KABUL, Afghanistan — The scars from four decades of war are etched into the boxy apartment towers known as Macroyan Kohna, a dreary neighborhood built by the Soviets in central Kabul a half-century ago as a testament to modernity.

Like other parts of the Afghan capital, Macroyan Kohna has been pummeled by rockets, mortar shells and car bombs since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began just over 40 years ago. But the leafy neighborhood of shrapnel-pocked apartments has been rebuilt and expanded several times over.

Macroyan, a corruption of the Russian word for “micro-complex,” offers a micro-history of Afghanistan’s four decades of war. Built for pro-Soviet Afghan elites, Macroyan Kohna today is a worn but vibrant neighborhood of middle- and upper-class Afghans who have reinvented it as a shabby chic refuge.

Yet among the original 1960s gray “Khrushchevka” buildings, emblems of violence are everywhere, some decades old and some as fresh as the latest car bomb.