Misery and uncertainty have been a near constant in the lives of the people of the Afghan capital for more than two decades now. But even for them the day after the first attacks by the United States and Britain was difficult to face.

"I don't understand why the people of Afghanistan are such unlucky people," said Mirza Mohammed, leaving town Monday morning with his four children for Logar province in the central part of Afghanistan.

"I haven't seen Osama bin Laden in my life," he said.

Things appeared normal, as normal as possible in a capital that has endured so many years of war. Markets opened as usual. The city, already just a shell of what it was even after 10 years of Soviet occupation, looked the same Monday morning as it had at dawn on Sunday.

But ravaged psyches don't show the way damaged buildings do.

Shaken residents sought to make sense of the attacks, which Washington and London said were aimed at crippling the ruling Taliban's air defenses while an international coalition hunts down top terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.

The people were bracing for yet another siege of war.

"Both sides are strong. America is not afraid and Osama is not afraid," said Fida Mohammed, a bus driver who lives near the airport. He has moved to his brother's house at the other end of the city.

"This fighting may be long," he said. "American people are eating chicken, and all we want is a piece of bread _ and still we are in trouble."

A spot check of four hospitals turned up no evidence of casualties. Kabul's airport compound, however, was closed.

The attacks had come as curfew was approaching at about 9 p.m. Sunday night. Few Afghans were on the streets. Five thunderous blasts sounded; anti-aircraft fire lit the sky. The city quickly went dark.

In a once-posh neighborhood of rose bushes, verandahs and large yards hidden by bullet-pocked walls _ home to many Taliban leaders _ bearded soldiers piled into the backs of pickup trucks.

They roared through the city's streets in the minutes after the explosion, beginning a swift, harsh security crackdown. They screamed at drivers to halt, demanding to see identity papers.

For more than 30 minutes, Taliban anti-aircraft guns thundered shells into the darkness, the only light visible. In about an hour, the city grew calmer.

In another hour, the curfew firmly in place, electricity returned. By midnight, lights glowed in homes across Kabul; people were still up. A bit later, a lone aircraft dropped one bomb on Kabul's northern edge. Then the city went dark again.

Mohammed Jalil said the first bomb fell near his home in the northwest of the city, close to Maranjan Hill, site of former King Mohammed Zaher Shah's father's tomb.

"Oh my God _ we don't know what is happening in this country," said Jalil, a waiter. He looks after an entire extended family, including his sister-in-law, whose husband was killed after the Soviets invaded in 1979.

"Now we are afraid we will make another sacrifice, this time by American rockets," he said.

His son, Hamid, 12, said 20 pieces of shrapnel shattered the windows of their house. "All the night, we were in the basement with our neighbors," Hamid said.

Jan Mohammed, 45, drives a donkey cart filled with tomatoes.

"I can't go anywhere. All I have is what I grow," he said.

"What if a bomb falls on our house? We will be killed. My children, everybody hid in the basement last night. Where are the poor people of Afghanistan supposed to go?"