OK, maybe I shouldn't say it, but...

...this makes me giggle:

American and Afghan scholars and diplomats say it is worth recalling four decades in the country’s recent history, from the 1930s to the 1970s, when there was a semblance of a national government and Kabul was known as “the Paris of Central Asia.”

Also it makes me wonder, what would be the Paris of Iowa?

(The quote is from the NYTimes piece,Remembering Afghanistan's Golden Age.)