So devastating has the past fifty years of Afghan history been that it is simple to overlook how prosperous the country’s culture once was. The Mughals always regarded it as a far more sophisticated place than India and turned to it as the source of the region’s greatest poets and artists, miniaturists and calligraphers, tile makers and architects. As late as the start of the seventies, at the height of the hippie route, as Afghanistan filled with travellers "high on weed and low on cash", Kabul was still known as the Eastern Paris. Memoirs of the time depict a realm of miniskirts, jazz venues, bowling alleys and gelato shops. This world was linked to a impoverished but exceptionally scenic countryside where life revolved around the vine harvest and the annual arrival of nomadic groups from the Wakhan region.
A Peek into Afghanistan's Past
A quick flick through travel guides from that period uncovers an Afghanistan unimaginably different from today: of royal levees and style exhibitions and apres-ski restaurants. Facing a image of a huge pile of melons – "delicious Afghan fruits are a treat for travellers" – you’d see a picture of "a tourist and his hunting group in the Pamir mountains with a Marco Polo sheep". Most poignant of all are images of the priceless treasures of the National Museum of Afghanistan, nearly all which are now lost or destroyed, after plundering during the mujahideen takeover of Kabul in the 1990s and the destruction of what remained by the Taliban in 2001.
The Intercon: Kabul's Finest
In such guidebooks, there was only one place to stay: the InterContinental. This is "the finest hotel in Kabul" of international journalist the author's engaging and often surprising memoir. "The InterContinental", as it was called, was a symbol of sophistication where Paris couturiers opened chic stores and Italian coiffeurs competed with their rival salons. Renowned Afghan singing stars such as the "Elvis of Afghanistan" lolled by the pool while his Afghan fashion-model girlfriend glided by in her bikini. In the evening, guests could decide whether to drink Afghan cognac in the Nuristan cocktail lounge, eat escargots in the Pamir restaurant or attend the annual Miss Afghanistan contest in the ballroom, then dancing to Gloria Gaynor in the underground club.
Doucet acknowledges that the Kabul InterContinental, "a white box of concrete and steel", was always, from its opening in 1969, "an iridescent bubble floating above the urban worries". She even suggests that the type of libertine western modernity that the hotel represented, and the corruption that financed it in what was still one of the poorest countries in the world, was partly responsible for stirring up resentments that eventually led to catastrophic and brutal responses – first Marxist, then religious extremist. Nevertheless, Doucet succeeds in making the hotel an oddly successful framework for a comprehensive cultural narrative of Afghanistan over the last half century and a moving symbol of its extraordinary capacity to withstand any atrocities destiny has thrown at it.
A Story of Resilience
The narrative begins shortly after President Biden has withdrawn support on US military assistance, with a description of the tragic disintegration of a 2021 nuptial celebration in the establishment. The news arrives that President Ashraf Ghani has escaped the country and the militant group are at the city’s gates. Guests scatter as a militant vehicle is seen trundling up the hill to the building; the newlywed starts crying and the banquet manager, instructs the husband: "Console your wife! If you fail to be brave today you will always disappoint her."
The author then returns to the 1969 inauguration during the glory days of the Zahir Shah monarchy, as Kabul pullulated with clubs and the InterContinental played host to formal events in the sole cold war city where Western and Soviet officials regularly asked each other to their parties. We follow the hotel through two successive coup d’etats, the killings of three presidents in 24 months, the Soviet invasion, the triumphant mujahideen counterattack and the rise of the extremists. Somehow, throughout it all, the establishment manages to remain open.
What sustains the book is the author's emphasis on the ordinary Afghans who keep the place going in spite of the shelling, rockets, suicide attacks and periodic massacres of both employees and guests. These are horrific incidents: during the era between the two Taliban governments, three consecutive suicide teams breached rings of hotel security to maraud along the visitor levels, shooting diners, throwing grenades down stairwells after escaping workers, shooting closets full of hiding waiters with machine gun fire.
Today, regardless of all, the hotel stands as a testament to Afghan perseverance and to the bravery and persistence of its staff. In the author, and her clever, perceptive and sometimes heartbreaking work, they have discovered a fitting historian.
