Inside the Taliban's luxury hotel

The Intercontinental in Kabul was Afghanistan's first luxury hotel. Once the site of legendary parties, the hotel is now in the hands of the Taliban, and their fighters are supposed to work with outsiders.

At the first barrier, a Talib smiles; he has orders to smile here. At the second barrier, a sign: Weapons Handover Point. Those who deposit their Kalashnikovs here will receive a locker number and get their weapon back upon leaving the hotel. The road winds up the hill between circular trimmed hedges. At the third barrier: a body search. Then, behind a metal gate, the driveway to the hotel finally appears. Car tires squeal on the marble slabs in front of the entrance.

The Intercontinental Hotel towers over the Afghan capital like a castle. Kabul, this war-ravaged city. The noise of its car horns can no longer be heard up here.

In 1969, the Intercontinental Hotel, Afghanistan's first luxury hotel, opened. It was built in a time that feels much further away than the year suggests. Afghanistan was at war for more than forty years. Rulers came and went, and every one of them was here, at the Intercontinental. Its former luxury has faded, but the Intercontinental has remained a symbol: Those who rule Kabul rule Afghanistan, and those who rule Kabul rule the Intercontinental.

Today, the hotel is run by the Taliban.

They entered Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021. Although they have been in power for two years, they have remained enigmatic. Only horror stories seem to leak out: For two years now, women and girls have been forbidden to attend secondary schools and universities. Women are no longer allowed in public parks. Women and men are whipped for adultery.

However, the Taliban's biggest experiment has gone almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. It’s taking place at desks across the country. The new government is forcing Taliban and non-Taliban to work together – in the administration and in government-related businesses. Young men share an office with young fighters they once feared, and young fighters sit next to young men they once despised. A lot depends on this experiment. It will help determine whether peace will remain, whether there might be reconciliation, or at least a normal life – together, as best as possible.

This big experiment can be observed on a small scale inside the Intercontinental. And perhaps there is no better place to venture a glimpse into Afghanistan's future than here, where history and the present come together.

Reception

The automatic sliding doors rattle with age as they open. The Intercontinental welcomes its guests at a massive marble counter. Behind it, a wood-paneled wall with four clocks – Kabul, New York, London, Dubai. Cosmopolitanism in a closed-off country. The Intercontinental does not accept credit cards, since Afghanistan is largely cut off from international banking. A guest arrives with a plastic bag full of cash.

Only every second chandelier in the lobby is lit. «We’re saving electricity,» says Samiullah Faqiri. Faqiri is responsible for marketing at the Intercontinental. He was immediately enthusiastic about the idea of letting a foreign journalist look behind the scenes of the hotel for a few days.

Faqiri is 28 years old, his beard neatly trimmed over his round cheeks. He has been working at the hotel for two years, since the Taliban came into power. «I've been marketing like crazy,» he says in fluent English, telling us that he invented the hotel’s new slogan: «Intercontinental for everyone.» He had the words printed on billboards in Kabul. Faqiri knows, of course, that only very few Afghans can afford a meal or a night in a luxury hotel right now. According to the U.N., nine out of 10 families cannot even afford enough to eat. One night in the cheapest room costs 90 francs, which for many is a month's wages.

But Faqiri, like any marketing manager, has a goal to reach in terms of how much profit he needs to make. The hotel belongs to the government, and it wants it to be profitable. All profits go to the state, which then distributes the money back for wages, maintenance and renovation. Although Faqiri works for the Taliban, he himself is not one of them.

When Faqiri speaks of the Taliban, he says «they.» «If I don't reach the target, they won't kill me,» he says, laughing. When Faqiri laughs, his nose starts to wiggle, then his shoulders, his belly, a very physical, very contagious laugh, usually bursting out of him after sentences that would otherwise sound too heavy.

