Kabul, landlocked, ringed with improbably steep mountains, felt like a defiant fortress with its inhabitants peering out into the wild. A fragile, jagged peace saturated the everyday life, as if the manic effort to house, feed, and protect the executors of the war mostly amounted to staving off the chaos outside. Someday, America in Kabul would vanish. It was impossible to imagine what the city would look like when it did.
