The Finest Hotel in Kabul

When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan s first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world.More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls.Lyse Doucet, the BBC s Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel s 1970s glory days an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the Paris of Asia .It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con s famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the lives of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021. The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption.It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.