Faqiri comes from a family that lacks nothing. His father is a university professor. The whole family lives together in a house very close to the hotel. Faqiri studied business administration in India. Before the Taliban took over power, he liked to wear sleeveless T-shirts and play basketball. Today, like almost everyone, he wears a shalwar kameez, a traditional Afghan garment.

To achieve his goal, Faqiri would need to rent out more rooms at the hotel. The Intercontinental has 198 rooms in total. About a fifth of them are occupied, Faqiri says. As long as no country in the world recognizes the Taliban, there will be no mass of tourists either. But Faqiri doesn’t give up. When the Canadian government evacuated endangered Afghans, he made a contract with the responsible travel agency: The Intercontinental became the meeting point for the evacuees fleeing Afghanistan. Faqiri rented out 120 rooms and managed to get those fleeing the Taliban to check into their hotel before leaving.

Faqiri works until the early afternoon. A young Talib is standing at the reception, leaning against the black marble. His name is Mohammed Elyas Niazai. «The night shift,» Faqiri introduces him.

Faqiri and Niazai are part of this big experiment at the Intercontinental, a normal Afghan man and a Talib, two young men who are supposed to work together for the big picture.

Third floor

Niazai rides up in the golden elevator, his contorted reflection visible on the walls of the small cabin. Niazai is 23 years old, his beard unruly and still somewhat irregular. His eyes are awake, but his gaze unsteady, making him appear like both hunter and hunted at the same time.

Niazai lives on the third floor, room 311, standard furnishings: heavy moss-green curtains, thick carpet with an intricate pattern so the stains aren’t as visible, ashtray. Unlike Faqiri, Niazai lives in the hotel. He says he is the human resources manager. He, too, studied business administration: «The hotel business is a good business, hardly any risk.» There’s not a single personal item in the room, but maybe it's not actually his. He says he has a second, secret one. It's where he keeps his weapons: an M4 assault rifle, captured from French soldiers, and a Glock 22.

Behind the undulating wallpaper of the Intercontinental, the clandestine lurks. Again and again, someone calls Niazai on his cellphone. It's the GDI, the Taliban's secret police. They ask him why a journalist is roaming the hotel. Nothing goes unnoticed. They are in hiding somewhere. Watching. Cameras in the hallways, but supposedly not in the rooms. A group of Russians is staying on the third floor. They keep to themselves.

Niazai joined the Taliban when he was 16 years old. A special army unit had killed his uncle and cousin, and foreign soldiers had allegedly been involved in the operation as well. Thus began Niazai's jihad, his holy war, out of revenge. He grew up in Kabul, in a poor neighborhood. The Taliban used Niazai as a mole. He studied at a university in Kabul. He claims that he spoke very good English back then, but that he has forgotten a lot of it by now. On his smartphone, Niazai shows us photos from that time: a young man with a fashionably blow-dried fringe and chin beard. Niazai spied on his fellow students on behalf of the Taliban. When his studies allowed it, he fought outside Kabul against NATO troops and against the Afghan army. He claims he can build a bomb with a plastic bottle and two dollars.

When he would arrive late and his professor asked him why, Niazai would reply in English: «Legends are always late.» He’s proud of this sentence, he still knows it by heart.

All this was years before the fall of Kabul. The capital was supposed to be the heart of the new Afghanistan that the Americans and their allies had built with billions of dollars in development aid over the course of twenty years. But the loyalties in this city were never as clearly divided as some would have liked to believe.

On Aug. 15, 2021, Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban. In the weeks before, they had conquered one province after another. Kabul, however, would hold out, at least for a few weeks, experts predicted. But there was little resistance. Late at night, the Taliban drove up to the Intercontinental in their pickup trucks. In the hours before, the hotel's security guards had abandoned their posts. Some first stormed the hotel lobby and stole the computers. The Taliban quartered their fighters in the hotel and sent the staff home. Two days later, they called the hotel staff and told them to come back, and that the Intercontinental was now open once again.

«At first, the employees were afraid of us,» Niazai says, «but we had orders to be nice to them.»

