5 Beautiful Things About Afghanistan

Alyssa Hollingsworth | May 27, 2016

5. Rose Season

I visited Kabul in May, just as the roses started to bloom.

When they come, the roses are everywhere.

They climb the walls surrounding private homes. They rest in the gardens outside the Queen’s Palace. They grow in the foreigners’ graveyard, near the buried aid workers who wanted to rest in the country they loved.

Old men and young boys twine roses around the handlebars of their bicycles. They bob there, leaves outstretched, in their journeys across the bumpy city.

An Afghan woman told me with hope, “The roses have come back to Kabul.” They had gone for a while.

I don’t know the future of this country. I know the present is shrouded in pain, uncertainty, controversy, and politics. But when I think of Afghanistan, I think of the roses.

Alyssa Hollingsworth / Own Work

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