Afghanistan - Hedayatullah Ahmad Zai slaps his hand against one of the ancient mud brick walls that separate this historic neighbourhood from the rest of Kabul, a bustling city now despite the remnants of war.

“There was garbage up to here,” he says, shaking his head. “We hauled it out for weeks. And there were people living in that.”

Murad Khane was once a thriving area that played host to Afghan royalty. It had grand houses that people loved to live in and a busy market along the Kabul River.

Through decades of war, the area had fallen far from its glory days.

The landmark buildings were crumbling. Raw sewage ran in the streets. The wells were dry, and the only people who remained were those too poor to have anywhere else to go.

“This area has a story that is 300 years old,” says Ahmad Zai, the head of engineering for an ambitious project to rebuild the area.

“The people like living in these houses,” he says as he strolls through a maze of alleys and construction sites. “They have been here for generations.”

And for generations they had watched as the grand buildings of Murad Khane buckled from neglect and returned to mud.

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