Fifth floor

The golden lift stops on the fifth floor. This is where the entire history of the Intercontinental comes together. On the left, next to the elevator, is the entrance to the Pamir Supper Club. Starting in 1969, lavish parties were held here. The first Afghan pop musicians with long hair and guitars performed at the Pamir Supper Club. Afghanistan still had a king back then, Mohammad Zaher Shah. In 1973, his cousin overthrew him in a coup; he was assassinated by the Communists five years later. The parties went on. Months after the murder, the Intercontinental invited guests to a Bavarian festival at the club, including an early drinks buffet and «schnapps on the house,» sponsored by Lufthansa. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The American officials at the Pamir Supper Club made way for Russian ones. 

While the country descended into civil war, the Intercontinental remained in a world of its own. When the Russians left in 1989, Afghan President Najibullah pulled up in front of the Intercontinental in his black Mercedes.

In 1992, the Mujahedeen marched into Kabul, groups of Islamist holy warriors equipped and trained by the United States to fight the Communists. The Mujahedeen ate at the Intercontinental free of charge and were soon fighting each other in the capital. Rockets flew into the Intercontinental. The notorious Ahmad Shah Massoud and his men took over the hotel.

On the fifth floor, on the right, at the end of the long corridor, is the Khyber Suite, the Intercontinental's penthouse. A balcony winds around the suite, allowing guests a view over all of Kabul. Right now, the U.N. is hosting a course: how to solve interpersonal conflicts. Here, Massoud is said to have planned his attacks with binoculars. Until 1996, when new, even more radical Islamists came from the south and conquered Kabul for the first time: the Taliban. They castrated and executed Najibullah, the ex-president with the Mercedes, dragged his body around the city and hanged him in public. The Taliban removed the chairs in the hotel bar and sat on carpets.

There are no windows in this long corridor on the fifth floor. Neon lights on the walls brace themselves against the darkness. They cast harsh shadows. Sounds and history sink into the stretch carpet. It smells like dust and something else, sour. The hotel’s employees don’t like to be on the fifth floor. It's haunted up here, they say.

The Taliban were in charge of the Intercontinental until 2001. One day after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, they held a press conference at the Intercontinental. The Taliban foreign minister said they didn’t know where Osama bin Laden was. «I only know he’s not here,» he said. It was a lie. Bin Laden was a guest of the Taliban and the reason for the American invasion of Afghanistan a few months later.

After the invasion of the Americans and their allies, the Intercontinental once again became the meeting place of foreign diplomats, business owners and rich elites.

The new government renovated the place with the help of contractors, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be. One company closed the balcony in the dining room, where guests could feel the cold wind from the mountains while enjoying their coffee. Another company added another dining room to the hotel; it has clouds painted on the ceiling and looks like a cruise ship. Another sold off the marble slabs in the garden. The hotel staff says that corrupt officials just took what they wanted from the Intercontinental, as they did with so much in Afghanistan. «Those cursed people destroyed everything. All that's left is the name and the substance,» says one longtime waiter, «apart from that, there's nothing left from the old days.»

For years, the Taliban fought underground. They gained strength despite thousands of NATO soldiers in the country. In 2011, they attacked the hotel. Nine suicide bombers killed twelve people and themselves. The last attacker detonated his bomb on the fifth floor, in room 523. The room has since been renovated, the bathroom is now decorated with pink tiles. Then, in 2018, a second attack followed. For twelve hours, four or five assassins occupied the hotel. They murdered forty people. The guests barricaded themselves in the rooms, crawled into the graying bathtubs with the non-slip mats. A clergyman who was staying in room 519 at the time was killed in the attack. The man who now cleans on the fifth floor swears he hears him showering sometimes.

