This is the Guardian. May I have your attention please you can now book your train tickets on Uber and get

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Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. This episode contains graphic descriptions of war.

Welcome to the Guardian Long Reed, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read. I remember the silence between the falling shells, the terror of living under siege as a child.

By Zarlasht al-Amzai. In 1992 when I was 10 years old, thousands of rockets were fired into Kabul.

It started before the spring solstice when we celebrated

Persian New Year and carried on into winter. The siege forced my family to flee our home, never to return.

We had hoped the fighting in Afghanistan would stop in 1989 after Soviet forces withdrew from their failed invasion.

But our hope disappeared as US-funded Mujahideen started fighting one another, bombarding Kabul in an attempt to seize control of the capital.

I was living with my family in the northwest part of the city in a house with

fading yellow paint on its outside walls a red iron door with loud creaking hinges

opened onto the outside world. I used to run out into the street to play with the other children in our neighborhood.

But the siege changed everything. I remember this as the time when all the time I knew disappeared,

when bedtime, school time, playtime and dinner time all vanished.

The simmering fear of violence that we had felt every day now turned into terror. Cubul was shelled relentlessly for months. Food and water became scarce. Each day we received news of more deaths among our family, friends and neighbors.

I lived in an extended family of several uncles and aunts and my granny and it became our family ritual to pray for the dead before eating supper.

My grandmother would lead the prayers. My four little siblings and I would follow,

scared and confused by death. My heavily pregnant aunt looked numb, all expression drained from her as if she needed

reminding to move her arm and her hand to reach the food on the plate in front of her.

My mother, always anxious, made no effort to hide her terror.

She would talk about different scenarios in which one or all of us would be killed.

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