On a bright winter morning lines of plane trees and immaculately tended rose bushes fall away down terraces where men crash out on carpets and sheepish young couples sit as close together as they dare. The plants are fed by a central water channel, the signature feature of a Mughal garden. Below is the brown smog of Kabul; beyond, snowy mountains.
The tomb of Babur, the first Mughal emperor, blasted and pock-marked during the civil war of the 1990s, has been lovingly restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Some visitors come because it is now Kabul’s most tranquil public space; some because Babur is emerging as an unlikely national hero in a country short of leaders worth admiring. People pray at the foot of his low, simple grave. One enthusiast sacrifices a buffalo to him every year and distributes the meat to the gardeners who tend the place.
Born far to the north of modern Afghanistan, Babur went to Kabul only because he had failed in Central Asia. It was Samarkand he dreamt of capturing. Yet when the demands of building an empire drove him south, he yearned to return to Kabul.
Ismailimail 