The Current - How a luxury hotel in Afghanistan tells the story of a nation

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Lyse Doucet, Canadian journalist and the BBC's Chief International Correspondent, takes us inside the Intercontinental Hotel in her new book: The Finest Hotel in Kabul, A People's History of Afghanistan. The hotel is an Afghan landmark that has seen every chapter in the country's history, and so has its staff. She explains why their stories matter, what they teach us about the country -- and how she hopes these kinds of narratives can help the rest of the world care about Afghanistan. 

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Join us. Because kids these days, we need you more than ever. Donate at GeoFoundation.com. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Restaurants'alli Hotel Intercontinental, Pazirai Habbatan-Aziz. That ad on YouTube from 2012 shows a sparkling swimming pool

surrounded by tables and filled with hotel guests. Chefs at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, are grilling kebabs, the buffet tables, are heaving with food. This hotel has been a landmark in the Afghan capital since it first opened in 1969, part of the King's efforts to modernize the country and cement its status as the Paris of Central Asia. It has hosted diplomatic meetings, weddings, the Miss Afghanistan competition, but it's also been a target of terrorist attacks. Breaking news from Afghanistan.

A team of suicide bombers has attacked a luxury hotel popular with foreigners, including Americans, shattering what had been relative calm in the city of Kabul. There have been several explosions and a gun battle at the Intercontinental Hotel.

Hundreds may have been... The siege in 2011 lasted five hours took the lives of both staff and guests. The hotel would face another suicide attack seven years later. In many ways, the history of the Intercontinental Hotel

is a window into the history of Afghanistan itself. That has how the Canadian journalist, BBC's chief international correspondent, Lee's Ducet, sees it. She tells that story in her new book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, a People's History of Afghanistan. Lee's Doucette, good morning. Matt, it's really, really good to see you.

This is a wonderful book, and it's great to have the chance to talk to you about it. Describe this hotel to me. What does it look like? But I was looking for a familiar prism to tell what is a tumultuous story. This is a hotel with a difference. It's a hotel where history lives inside it. It lives within its walls. If you go and you can book your room,

so book your room at the Intercontinental Hotel, you'll have the waiters who say, there's the bullet on the floor, in the marble floor from that 2011 suicide bombing. They'll take you up to the fifth floor. Look, there's a bullet there. There's a shrapnel from the Civil War. We couldn't get it out.

And in a land of old beautiful royal palaces with scalloped walls and curved windows, and soaring ceilings. Here, on a hill, a pine-covered hill on the western edge of Kabul, there rose in the late 1960s, a modern palace of glass and steel. And its facade was of 200 balconies, windows like eyes looking out onto the city. And this was a small corner of Kabul, which was starting to modernize, a capital where women were going to university,

they were wearing Western clothes, sometimes even miniskirts. It was a hotel for those with a fortune or fortunate in life, the royals, the elites, the wealthy tourists. So it literally was above the cares of the world. But then, as you saw in the book, decade after decade, it solely became sucked into the city until it too became smack on the front line of one of the many grievous wars. I mean, as you say, the balconies are like eyes.

The hotel saw everything. But in some ways, it makes perfect sense to tell this story through the lens of the hotel. Because as you write, hospitality is hardwired in Afghanistan. Tell me more about that. I'm sure many of your loyal listeners know quite a bit about Afghanistan. When it is in the news, it's a place of violence, of turmoil. And I wanted to go beyond those stereotypical snapshots that you see in the news to tell about how life goes on through the eyes of the.

