The host tames his otherwise playful voice into a soft, dreamy thrum: “You are listening to 98.1 Arman FM, Radio of the Hearts. This is The Night of the Lovers.”

At the end of every Friday, the second day of the Afghan weekend, Ajmal Noorzai sits behind the mic in a dimly lit studio to host a two-hour radio show that is part storytelling made possible by technology, and part unloading of hearts — the breaking of which was facilitated by the same technology. It’s not the kind of love call-in show you might expect. There is no banter with the host. There’s no advice given. Listeners just dial in and leave a long voicemail — or a post on the show’s Facebook page, which the host then plays or reads. Everyone, including the host, listens.

“I will be with you until 9 p.m. You can call 456 to record your stories, or if you have access to the internet, you can post on our Facebook page — my colleague Yalda Jan will read it anonymously in her warm voice.”

The Friday night I visited the Arman FM studio in the posh Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood of Kabul, Ajmal was wearing a checkered shirt, its short sleeves rolled up further to reveal, on his right arm, a tattoo in a shape that is neither a scorpion nor a flame. He had three mobile phones — 68 unread text messages on one, eight on another — and two computer screens in front of him. A bright neon light on the blue ceiling lit the otherwise dark room. A small Persian rug covered the floor.

At the mic, he took a moment to do what he does every show: ask listeners who called in to talk naturally, in their normal, human voices, and not to do what everyone always seemed to, which is imitate, in monotone, monologues from the Bollywood movies we Afghans consume en masse. I am made of your love. Before, I was just alive. I have only been living since I met you.

Ajmal wanted specifics. Juicy bits. No matter how difficult that might be.

“Think of us as your bridge — with calm, with passion, tell us your stories of love, of separation. Don’t be quick and just say I was in love and that’s it. You have between one and 10 minutes — pretend you are standing in front of a mirror, or lying in bed. Tell us the details.”

When you’re examining the public expression of a condition — love — that is relatively new to an entire country, every detail matters. Until the beginning of the U.S. war and the fall of the Taliban, relationships — at least as the Western definition of relationships — hardly existed. Segregation was enforced. Marriages were arranged. Dating ran contrary to tradition. There was faith and families and slowly growing to love whoever it was you were told to be with. Then came liberation from the Taliban and more freedom for women to come out of the house and, soon enough, an explosion of dating—offline, but largely online and over the phone. With dating came a new kind of “love,” one that is much more familiar to the West, but one that has caused an understandable and not insignificant amount of confusion here because, while young people have started a slow, dicey exploration of modern relationships, the rest of society still clings to ultra-conservative values. So love invariably leads to some kind of heartache, which is what people call in to Arman FM to talk about: their doomed and broken hearts.

A story begins. Soft music, a Bollywood song, plays in the background, matching the nature of the story. A predictable progression: love at first sight, separation, unfaithfulness.

“Dear sweet Ajmal,” a young female voice, monotonous and sad, starts. A boy, she says, forced his number into her purse at a wedding. A brazen act. She hesitated to call him for a month. What should she do? She couldn’t ask her friends for advice, let alone her parents. She eventually dialed the number only to hang up, but the boy guessed the number as hers and called back relentlessly. She was annoyed at first, but when they spoke he seemed so dedicated, so nice. She fell in love with him without a face-to-face meeting. He must have sensed her heart opening to him because soon she felt a change in him, too. With his treasure won, he just wasn’t that into her. His number suddenly always seemed busy, she says. He never answered her calls. Clearly, she thought, he is talking to other girls.

The music in the background rises to a crescendo and pours from speakers all over the country — out of the radios of cab drivers braving the dangerous streets at night, out of the portable radios of weary soldiers patrolling in distant provinces, out of computer speakers and the radios of old men who still find looking at TV screens blasphemous. “Bewafa [Unfaithful],” cries the Bollywood singer. “Unfaithful!”

And that’s it. No commentary, no back and forth between caller and host. When the song ends, the show goes straight into a commercial break. Ajmal takes off his headphones and sits back in his chair, his body relaxing ever so slightly, like an orchestra conductor between arias.