a madly scruffy looking blond Afghan, gladly let us in after I replied to him in Russian. The gate didn’t make sense because the fort is open on all other sides, with neighborhood boys playing football all around.

We saw the blond scroungy soldier again inside the fort. He enthusiastically beckoned to us while picking up an object hidden behind military junk. We approached and saw it was a large soft drink bottle transformed into a pipe. He invited us to smoke some good Panjshiri hash with him, while cracking wild jokes about Osama and the war. We couldn’t accept his invitation because we had to go to an appointment. On the way out we saw this oversized tomb, possibly of a martyr who died in the fort.

That evening we had dinner at the Sufi restaurant in street 1 Taimani, which I strongly recommend. It has delicious Afghan food, nice seating and live music, and is very reasonably priced. After dinner we walked towards Shahr-e Nao to grab a taxi and saw this beautiful new building:

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