the people who kept this hotel running come what made through war and peace and peace and war. I'd say, well, do you have any photographs? Do you have any videos of that wedding in the hotel? They'd say, oh, no, but I lost it when I was pushed from my home, when my home was destroyed, when I became a refugee. But what wasn't lost was I have always marveled at Afghan's memories. Memory becomes the sharpest of tools to hold on to what you remember, because remembering is all that you have when physical mementos have been lost. And to come back to how this question began, and what hasn't been lost in all of this is this deeply ingrained sense of hospitality, that your guest is to be honored. And therefore, again, that seemed to me, and I, of course, discussed it a lot of my Afghan colleagues, most of all the Afghan colleague, Mahfuz Zubedi, who worked very close. mostly with me. I couldn't have done the book without him, is that the hotel was, is the home

of hospitality. Afghanistan's first luxury hotel, first five-star hotel, first international hotel and a place which so many Afghans have so many memories. It is a memory palace. Tell me about Hazrat. I mean, there are characters that run through this book that allow you to tell this story. The way that it's told, I mean, I should just say the book is, it's the history, but it reads like a novel in some ways, which I found fascinating. Tell me a little bit about Huss Wright. He started working there, what, in the 1970s? Can I do a little parenthesis on that and bring it back to Toronto?

This is my first book, and the very first time where I had in England, I might like to write a book, was in Toronto. I was just finishing graduate school at the University of Toronto, and I was in a cafe on Queen Street, and I was reading Truman Capotees in cold blood. And do you know, with books that you love, you just sit there. Like, you almost put your hands on the books and you savour it. And I thought, wow, this is so delicious that you can take the conventions of fiction to write a nonfiction story. I was dazzled. And, of course, it took me decades afterwards to try. But when I started to write this book, I was looking for a different kind of storytelling.

You know, in Britain, we call it news avoidance. I don't know what the term is here in the CBC. People say, and I include myself as a listener. The news is, oh, so gloomy. It's so grim. It's so depressing. So I suppose here in Canada, you turn away from CBC Radio 1 to CBC music. I sometimes do that.

But we have to come back to know what's happening in the world. So I wanted to find a different way to tell these stories. When you go to places of hardship, and it doesn't have to be Afghanistan, it could be a story about Ukraine. Gaza, Sudan. It could be in some hard scrabble parts of our country, including where I come from in New Brunswick, where people live hard lives. What about the births and birthdays and weddings and celebration? What about joy and hope? Some places are really, really hard now where they're almost impossible to find. But people do find them in order to get through the day. So this is that kind of book. As a journalist, though, you are telling the story through the eyes of individuals who work in this hotel. So tell me about this. Yes. I was sorry. When I went back to the hotel and started doing the research for the books, first thing I had to ask people, would they want to be part of it?

Because in Afghanistan, even telling your stories, can have consequences. And the person I really wanted to be in the book was the man who started as a teenage tailor. September 10, 1969, he walked through the door, one of the first employees of this glittering new hotel. And then when I met him again, when I met him in 2020, 2012, when I was beginning the research, He was an intercontinental waiter with his black suit and his little black tie. But it became clear that he didn't want to be part of it because he came from neighboring Warjack. And this was 2020 when the Taliban were advancing. He was worried that he would be questioned by the Taliban.

In contrast, Hazrat, tall, muscular, former bodybuilder, he was so happy to be part of this book because he made it clear to everyone who would listen and even if you didn't want to listen that he had been trained by the proper intercontinental. He knew how to run a hotel. And in our first meeting, Matt, he mimicked nonchalantly tossing a towel over the shoulder gliding through the lobby across the marble floor,

the wealthy foreign tourists with their white shirts and white skirts on the way to the tent. tennis courts or to the swimming pool. A life so different, a different way from his home. He was the eldest of 10 children. His father was electrocuted when a heater fell into the water. Hasdard had to quit high school to support his entire family. He enrolled in hotel school. But here he was decades on, still working, still saying, you know, in the 70s, this was the best hotel in the world, maybe the second, but definitely one of the top two. And to the end, he always kept that faith that one day this hotel would again, not be just in his mind, the

finest hotel in Kabul, but far beyond. You went to Afghanistan the first time the day after your 30th birthday? Christmas Day, yes, Christmas Day, 1988. And that was when Kabul was in the grip of the harshest winter in a decade. But it was also in the clutches of the cold, war. And Kabul was in the crosshairs, the Soviet-backed government in Kabul, battling against the Western-backed Mujahideen, backed by the U.S., the UK, neighboring Arab states. It was tearing the country apart, the most grievous war in the world, the biggest migration crisis. And when I arrived, it was to cover what was the biggest story in the world, which was the imminent departure of Soviet troops. The last Russian soldier would leave. That was under Gorbachev.