In 2021, just three years later, the Taliban captured Kabul for the second time. One of the guards outside the hotel knew some of the suicide bombers. «They were incredibly brave,» he says. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who orchestrated the attacks, is now Minister of Interior Affairs. He gave a speech thanking the families of his assassins in the ballroom of the Intercontinental. The hotel room doors are still a reminder of the attacks. Brown paint sticks to bulletproof steel.

Kitchen

In the kitchen, Faqiri, the marketing manager, points to a large pot with a lamb simmering inside. «I sold that for $230. Write that,» he commands. Two families have rented a conference room, the men are negotiating the bride price before their children's wedding. Faqiri persuaded them to stay for dinner as well.

The pots in the kitchen contain food for 900 people. At noon and in the evenings, the Intercontinental prepares a buffet. Today, the kitchen crew is also cooking for the Ministry of Defense, 700 people, the food is delivered by truck and escort – the Intercontinental is also the Taliban's caterer.

Sayed Mazaffar Sadat is the head chef at the Intercontinental, they call him Goldfinger. He took part in a television cooking competition five times, and won four times, hence the nickname. He came to the Intercontinental before the Taliban took power. He prevailed against twenty other applicants. «I didn't have any connections. You don’t usually get into the Intercontinental without good connections.»

Sadat says he never considered leaving the country even after the Taliban took over power. He will soon be representing Afghanistan in a cooking competition in France, and his friends tell him he should just stay there. He would be just one of countless young men leaving Afghanistan, legally or illegally, hoping to find a better life elsewhere. An esstimated 1.6 million Afghans have fled since the Taliban came into power, most of them are holding out in precarious conditions in neighboring Iran and Pakistan. Sadat says, «My philosophy is: death will come anyway – it will come for you even if you leave your country.»

In the heat of the kitchen, one of Sadat's cooks orders a Talib, who is standing idly by: «We don't need you here. Go to your office.» 

When the Taliban first ruled in the 1990s, they only placed one of their own at the head of the hotel. This time around, they have put their fighters in every office, integrated into several levels of hierarchy: Taliban and non-Taliban are forced to work together.

Women play no role in the Taliban's deliberations. All of the hotel’s female employees are at home. They are still supposed to receive their wages but are not allowed to come to work. The only woman in the building works downstairs at the entrance of one of the security gates, screening female guests. She refuses to cover her face in addition to her body and hair. She is too old for that, she says.

Faqiri rules the kitchen, waving his arms like someone who has given instructions all his life. He's always on his cellphone, trying to solve a problem. Niazai tries to keep his hands busy somehow. He sometimes lifts one of the bread baskets in the kitchen and then puts it down again, turns a single kiwi in his hands or eyes the expiration date on a can of Coke. He is also responsible for quality control, he says.

The Taliban are considered willing to learn. The leadership paid for training for some of them, and former guerrillas are now taking computer courses. The new rulers have decreed peace and reconciliation. And yet it remains a strange situation for many: The rebels whom everyone feared for twenty years are suddenly sitting in the same office. A former employee of the Intercontinental says: «One of the fighters was my subordinate. But what orders was I supposed to give him? He had a gun.»

Garden

Niazai looks around the hotel's dilapidated tennis court, the net missing, a referee's chair rusting in one corner. The tennis coach has fled to Spain, or so Niazai has heard. It's his first time here: «Who knows how to play tennis?»

Niazai has had many roles at the hotel over the past two years, and now he happens to be the human resources manager. He receives a salary, 500 francs a month, and is saving for his wedding. It’s supposed to be a lavish celebration some day. He hasn't met his bride yet.

But: «If they order me to clean rooms tomorrow, I won't ask any questions,» Niazai says. He blindly follows orders. The Taliban have a chain of command that is difficult to understand. What’s clear is that the emir in Kandahar and his confidants sit at the top, followed by the ministers in Kabul and their deputies. But there are powerful local commanders, in Kabul and outside. The Taliban are a less homogeneous movement than it sometimes appears from the outside. His commander once ordered Niazai to cut off his beloved long hair. He did it immediately.

