Shadow City

A revelatory journey on foot exploring Kabul's war-torn past and scarred present

One of the first things I was told when I arrived in Kabul was never to walk...

When Indian journalist Taran Khan arrived in Kabul in 2006, she imagined it as a homecoming – a return to the land from where her Pashtun forebears hailed. Falling in with poets, doctors and other journalists, she began exploring the city on foot and discovered a Kabul quite different from the one she had encountered in the world’s media.

Her wanderings revealed a fragile city in a state of flux: shaped by near-constant war, but showing the flickering promise of peace; a shape-shifting place governed by the ancient codes of Islam, but experimenting with new modes of living. Getting lost in its labyrinthine streets, Khan meets with the booksellers of Kabul, the archaeologists, the intrepid film-makers and the economists who are remaking the city. But as her walks take her deeper into the city’s past – to the unvisited tombs of the dead, the mental asylums housing those forgotten by their families – it becomes clear that to talk of Kabul’s various wars in the past tense is a mistake.

And as the political situation worsens and walking becomes untenable, Khan’s friends and comrades begin to flee the city. With the sound of gunfire echoing in the distance, Khan excavates the ghostly iterations of Kabul past and its layers of forgotten memories – unearthing a city that has been brutally erased and redrawn as each new war sweeps through. Shadow City is a haunting evocation of loss and absence – and a blazing portrait of a city caught between worlds.