Escaping war zone at the video arcade 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’s Old City, shoot’em-ups, beat’em-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. “We come here to play games and relax from street-begging,” 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. “These are beautiful machines,” said his friend, who claimed not to know his own name.

Escaping war zone at the video arcade

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’s Old City, shoot’em-ups, beat’em-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.

“We come here to play games and relax from street-begging,” 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.

“These are beautiful machines,” said his friend, who claimed not to know his own name.