Afghanistan takes a holiday

However, fighting in Khost and drizzle in Kabul didn't seem likely to block what feels like a long-hidden sun coming out again: Nawruz means "new day," and comes from neighboring Iran, where it's also frowned upon by Islamic conservatives. In Kabul, more women can be seen showing their faces around town, still wearing the burqa but flipping the fronts of them to expose faces that were hidden from view for five years.

Last night kicked off with an all-night, tickets-only party at the city's decrepit Intercontinental Hotel. On Thursday, the residents of Kabul will be treated to a stadium concert by famed Afghan singer Farhad Daria, whose combination of local and Western pop sounds earned him the ire of the Taliban, which forbade all music – and spurred his flight to Germany. Young admirers may send cards to one another, a la Valentine's Day. And over the course of the holiday, families will likely head up to the mountains for picnics that were not just banned under the Taliban, but which have been out of fashion during years of conflict.

That, however, has de-mining experts worried about whether holiday revelers could end up on hillsides with deadly booby traps left over from 23 years of war. "The people of Kabul were not allowed to celebrate Nawruz, and people are just dying to go up to the hills to celebrate," says Abdul Ladif Latin, a de-mining expert with the UN.

"But there were some places that we were not able or not allowed to clear." Kabul Television will be broadcasting information about which parts of the city are safe and which are not.

One of the favorite spots for those in search of the real Nawruz will be Karte Sachi, a Kabul neighborhood that contains the city's most famous Shiite shrine. Since the roots of Nawruz are Persian, it follows that the holiday is most dear to the country's Shiite minority, the Hazara sect.

It is here, outside a Grecian-blue mosque dedicated to Ali, the prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, that a ceremonial New Year's flag is to be raised – a job they had hoped to bestow upon the exiled king, Zahir Shah, who will not return until next week. On the eve of the holiday, a colorful, carnival-like atmosphere began to roll through the courtyard and even among the graves that surround the shrine, where families were putting down sheets and slabs of cardboard they would camp out on in the days ahead.

"I'm an old woman, and the Taliban wouldn't even let me come down here on our holiday," says Bibi Qandi, surveying the scores of people preparing for the holiday. "We tried to celebrate it at home, but that was very difficult. It's just not the same if you can't come here."

Nearby, an elderly salesman kept watch over his table of children's toys: fake Matchbox cars and trucks for boys, knock-off blonde Barbies in miniskirts for girls. "On Nawruz, every parent has to give gifts to their children," explains Hussein Ali. "For years, [the government] didn't allow us to celebrate Nawruz, and now they're helping us."

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