And the book begins, as you know, with me arriving at the reception desk, the black marble counter. And I still can remember the glittering sandaliers were all dark because they were either dimmed by dust or because they shut them off to save on electricity bills. And the receptionist goes, of course, welcome to Kabul. How long will you be staying? And I thought, oh, this is going to be six days, six weeks, six months? And I ended up staying nearly a year. And this, again, another reason to use this. says the prism, which gave me, I felt, I don't want to use the word right, at least a vantage

point to tell this story, because it was also, in some ways, a small way, my own story. The people then became my friends. They were my family, my first Afghan friends in this hotel. The way that you capture the change in the country is fascinating. And this, again, is seen through the hotel, where as those in charge change, there's a little detail of the port. behind, I guess, the front desk, and that's the portrait of the leader in charge. That changes as well. Yes. And they have to swap it out quickly, given the changing nature of who might be in charge in the country.

Yes, and that was quite a big task to do because in 18 months, three leaders were assassinated. And so it was, you know, take down the photograph, get out the nails and the hammers, not going to put up another photograph at the reception desk, in the management offices and in all the rooms. The photograph of the leader had to be there. What does it tell us about how, I mean, in many ways, the story of Afghanistan is a story of change. It is. And I've always been struck that, you know, perhaps better historians among your listeners may correct me. But I think Afghanistan is one of the few countries which has lived through every possible political system that the world has tried, almost everyone. So it had a kingdom, not perfect, but it was peaceable.

Afghans now remember that as the gold in years because there was no war. Then they had Soviet back communism. Then they had warlordism where there was a turf war among these armed groups, which tore Kabul, including parts of the hotel of power. Then they had Islamism under the Taliban. Then after 2001, with the fall of the Taliban, beginning of international engagement, they had a would-be or a wannabe democracy backed by the West. And now again, it's a Taliban again.

So they have gone through all these seismic shifts that the world has seen. And so it is woven through their own lives. And throughout it all, the cooks keep cooking, the waiters keep waiting, the bellboys keep lugging the luggage because their job, as with any hotel, anywhere in the world, is to serve. And so they do serve and they do try to keep politics out of it because, especially in times where the economy is crushed by the war or by the privations, they want to keep their job because they're all supporting big, big families. Kids these days, people say we have so much more. Smart phones, video games, treats, and busy schedules. But more isn't always better. Because kids these days, we also have more health challenges than ever before.

More mental health issues. More need for life-saving surgeries. And more complex needs. Chil has a plan to transform pediatric care for kids like me. Join us. Because kids these days, we need you more than ever. Donate at GeoFoundation.com The headlines never stop and it's harder than ever to tell what's real, what matters, and what's just noise.

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I mean, when you think of when the Taliban was driven out, what did that mean for the hotel staff? When the Taliban were driven out in 2001. So when the, just to put it in a bit of context, the government built the hotel with British money, a lease was given to the intercontinental hotel chain, the luxury. change, which was expanding across the world then. But when Soviet tanks rumbled in, so warplanes roared in, in Christmas of 1979, then the luxury, Western luxury chain pulled out, and then it became a government-owned hotel. So whoever ruled Afghanistan set the rules in the intercontinental hotel. And so it would be all changed, not just the photographs,

but did the music play or did it not? Certainly during Taliban and Mujadim, there were no bikinis by the swimming pool, there were no cocktails on the roof. The pianos were put under the stairs. The alcohol was carted down to the basement. But then, of course, when the international community comes back to Afghanistan in late 2001, suddenly Afghans are rejoicing. And there were stories in Barbershoffs, people shaving off the beards that they had to wear. Women also coming to work.

