Situated just next to a large roundabout, the Hamkar Plastic Surgery Hospital should be easy to find.
But this is Kabul, not an episode of Nip/Tuck.
In place of a sleek building that reflects the clean, simple standards of contemporary design is a metallic edifice still under construction where workers in hospital scrubs and surgical masks paint the walls and install light fixtures. Instead of electronic and new-age music, the sounds of saws and hammers are heard, as patients enter a bare lobby leading to a flight of stairs being mopped by nurses. The surrounding, evoking a sense of incompletion, may not be what one usually associates with an industry often seen to be indulging in a profligate exercise of turning out new tropes of 'perfection'. But it is very much in line with life in the new Kabul.
Nestled along the dirt road of the Char Rahi Sar Sabzi, Dr Aminullah Mohammad Ehsan Hamkar's eponymous private clinic is upstaged by the relative opulence of another of the Afghan capital's nouveau riche icons – wedding halls. With their multicoloured flashing lights and replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the wedding halls easily draw attention away from a clinic, which according to Hamkar, performs procedures that rival Western practices in their quality and precision.