Escaping war zone at the video arcade
In Kabul, Afghanistan, vintage video arcade games provide a much-needed escape from a war zone.
A young boy plays a vintage video arcade game in Kabul, Afghanistan, a war zone for decades.
Iason Athanasiadis
Kabul, Afghanistan
鈥� A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
There is no sign posted outside and no frills inside, aside from two rows of hulking games machines stacked up against peeling walls. In Kabul鈥檚 Old City, shoot鈥檈m-ups, beat鈥檈m-ups, and soccer simulations are providing a much-needed escape through makeshift arcades.
In one, an antique black-and-white television balances on the wall below a life-size poster of a pixilated Japanese warrior. Children and young men compete for space, maniacally twiddling brightly colored controls on machines that are leftovers from another era.
鈥淲e come here to play games and relax from street-begging,鈥� said Ubaydollah Sharafian, a 14-year-old street urchin too young to remember the reign of the Taliban, when all forms of visual entertainment were banned.
鈥淭hese are beautiful machines,鈥� said his friend, who claimed not to know his own name.
Tucked off a side street from the bazaar, the row of video game arcades is advertised by chugging generators pumping in power to an otherwise darkened neighborhood. Electronic music and raw sound effects fill the air.
鈥淭he lads come here and stay off the streets,鈥� said Abdulghaffar Sediqi, the proprietor of one store as he watched his young customers playing Mortal Kombat, a 1990s arcade game that placed martial arts warriors against one another. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e not filching pockets, they鈥檙e not sniffing glue.鈥�
Hundreds of thousands of street-children fill Kabul鈥檚 bazaars and traffic intersections. They often provide the only source of income for families in which parents were either killed in 鈥檚 wars spanning 30 years or were crippled by land mines and drug addiction. For a generation that knew only violence growing up, these aggressive games offer a logical continuation to lives lived in hardscrabble conditions.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 want this game to finish, I want to keep on playing forever,鈥� one young customer whispered as he stared at the screen.
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