Homes that lay in roofless ruins of brick and jagged stone, gouged buildings with fallen beams poking through the holes, the charred, mangled husks of cars, upended, sometimes stacked on top of each other, walls pocked by holes of every conceivable caliber, shattered glass everywhere.

Khaled Hosseini uses strong imagery to describe the disaster that struck upon Kabul. By placing strong images in your head about the scenery of what Laila and Miriam saw in the taxi, you can began to imagine the horrible toll that all the fighting has taken on the people of Kabul. Everything is gone or fallen apart. This explains part of the desperation that Laila and Miriam have in trying to escape Kabul and flee to Pakistan. Life in Kabul has slowly but literally become unlivable.