article_snippet.sent: (CNN)It is a city transformed, swollen in size but shrunken in scope, anxiously awaiting what comes next.
article_snippet.sent: It is immeasurably different to three years ago when I lived there.
article_snippet.sent: Yet still the wedding palaces proliferate.
article_snippet.sent: Along one stretch of road the wedding palaces endless, multiplying lights throb.
article_snippet.sent: Each night the houses seem packed -- the commitment to the future still is popular here, despite the uncertainty -- even if the lights that decorate the houses seem more and more like a symbol of leaving.
article_snippet.sent: One set actually replicates the shape of an expensive hotel in Dubai.
article_snippet.sent: The city's lights do shine staggeringly and often constantly -- something the Taliban never achieved during the Taliban rule here.
article_snippet.sent: The question many surely ask here -- as the last American troops prepare to retreat inside the U.S. Embassy by the end of next year -- is how much longer The city's lights will continue to glow.