I have just landed in Kabul after almost four months, it is the longest I have been away in these five years.

I remember that once my friend Ty, who at that point had not been in Kabul for quite some time, asked me to write him about the smell of Kabul as it would hit me as soon as I arrived. It has been a few years since, but never got around doing it. So here I am, better later than never.

The first thing that reaches the nostrils, “in body and spirit,” is dust: as it rubs against the asphalt, as it covers rose bushes, as it creates an opaque patina that makes everything blurry. And then there is the smell of melting plastic: it is the rubber frames of car windows that wait for hours under the sun, either because of traffic or for the lack of trees. Speaking of traffic, the exhaust of old, battered Toyota Corolla heavily contributes to the mix. Besides the actual smells, there are those you build in your head: like the one that may come from the watermelons stored in the truck that crossed the road; or that of sweat and youth of the school bus full of little girls driving before us with closed windows despite the heat. They kept me company for a good part of the road pulling faces and laughing together across the windshields. There is the smell of the end of summer, with wafts of humidity announcing the coming of autumn and the forecast of the sting of the black smoke coming from sawdust stoves in winter. Above all, is the smell of return that, in spite of doubts and hesitations, welcomes you like the hug of an old friend.