Reading a city is, in truth, experiencing it. City-reading cannot exist beyond experience itself; otherwise, it becomes an attempt to impose pre-made concepts onto the city’s forms—and that would betray the truth. Therefore, reading the city is experiencing it.
The experience begins with stench—a foul, stubborn odor that sharply reminds the passerby that they are in Kabul, a place that has not yet become a “city” in the true sense, where modernity—unlike the rest of the world—does not arrive quickly, and whose slow crawl here is itself astonishing. The stench begins with old latrines that lack proper septic systems, releasing their smell directly into the streets. But it does not end there. A few steps later, at the mouth of an alley in the heart of Kabul, one comes across a pile of garbage. The body’s immediate reaction to its odor is nausea; even if one wishes to ignore it, the body instinctively quickens its pace to escape the cloud of smell.
Yet even here the stench is not finished. Next come the loud, jarring cries of street vendors and cart drivers—voices raised to piercing heights as they call out their goods. It seems the poorer the seller, the louder their desperate plea to attract a buyer. These sounds evoke contradictory feelings: the rational, idealistic part of you rejects them, believing a “city” should not be like this, that there should at least be an organized marketplace where these vendors could sell fruit and vegetables with dignity. But another part of you—the poor boy who once feared going hungry—reminds you, with blistered honesty, that you were once one of them. So show humility, show respect, do not harshly judge the desperate. This tension presses heavily on you, and the fact that you called it “stench” leaves you with a pang of guilt.
You continue walking, noticing how the stench lives on: nearby, a group of taxi drivers make crude comments about a woman who has just passed by, their vulgar laughter exposing their own poverty and sexual deprivation. You get into a taxi. By habit, you greet everyone, but no one responds; their heads sunk into their collars, each face darker than the next. Moments later, the taxi driver stops because a tiny girl—perhaps seven or eight—struggles to drag a handcart of yellow water barrels across the street. As he waits, the driver loses patience and begins complaining about the water tap that has been dry for ten days. From the back seat, someone—whose age you’re too tired to guess—says, “It’s drought. A drought.”
You stop listening. You’d prefer not to hear it, but you know that whether drought is the cause or not, the city has become a barren wasteland. A city whose river—Kabul’s river—has for decades been a running joke, a stagnant, dried-out channel no one laughs about anymore because the reality is too bitter. Not only has the fee for public water gone up in this “bargain-seeking” poor city, but even the water itself is undrinkable—unless one wishes to swallow poison. Tap water that smells horrific, tastes worse than brine, fails to quench thirst, and instead leaves one even thirstier. Its impurity is undeniable.
You tune in again to the passengers as the same weary voice says that in his northern village—Farza, a place you know well—they drilled a hundred meters into the earth and found no water to irrigate their land. You’re not sure whether to believe him. In a city where “truth” has long died, no one expects honesty anymore. Finally, you decide neither to accept nor reject his words—only to accept this much: the people of your city, its youth, including you yourself—all are thirsty, all dream of rain. But your city, this Kabul, is a barren wasteland where the young cedar saplings die every day under the harsh, merciless sun. The only movement is the trembling shimmer of sunlight on the distant horizon—an illusion that cannot even offer the comfort of a mirage to your parched throat.