He’s actually waiting for an order that hasn’t come yet. An order that will send him back to the front, any front. If the order came, he wouldn’t leave the next day, he says, but right away. «This hotel is like a prison for me,» he says. He misses the mountains, the forests and the ice-cold rivers.

When Niazai walks on the grass in the garden, he takes off his shoes and walks barefoot. He wants to feel the grass on the soles of his feet. Then, he says, all negative thoughts disappear.

Second floor

The Hakimi family is staying on the second floor of the Intercontinental, in rooms 238 and 239. There aren’t many guests at the Intercontinental. The Russians who are picked up every morning in a white SUV. The development worker from India. The Pakistani businessman who sells lamps made from Himalayan salt. And the Hakimis.

Hayatullah Hakimi, 67, and his wife Aziza, 64, fled Afghanistan in 1988. Hayatullah used to own a jewelry store. Then he came into the focus of the secret service.

The Hakimis have experienced the Intercontinental's most pompous times. When Hayatullah would close the store on Friday afternoon, he and his wife would come to the Intercontinental. «We liked the Beatles at the time, pop music was just coming to Afghanistan,» Hayatullah says, bands were playing concerts by the pool. Female tourists were swimming in bathing suits. The hotel was located a little outside the city, surrounded by pine trees. In the garden, music sounded from loudspeakers, by Ahmad Zahir, the Afghan Elvis, who died much too young in a car accident. The Hakimis have photos from back then: He’s sporting a thick mustache, long hair and shiny belt buckle, she’s wearing bell-bottoms.

Hayatullah says: «A customer once offered me a visa to the United States. But I didn't want to leave. Kabul was the best place in the world.»

Aziza says: «Nobody wanted to leave the country, nobody wanted to go to Europe or America. People came to us.»

From the Hakimis' balcony, you can see over Kabul. The city has encroached on the hotel in the past decades. The sun rises in front of the Intercontinental and sets behind it. White concrete elements protrude from the Hakimis' balcony to the one below; they function as railings above and sunshades below. It looks like every room is wearing heavy white eyelashes. The burning sun exposes the cracks in the concrete, the city disappears in the blinding light and the dust. The air conditioner is rattling, and downstairs the gardeners' hard brooms are scraping the asphalt.

The Hakimis now live in Canada. They have come to Kabul to show their grown daughters the city they once left for the first time. They spend many of their hours driving through streets they don't recognize.

Aziza says: «Everyone in this hotel wore beautiful suits. Men used to only wear their traditional clothes at home. It's painful to see all these changes.»

Hayatullah says: «I cry every night. I hope the hotel stays open. It's part of our identity.»

Lobby

Faqiri leans over a desk which is not his. His is in a corner of the office, but he sits down at the big one in the middle as a matter of course. It belongs to his supervisor, a Talib who is rarely there. Faqiri is typing on his smartphone. Today is Afghan Independence Day, celebrating the peace treaty with the British, other wars, the Great Game, things that took place in the early 20th century. Faqiri is tinkering with a post for social media, it ends up being a photo collage: Faqiri on the bottom, a waving black-red-and-green flag on top. The flag of the old Afghan Republic, replaced by the white flag of the Taliban. «We have good memories of this flag,» he says, referring to the black-red-and-green one.

Faqiri says: «Most people have girls at home and hope that things will eventually get better for them. I hope everything will be fine. I don't want to go, I want to see how things go first.» Fleeing Afghanistan is expensive and complicated. So many Afghans just hope that life will eventually get better under Taliban rule. Or that they can wait until it's over. Last time, the Taliban were in Kabul for five years. Only this time, there is little sign of resistance in the country. Kabul looks like a city in hibernation, and no one knows how long it will last.

Those who do not flee come to terms with the situation, and that is most of the population. «We have to work with the Taliban. They’re the government,» Faqiri says.

