KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Allah Mohammed, 37, helps sustain life, baking bread all day in the small oven of his corner shop in Kunduz city. Part of his bakery’s ceiling remains caved in where it was hit by a rocket during the latest Taliban siege.

In another corner of the city, Abdul Rassoul, 65, comes in after life has gone. He digs graves and then waters the trees that dot the cemetery. He also chases away addicts trying to steal a grave railing, or shepherd boys whose herds stumble on the graves — pelting them with rocks and cursing them.

Both men wake up around 3 a.m. when the rest of Kunduz’s residents are fast asleep, barring just a few.

Their everyday lives are woven into a larger pattern of hardship and resilience in the city. The bullet holes in the walls after each siege — two Taliban takeovers in just over a year — are reminders that it could easily happen again, and most likely will. So the people of Kunduz try to shrug it off as just another disruption in a long stream of them.