Women coming to work. Women putting on red lipstick and marching through the seats. It's a conservative society, but not the kind of repressive, the strictest of interpretation. of Islamic law that the Taliban imposed on Afghanistan then, and despite their promises to the contrary, are imposing on Afghanistan once more. And the story that I use in the book is that Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban were ousted, was a country which is pushed back to the last century. There were no international flights. There were no international landlines. Even domestic landlines didn't work. It was incredibly poor.

And the privations were immense. And so one of the stories in the book is when Hamid Karzai, who becomes the interim leader, comes to make the first international telephone line from, of course, the intercontinental hotel. So again, the hotel becomes the stage for a momentous moment. There's also the story of what, the first female sous chef. Yes, Abada. Yes, I love Abada. When I first met, I can still remember she walked into the hotel cafe and she had her pink,

headscarf on. Her favorite color was this dusty pink. And she started crying that the tears came to her, you know, as soon as we started talking when she remembered how she had lost her husband to a rocket during the Civil War of the 1990s. And then on top of it, it's the saddest of things in a country which has all too many widows. It's misery upon misery from one generation to the next. Her daughter was also widowed when she lost her husband to a rocket in one of the chapters of war. But here was Abida in her mid-50s. Life never gave her the opportunity to learn how to read or write, but her superpower was in her hands. She could cook and she could sew. And an illiterate mother, a widow, had educated all eight of her children, six of them,

up to university level. And so this is Abada, who has found that within the pain of her own life, this immense power to be the kind of person that she wanted to be. And boy, she had to really fight, fight for that. What does her story and the ability to become, as I said, a sous chef at this famous hotel, what does that say about the role of women in Afghanistan and the promise that that moment held? I'm just going to take a little step back to say this, because I'm sure some of the listeners will be thinking the question that many of us still asked this day, which is two decades of international engagement

only to have the Taliban return again. Lives were lost, money was spent, energy was invested, we hoped for the best and found it what in the eyes of many turned out to be the worst. I always say it wasn't for nothing. Take Abida, take some of the other characters in the book. Two decades of international engagement created the space to allow the most educated, connected generation,

to emerge in Afghanistan, that never had the opportunities for education, for jobs, been so great. Abedah's gratitude, which never ended, was to Hamid Karzai. And when she listened, she was a news junkie like us. She would listen to her crackling radio. I mean, she heard the speech with Hamid Karzai in late 2001 saying, this is a new moment, this is a new day for our country of optimism and hope. Men as well as women will be given all their rights.

And when the announcement then came that a new, office for jobs in the government hotels was opening. Abara was out the door like a bolt of electricity. She rushed as fast as she could down to that office and she, the little writing she knows was her name. She was the first woman to sign up. And what do we say about Afghan women now? Of course, the stories are painful beyond the belief that there is a country in our world where girls are not allowed to be educated past grade six. Women can't go to university, many jobs, not all jobs. You'll see women at the airport, women in the private sector,

but women can be doctors, they can't be lawyers, they can't even be midwives, that these girls who are still there, many have tried to leave and, you know, many have got here to Canadian cities as well. They're fighting for the rights they know are part of Islam, are part of their, for them as Afghans. And there has also been, I should say, a succession of Islamic scholars. and leaders who've gone to Afghanistan to tell the Taliban leaders

that you are violating the rights of Islam. Islam gives women all these rights. And you promised that you wouldn't rule like you did the last time. And a founding member of the Taliban and one of my last visits two years ago said to me, Lee's 95% of the Taliban do not agree with these harshest of edicts.

We're a conservative country. We value our traditions, but Islam tells us that we have the right to be educated, girls, boys, men, and women. Is it hard to get people? You mentioned news avoidance earlier. Is it hard to get people to pay attention to these stories now? There's a lot of bad news.

There's a lot of bad news. There's also very, very, you know, Ukraine, Gaza. Even Sudan doesn't get enough of a look through. You know, I'm fortunate to work for the BBC, which is a global broadcaster. We have a world service. We do cover the stories, but not as much. And we don't have enough journalists on the ground. there's too much other news.

