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EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

direction. The old city is still there. The commercial
bazaar basks still in the noonday sun, packed with
disease, intrigue, cheerful noise, and the clatter and
clang of Eastern commerce.

The railway never ran a train along its single line to
the glory of Amanullah. Amanullah never had the
supreme thrill of watching a railway train steam out
of Kabul for the wonder city.

The cinema in Paghman showed a film or two in
its time, and was duly hailed with wonderment and
delight by the astonished natives. The bandstand
was quite rightly the pivotal point round which
circulated the talent, wit, and administrative intellect
of Afghanistan, while massed bands ground out a real
national anthem newly composed, from within its
hideous pillars.

The cafe in its time served out hundreds and thousands
of brilliantly coloured ices, and thousands of cups
containing green tea; and the poplar trees grew to
shade the sanded road leading up to the Paghman
Palace. The poplars are there still, shading a road that
led to nowhere but a desert of lost hopes and desolate
expectations.

But Darulaman ! If there is a sea of lost ships, there
must be a country of lost cities. The old dead-and-gone
cities of Annam will be there; the desolate ruins that
were the glory of Peru; Biblical cities, giving a trace
of their cool magnificence; Pompeii.

With them, pale shadows of the past, will be Aman-
ullah's dream city of Darulaman, which grew a few
feet in the air and then withered. If hopes are translated
into brick and mortar, then it overtops the others. In
the dream city, clerks run about their business all day
long. There is no corruption, but boundless funds, and

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