Mournful wails from loudspeakers atop minarets at nearby mosques heralded a new day yesterday in this war-battered city of 1 million.
The nightly bombing by US jets had stopped, the Northern Alliance that Washington backs was in the city and the hardline Taliban rulers and their al-Qaeda allies were on the run somewhere in the south of the country.
It had been a peaceful night.
"We are so tired of war. We just beg everyone, please give us peace," said Mohammed Aga, a guard at an abandoned house of a former Taliban leader.
Markets were bustling. Music, banned for five years by the ruling Taliban, played loudly. More men without beards, another mandatory requirement of the previous Taliban rulers, began to appear.
But the all-enveloping burqas worn by women still billowed as the women moved through the market place.
"It's too early. Still the situation is uncertain," said Shasia. "But we are planning to take off the burqa. Now there is more freedom."
But it's not for the women alone to decide, said Mohammed Shah.
"They have their husbands, their fathers, their brothers. It is our tradition," he said. "And even the educated woman does not want to right away throw her burqa away. Slowly, slowly they will make a decision to stop wearing it. No one wants to be the first one to show her face, while everyone else is covered."
Meanwhile, uniformed northern alliance security troops patrolled the city, took up positions outside international aid agencies, and at major intersections.
There were also several vehicles roaming the street, loaded with men who had guns and no uniform. More men with guns, but no uniform also strolled leisurely down the street.
It wasn't clear whether they were there to provide security or were a threat to security.
At government offices and military units throughout Kabul posters of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani had been put up. Often by his side was a poster of his slain defense chief Ahmed Shah Massood.
At the foreign ministry, bureaucrats who had worked under the Taliban, and under Rabbani before the Taliban, waited for their instructions. They sat in chairs on the grounds outside the unheated four-story office building.
Dr. Abdullah, the Northern Alliance foreign minister, seemed likely to set up office there.
There was also speculation that Rabbani would soon return to the capital that he had left five years earlier.
"He might come soon, but we don't know anything officially," said Azizullah, a new northern alliance foreign ministry official walking around the sprawling grounds with a hand-held radio that occasionally erupted with static sounds of orders being given.
Jeeps loaded with armed men were parked outside the Interior Ministry. Inside, the northern alliance's interior minister Younus Qanooni was at work.
It appeared the northern alliance leaders, most of them affiliated to Rabbani's Jamiat-e-Islami party, had returned to the government offices they had abandoned five years earlier -- to rule at least temporarily.
In the market, ordinary Afghans discussed their future.
A woman covered by a burqa, made mandatory by the Taliban, demanded an immediate UN presence to keep the peace.
"One hundred percent, the United Nations has to come," said Shafiqa, who gave only one name. "I am from Kabul. I am educated and I know that we need the United Nations and then we need Zaher Shah," the country's former monarch, who has been living in exile in Rome since he was deposed in 1973.
In Kabul's old city, which runs along the Kabul River, entire neighborhoods lay in ruins, a legacy of Rabbani's last attempt at running the country, from 1992-96. Residents there pleaded for peace.
Most of them were pinning their hopes on the UN and the US.
Mohammed Nasim, who once operated a small tea shop said,"We think that America should make sure that they do not start fighting again."
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