You can't get into the Intercontinental without good connections. Faqiri's father was one of the hotel managers during the first Taliban rule. They called him again after Kabul fell and asked if he wanted to come back. He sent his son instead.

During the first Taliban rule, Mullah Omar, founder and head of the Taliban, once visited the hotel, room 124. He asked Faqiri's father: «Why is no one here?» The hotel had no guests, and Faqiri's father told the Taliban leader: «People aren’t coming because they're afraid of you.« So Mullah Omar announced over the radio that all foreigners who wanted to be safe in Kabul should check into the Intercontinental. The next day, the hotel was full, at least that's how the story goes.

Faqiri, too, has many ideas on how to fill the hotel. Enlarging the ballroom, building a helipad. Or putting one of the university's faculties on the huge site of the Intercontinental, a hospital perhaps. But all of this costs money that nobody has right now.

And then there is the issue of weddings: In the past, large parties took place in the ballroom of the Intercontinental. Afghan weddings are attended by hundreds of guests and traditionally have a men's and a women's area. Under the Taliban, it is forbidden to play music at weddings, but at some it can still be heard in the women's section. Afghan women always find a way somehow, and the Taliban do not dare to control the women's area. But in the Intercontinental, the hotel owned by the Taliban, music is strictly forbidden.

Faqiri estimates that he has already lost over half a million francs because of the music ban. «The Taliban have to become more open. I need that, otherwise I won’t be able to achieve my goals.» The hotel will probably make a loss again this year.

Faqiri could have fled as well. On Aug. 15, 2021, the day Kabul fell, a friend of his was at the airport. He would have secured a spot for him on one of the evacuation flights. Faqiri stayed. He didn't want to leave on his own, he wanted to marry his fiancée first. The wedding later took place in the grand ballroom of the Intercontinental. His wife gave birth to a son soon after the wedding. He hasn’t completely given up on going abroad yet. He would like to write a doctoral thesis somewhere. But, for now, he’ll stay here. Faqiri is waiting. Does he miss the old Afghanistan? «Of course I miss it.»

First floor

The golden lift stops on the first floor. Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden briefly stayed here, rooms 196 and 197. Right next to the elevator, thick cables wind under a door and disappear under the fitted carpet, room 114. Here, the secret police sit in front of their video monitors. They want to hide the cables better in the future, one of the agents says in a contrite tone. Down the hall, room 122, is the hotel president's office. Hafiz Zia-ul-Haq Jawad has taken a seat in his armchair. «The image of the Taliban is that we are here to break something. But we're here to build something,» he says.

Jawad says it pains him to see the rooms in the hotel deteriorate. It’s no longer worthy of its five star rating, he says. He tells us that he wants to renovate it, rebuild it, make it accessible to all: Since the Taliban took over, the people of Kabul, Taliban and non-Taliban, sometimes come up to the hotel to take a picture of the view. In the past, they would have been turned away at the first security barrier.

«We care about this hotel a lot,» Jawad says. It’s unclear what will happen next. Most of the staff has been here for years. But well-educated young men are leaving the country. The Taliban are planning a hotel academy. And the Intercontinental is supposed to become one of the best five-star hotels in the entire region. The responsible ministry is currently looking for investors. A Turkish company left a bid for the hotel, but it wasn't good enough, Jawad says: «We're not doing so badly that we just want to give the hotel away.»

Jawad says he doesn’t distinguish between Taliban and non-Taliban when it comes to his employees. «I don't discriminate.» He says he only cares about one thing: that everyone works hard, is honest, serves the nation. «Sometimes I go down to the kitchen. I show everyone: I am one of you. We don't want anyone to think that the Taliban are only here for a short period of time.»

There’s a photo from the hotel’s best days on the wall of his office, showing people swimming in the pool. Someone has painted over the women on the deck chairs with white paint.

