Lyse Doucet has been reporting from Afghanistan and other far-flung outposts for almost 40 years, with the Inter-Continental hotel in Kabul playing a vital backdrop to her distinctive accounts throughout. With her knowledge of the country, and of what ordinary Afghans have endured during the decades of disaster, she has created a remarkably vivid picture of a place with a remarkably vivid history.

Much of the Afghan story can be read through the hotel’s windows onto the former glory days, a time of haute cuisine, poolside cocktails and high fashion. Today’s hotel also features: a dilapidated, shrapnel-damaged shell that has endured three civil wars, two terrorist attacks, the US occupation, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban.

Lyse Doucet still stays there regularly. One senses that for her, as for the Afghans, the decaying grandeur still hints at dreams of a different future.

Lyse is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent. She visits the Inter-Continental Hotel whenever she is in Afghanistan and counts many of its staff and fellow guests her close friends.