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villages deserted, houses burnt, thousands of people rendered homeless, schools and colleges entirely closed, some of them burnt and demolished, the students having taken shelter in far off and remote places to avoid the wrath of this ignorant tyrant, who خارجي regarded them as renegades. Kabul, like all the other cities, was scarred and eaten away with fire. On all sides blackened ruins تنفر آور gaped as if in horror and the loathsome remains of public executions were to be انبار غله found everywhere. The granaries were empty, and the grain fields had been neglected مدهش for reaping the gruesome harvest of human lives. To add to these even the elements seemed to be bent upon destruction. The cold winter—the coldest during a period of some thirty years—threatened to last for ever. To heal as far as possible the wounds دردناک inflicted by the hands of tyranny was the melancholy task of this King, who took it up with the earnestness and solicitude of the humblest of workers. The innocent victims who yet survived were recalled from exile, or released from the prison, 178