Afghanistan, reports Eric Rayman, is awakening as if from a witch's spell

As soon as I saw Khaled's forced smile, I knew something was wrong. Khaled Wassel—in New York I call him Ed—was meeting us at the Kabul airport. "The government's canceled our reservations at the Intercontinental Hotel." I had awoken before dawn in a luxury hotel in Dubai in order to catch one of the few civilian flights to Afghanistan. My traveling companions, Afghans whose families had emigrated after the Soffiet invasion in 1979, had made a feature film about refugee life in America, FireDancer, of which I am a producer (as is Ed). Because of the Taliban, they never expected to be able to show it in their homeland. Then, in the fall of 2001, allied forces routed the Islamic fundamentalists, and in their wake a Persian cultural revolution began to unfold. The minister of culture invited us to bring the film to Kabul for its world premiere.

Ariana Afghan Airlines, the national carrier, had just two flights per week into Kabul. Our flight was jammed with journalists, documentary filmmakers, and Afghans returning from exile. In the seats next to me sat a clean-shaven man in a charcoal gray business suit and his wife, attired in a black pleated skirt and a white blouse. She told me that in 1980, they had fled Afghanistan for Germany. As we landed, she drew a silk scarf over her head and they both burst into tears.

The Kabul airport was littered with the carcasses of planes, jeeps, and trucks and other pieces of unidentifiable debris. Large hulks of camouflage green-painted metal had been dragged just far enough oV the runway to make room for our plane to land.

Amid the confusion of arrival, Ed tried to explain to us why our hotel reservations had been canceled: "Next week is the Wrst anniversary of the assassination of Massoud." Ahmed Shah Massoud's picture, not President Hamid Karzai's, was everywhere. Massoud, who was the commander of the Northern Alliance, is the symbol of Afghan liberation. "The government needed all the rooms in the hotel for the ceremonies," he said. "Didn't the hotel know Karzai was giving this party when we confirmed our reservations last week?" I asked. I imagined my letter to Conde Nast Traveler's Ombudsman.

The Intercontinental was another war casualty. Perched on a summit overlooking the city, it had once been surrounded by majestic gardens and ranked among the Wnest hotels in this part of the world. Now only half of its 220 rooms were habitable, its hilltop perch was barren, and electricity and phone service were intermittent.

Still, we had thought ourselves lucky to secure rooms there, since the rest of the city was in worse shape. Thousands of buildings were little more than piles of sand-colored bricks. The streets were choked with rusting Yugos, Soviet-era Ladas, reconditioned Fiats, horse carts, bicycles, and pedestrians. Land mine victims and war widows clad in periwinkle burkas competed for alms from the immobilized vehicles. Many people, especially foreigners, wore surgical masks to guard against the dust and acrid fumes. The Kabul River had dried up; its riverbed was now a ramshackle tent city known as the Titanic Bazaar. Teenage boys sold water from barrels that they pushed through the marketplace on handcarts.