We boarded the plane, and finally cut loose from strange Dubai, where the sky and the water melt into an aluminum-hued oblivion. Dubai had recently become the world’s most disreputable construction site. Now it served as the Kabul elite’s vacation spot. Western war profiteers cooled off in Dubai hotel pools and the Afghan criminal elite bought houses on a man-made island shaped like a palm. They were buying up the waterfront property, one resident told me, in anticipation of the day Kabul collapsed.
