In this picture, Afghans in the Babur Gardens perform a traditional Afghan folk dance. It was customary for Afghan families to have picnics in the gardens, an oasis amid Kabul’s dusty squalor, each Friday. They’d bring blankets and dance to music amongst the fruit trees. “It was really quite joyous,” says Nickelsberg. For him, this photograph represents “the calm before the storm.” Within a year, Kabul was in the midst of a civil war, and the Babur Gardens, situated between the neighborhoods of two difference ethnic groups, became a field of fire.