Based on the names, where would you rather live... a city where all the street names are Shahid (Martyr) This or Shahid That, or a city where the places have romantic names like "Arefan va Asheghan" ("Gnostics and Lovers")? The long-term future of Kabul should be good. The very names are more uplifting than Tehran. At least my friends from Kandahar think so. I've heard that mobile phones in Afghanistan are affordable for normal people!

French travel advice for Kabul: ``avoid the places with strong concentration of expatriates (restaurants, "chicken and flower streets").'' If you can't visit Chicken Street there's no point in going.