Pool

In the evening, bats flutter over the Intercontinental's pool. They chase the mosquitoes that swarm over the stagnant water. A greenish residue seeps into the deepest part of the pool; it’s supposed to be filled with fresh water eventually. A mosquito lands on Niazai's french fries. He filled his plate at the buffet like he does every night. Faqiri is sitting next to him at the table. Above them, a string of lights illuminates the scene.

The decay, the cracks, so obvious in the piercing daylight, are now softened by colored lights. The wind rustles through the pine trees. Faqiri has put his hand on Niazai's chair. He says they are friends. And for a moment, it really looks like they are, two young men, both smiling. Faqiri smokes thin cigarettes. Niazai doesn’t smoke.

Most of Faqiri's friends have left Afghanistan. Those who stayed have always been Taliban, he just didn't know. At university in India, they once recorded a funny video, he tells me, him and his fellow Afghan students, dancing in front of the university. After the fall of Kabul, one of his fellow students called him to ask if he could please delete the video, because he was a Talib.

For Niazai, being a mole, spying on others, waging a war in secret was a game. «Now the game is over,» he says. The Russians are sitting in a dark corner by the pool. They have been invited by the Ministry of Defense. They have been tasked with making old Russian helicopters airworthy again for the army.

I ask Faqiri, a little later: What does he like about Niazai? «He's a good guy. He never says no when it comes to getting work done.» Faqiri says the Taliban need him and the other non-Taliban in the hotel. He explains that Niazai and the other Taliban are only very slowly learning how to run a hotel like this. Faqiri forms a kind of bridge between the Taliban and the other employees, as well as between the Taliban and the customers. It’s not easy with the new rulers. «I need to understand them. But they never explain themselves.»

I ask Niazai the same question: what does he like about Faqiri? «He’s got a pure heart. And he's never jealous.» In general, if he doesn’t like someone at the Intercontinental, their days at the hotel are numbered anyway, he says. Formally, he and Faqiri are equal. But he has more influence because he’s a Talib, he explains.

Niazai loves to ride his motorcycle. For years, the Taliban waged their battles on old Hondas, always with a blanket on the saddle to sleep on at night, always moving fast. Faqiri has never ridden a motorcycle. He says working at the Intercontinental is his dream job. «I want to work hard for a few years, then I'll be happy and done with the hotel.» He wants to make 3 million francs in profit this year, that’s the goal. «I can do it,» he says.

That evening by the pool, Faqiri gets up at some point. He goes home. His wife and son are waiting for him.

Basement

The chandeliers in the hotel have already been extinguished, it's after 11 p.m. The Intercontinental is submerged in darkness. The laundry in the basement is closed, the sauna and beauty salon are barricaded anyway. Only the gym casts a shimmer of neon light on the white tiles. Niazai is pedaling on an exercise bike. Every night, he and his friends exercise here, he says, his friends being the Taliban guards around the hotel. But today he is alone. He has shed his traditional garb and is wearing an Under Armour tracksuit, a sports brand once popular with American soldiers in Afghanistan. The trash cans are filled with empty Red Bull cans.

Niazai once told me: «Peace is good for Afghanistan. But it's boring for us.» He is afraid of getting used to this life. He was never afraid to fight, and now he worries that he will one day be afraid to go to war again.

A lot of the equipment in the gym is broken. The handle of the rowing machine is missing; a friend of Niazai's tore it off in his vigor. The punching bag: also destroyed by enthusiastic exercise. It's quiet, only the whirring of Niazai's pedals disturbs the silence. He says he doesn't sleep much, none of his friends sleep much. He tells me what he’s watching when he sometimes sits alone in the lobby with his headphones: videos of Taliban operations across Afghanistan, shared in relevant WhatsApp groups. He doesn't have to follow the news, Niazai says. He knows better than the journalists what is happening in the country.

His oiled hair falls into his face as he leans over the handlebars. In his tracksuit, he almost looks like an ordinary young man. Spat out by the war.

The Intercontinental is submerged in darkness. Niazai doesn’t yet know when he’ll go to sleep.