And so again, but I've been really struck Matt that, you know, I've just come from Britain talking about my book. How many people have wanted to read this story because it's about Afghanistan, but in some ways it's about all of us and the way that we face the day. When I first started becoming a journalist many, many years ago, I thought I have to try to write stories

that even my mother would really, really like. And who doesn't like a story with the first chef who can cook and who can sew at a country which is trying to make the very best of the worst of times. Do you worry about the ability to tell those stories in a time when not just people are turning away, but people don't trust what we're saying and what's coming out of established media? I mean, you have these stories now of the head of news for the BBC and the big boss at the BBC having to resign because of this report that the BBC chopped up a speech by Donald Trump about the general. January 6 riot. This leads to accusations about bias, but also to some people just feeds into a

narrative that the mainstream media can't be trusted. And I just wonder how in the business of telling stories how you think about trust, how you think about earning people's trust. It's fundamental. It's everything. It's the gold dust of our profession. We always say, and I think we're both public broadcasters, which means that our journalism belongs to the people we broadcast to. And we do go after this ephemeral, this thing called the truth. and we can only do it by asking as many questions as possible, speaking to as many people as possible. But in order to get to the truth, we need the trust.

The trust of people we speak to, the trust of the people we are broadcasting to. And in many ways, journalism isn't an existential crisis now because people are questioning us. The news that Tim Davy, who I've really liked working with, our Director General, resigned. Our head of news, the CEO, Deborah Treness, has also resigned. And it's for a series of incidents.

And the BBC has, when it's appropriate, apologize, when what were errors were made, it has had to confront allegations of bias in the Gaza War, those of us who say we are pro-Israeli, those of us who say we are pro-Palestinian, as we always have, we get it from both sides. But this moment is very, very painful. And now no journalist wants to be the news, and we are the news. But some of the best stories are on the BBC. It is the top story. We don't hide from it.

Yes, this is an issue. Yes, we have a change in leadership. Why did this happen? We're analyzing as well, too, because it matters most of all to us. We try to do the best we can in what has to be said, the most increasingly difficult of circumstances. But I absolutely fundamentally believe, and I would hope that most of your listeners believe, too. Independent journalism is one of the fundamental pillars of the democracy. we live in, the values we hold dear.

And every knock to independent journalism is a knock to our democracy. And that is something that none of us, none of us, want to see, much less to live in. Well said. Just finally, do you think, are you confident there's a future? This book is so deeply reported. And it comes from the long period that you have spent in Afghanistan. Is there a future for that sort of journalism? do you think? Because it's the story, as you said, it's the people's history of Afghanistan.

It's beyond simply the news hits that people have. It's much deeper than that. Is there a future for that sort of reporting in journalism, do you think? Don't you think it's difficult for us to look into a crystal ball now? Because technology is changing at a pace that we simply cannot keep up with. Artificial intelligence is getting better at a pace that we struggle to keep up with. When I speak to journalism students, I say, Journalism may live or die in your generation. You have to believe in the journalism because you have to fight for the journalism. What do they still teach to this day at journalism school? The five Ws. You know them?

Who, what, where, when, why. We need a sixth W. Who, where, what, when, why? Wow. Wow. Did you hear that interview on Matt Galloway's program of the current? I didn't hear that interview anywhere else. Did you see that investigation?

on the BBC. Wow, did you? We just have to keep going. I hope you keep going. There's a real wow factor to this book. It's, as I said, unlike anything I've ever read, it's deep and broad and wonderful. Oh, that's so nice. I have such huge respect for you. And as I told you, when Canada was first plunged into its own existential crisis with threats from President Trump and imposing these swinging tariffs, I started listening to the CBC in London. I started listening, you were in my ear because I thought this matters to me. This news is about my life, my life too, and it matters.

So it's been good having you in my ear, even better in front of me. Lee's Doucette is a Canadian journalist, and the BBC's chief international correspondent. Her new book is called The Finest Hotel in Kabul, a People's History of Afghanistan. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening.

I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.