New York- There was an under reported suicide attack at the entrance of the Kabul City Centre/Safi Landmark Hotel today where the attacker detonated at the semi-secure entrance killing himself and two guards. I used to frequent this mall complex mainly to use the ATM to pay for my room at the Park Palace guesthouse a few blocks down. I once spent one fairly pricey night (for Afghanistan anyway) at the Safi in 2008 when I missed my PIA flight back to Islamabad and decided to splurge for one night/was too embarrassed to check back into the Park Palace because I had already said my goodbyes to all the staff and would’ve felt silly going back there. I occasionally used to hit up the overpriced lunch buffet on the top floor of this place to take a break from eating street food once in a while during my Kabul 2009 era.
It appears the Afghan Taleban are making a concerted effort, considered the bombing of the Wazir Akbar Khan Finest supermarket the other week, to smash places where well-to-do Afghans and Westerners go to use ATMs and buy/eat non-street food. You can see the inside of this mall in my friend’s film, Silencing the Song, mentioned in a previous post, now airing on HBO when the film’s central character Setara goes to shop there. To anyone who has never been nor certainly now will ever go to Afghanistan, one more suicide bombing there, and a barely reported one at that, is just more noise in an overly crowded, un-distilled media-verse. The lives of a couple of as-yet nameless Afghan security guards may seem meaningless in a war who’s costs are talked about in the billions and about the larger-than-life personalities of American generals etc.
Pessimists may view the advent of the Herati Safi brothers business empire in the heart of Kabul as a blight in the quaint rustic ruins of a formerly destroyed city and their undoubtedly questionable business practices as proof of Afghanistan’s supposed propensity toward failure. But for many people, myself included, who do not want to see Kabul continue to resemble a James Nachtwey photo circa 1996, this place represented a certain level of hope. Afghanistan is place filled with so much unhappiness that sometimes a little glitz is needed. Naysayers will undoubtedly accuse me of naivete.