Kabul has sat beneath the Hindu Kush mountains for over 3,500 years, held between snow-capped peaks and the Kabul river, making it one of the world’s oldest cities. From the Mongol Empire to the British Occupation, the Soviet Union to the US-led Invasion, the Afghan capital has been endlessly besieged by various powers vying for control. Its architecture is a record of those who tried to rebuild it in their own image – and those who wished to see it burn.

Between countless bullet holes and mortar craters, smooth ground is in short supply. Oliver Percovich knows this all too well. In 2007, the Australian found himself in the city after his girlfriend landed a job as a researcher in the Afghan capital. In between job hunting, he did what any skater would do: cruised around to explore his new home. Skateable spots were in short supply, but after using his spare boards to recruit two local kids, he started skating the city’s high-school yards with his newfound skate scene of three.

It was a different experience to skating in Europe and the US, with crowds of fascinated people amassing at every session and the police regularly interrupting the skaters to ask for a turn. But the excitement was undercut with a tension that pervades the city, one where bombings are an everyday reality and where women are almost entirely absent from the streets and civil society.

“It’s hard to explain what happens after a couple of months of living somewhere where you see virtually no women,” says Oliver. “Overall, it’s just more aggressive and in your face.”

Oliver started holding skate sessions for local kids in an old Soviet fountain. It wasn’t much, just a smooth dish-shaped piece of concrete, but it provided a space where he could positively discriminate and give extra time to the girls.

The fact that no one in the city had seen a skateboard before meant that girls weren’t barred from using them in the way they were barred from traditional sports. When the time came to introduce a competitive element, the girls routinely smashed the boys. “They’d reclaimed that little space, that part of the city,” he says.