From Kabuliwala to the Fall of Kabul: Afghanistan in Popular Imagination
With the recent fall of Kabul, Afghanistan has resurfaced in political and critical discourses. The “Graveyard of Empires” as it is known, the popular imagination of the country has been a source to draw courage from for subalterns the world over. Its crucial geopolitical location has often made it a site for global scuffles of major powers as we witnessed in Rudyard Kipling's Kim and its backdrop of the Great Game. We have also often seen how Hollywood’s Orientalist lenses transformed the country into a site for fulfilment of neocolonial American desires—Rambo vanquishing the Soviets almost single-handedly in the background of the Cold War.