There’s a glimmer of the previous Kabul hiding within the new one — if the place to look.

It’s there within the crowded snooker halls the place younger males in denims hover round velvet tables and yell “good shot” in English. It lives on in the dead of night rooms of online game dens the place teenage boys lounge on couches taking part in “Name of Responsibility” and “FIFA,” posters of well-known footballers plastered on the partitions. It’s in espresso outlets the place ladies sip on cappuccinos, their robe-like abayas concealing skinny denims, as a Taylor Swift tune softly radiates from the audio system.

Because the Taliban toppled the Western-backed authorities practically two years in the past, the group has erased most blatant vestiges of the American nation-building undertaking in Afghanistan. Highschool and college lecture rooms have been emptied of ladies. Spiritual students and strict interpretations of Shariah legislation changed judges and state penal codes. Parliament was dissolved, any semblance of consultant politics gone with it.

However more durable to stamp out has been the cultural legacy left after 20 years of U.S. occupation, these far subtler methods through which Western and Afghan cultures collided in main cities and got here to form city life together with the era of younger individuals who got here of age inside it.

“It utterly modified in these 20 years,” mentioned Ahmad Khalid, 37, sitting in a steakhouse in downtown Kabul. “There are extra faculties, each model of clothes and footwear is right here, sports activities academies, now we have all the brand new expertise — we obtained linked to the world.”

The enduring Western affect is most putting within the capital. Earlier than the U.S.-led warfare started in 2001, Kabul was a metropolis in shambles, suffering from rubble after years of combating in the course of the civil warfare and later between resistance forces and the Taliban’s first authorities. However after the American invasion, it turned a hub of worldwide consideration.

Hundreds of overseas help staff, troopers and contractors flooded in, and high-rise buildings and cell towers sprouted up. New eating places and malls catering to nouveau riche Afghans driving the financial increase appeared. Since 2001, the town’s inhabitants has practically doubled, reaching round 5 million individuals at present — or about half of the nation’s complete city inhabitants.

There are pizza outlets, burger joints and bodybuilding gyms in each neighborhood. Out of doors distributors promote secondhand T-shirts adorned with “I <3 NY” in massive block letters. Tattoos — thought of forbidden in Islam — of stars and moons and moms’ names are etched on younger males’s arms. Road youngsters yell English expletives with gusto.

For members of the younger, city era, the eating places and bookstores have turn out to be cherished corners of the town. There, they’ll step via a door and escape the sometimes-dismal actuality of a rustic now being remade by a authorities that always feels extra overseas to them than the Western-backed administration did.

One latest afternoon in western Kabul, a well-liked cafe buzzed with the screeches of an espresso machine. Acoustic tunes echoed throughout the room whereas women and men mingled amongst potted vegetation and a bookshelf of English and Persian language literature — ignoring verbal edicts barring music and gender-segregation necessities.

One man in his 20s in a white T-shirt stared at a laptop computer display screen, his fingers tapping together with the music taking part in in his headphones. Close by, two teenage women in crimson lipstick and thick eyeliner took selfies on their iPhones.

At one other desk, Taiba, 19, beckoned for the waiter to carry tea whereas her buddy Farhat, 19, flipped via the pages of “The Forty Guidelines of Love” by Elif Shafak, her white head scarf pushed again so it solely coated her shoulders. The women normally meet up for espresso right here a couple of times a month — as typically as they’ll afford. It’s a world unto itself, one of many few public areas left the place they’re permitted entry and the place their very existence doesn’t really feel threatened, they defined.

“I really like the scent, the books, the music they play,” Taiba mentioned. “Though,” she added with a wry smile, “I don’t like pop music anymore since I turned a great Muslim previously two years.” The women checked out one another and burst out laughing. “Solely joking,” she quipped.

It may be a jarring juxtaposition: a metropolis the place women are barred from faculty above the sixth grade however are allowed to learn English-language books in cafes; the place male public servants are required to develop out their beards whereas teenage boys rock fashionable fade hairstyles and sweatshirts that includes American sports activities franchises.

That dissonance is partly defined by Taliban officers’ competing visions for the nation. The federal government’s prime management — who not often go away their southern heartland in Kandahar — imagine in a strict interpretation of Islam and have enacted legal guidelines reflecting that. Extra reasonable officers in Kabul — who’ve interacted extra steadily with overseas diplomats and traveled outdoors the area — have pushed much less restrictive insurance policies and let sure norms slide within the metropolis that will not going survive in Kandahar.

Nonetheless, prime officers throughout the board method foreigners within the nation with suspicion. The few overseas journalists permitted visas are intently monitored by intelligence officers. The federal government has accused some Western vacationers of espionage. Officers, skeptical of what’s being taught in faculties supported by nonprofits, are at the moment debating banning overseas help teams from working in training.

For companies attempting to navigate Afghanistan’s new actuality, the crimson line of what’s and isn’t permitted is usually murky. One well-liked burger joint in downtown Kabul nonetheless performs Iranian music and American pop as a result of, whereas music has been banned in different public locations, officers haven’t explicitly barred it in eating places, the waiters say. Nonetheless, the employees fastidiously monitor the safety digital camera feeds and slam off the stereo at any time when they see a Talib about to enter the restaurant.

In a online game heart throughout the town, dozens of boys sprawled out on fake leather-based couches whereas maneuvering PlayStation consoles and watching 50-inch tv screens. As clients arrived, the proprietor, Mohsin Ahmadi, 35, pointed them to a desk within the heart of the darkish room with a pocket book illuminated by a neon inexperienced gentle. The boys scribbled their names and the time — they have been charged 50 cents every hour they performed — earlier than scoping out an empty sofa and controller.

“These zombies maintain attempting to kill me,” muttered Qasim Karimi, 18, who was perched on the arm of a sofa subsequent to a few pals. On the tv in entrance of him, a digital squad of troopers sprinted via smoldering buildings, the “pah-pah-pah” of gunfire howling via the audio system.

“We’ve skilled a lot warfare it turned our tradition,” Mr. Karimi defined, eyes glued to the display screen. “I really like combating,” he joked.

The boys got here right here each afternoon — it was one of many few retailers they’d left, they mentioned. With the nation’s financial decline, lots of the cafes they as soon as frequented closed. The federal government banned their favourite hookah bars. Even the way forward for the sport zone was unclear: Police officers not too long ago barred boys below 10 from coming into — prompting issues that the authorities may finally outlaw the gaming facilities totally.

“I concern that would occur,” mentioned Mr. Ahmadi, the proprietor. “However we’d like these locations, they’re the one locations the place individuals really feel comfy now.”

Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting.