There’s an art gallery just off Armenia street in the Mar Mikhail district of Beirut that sells a variety of novelty goods – soap from Aleppo, hand-stamped Iranian linens, black and white photographs from the Lebanese Civil War, books on art.

Our official tour of the Old City began the next day in the Armenian Quarter, where our guide paused along a narrow corridor to reflect on the Armenian Genocide. “Do you know what happened to the Armenian people under the Ottoman Empire?” he asked.

In New York it was the sirens that nettled, piercing through triple-paned glass seventeen stories above the avenue at all hours of the day and night. In Kabul it’s the call to prayer that distracts, albeit less frequently, and which I wake to most mornings.

My first week in Kabul has been filled with takeout dinners at home, homemade English breakfast, all day brunches in private gardens, and bonfires at night. These are things you wouldn’t think possible in Afghanistan.