Twenty years ago this week, Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan, after nine years of occupation. Lyse Doucet was our correspondent in Kabul then and she's back in the Afghan capital now.
I still keep the single sheet of paper - dull grey, stark black font, with the seal of the British embassy in Kabul, dated 19 January 1989.
"I must advise you," it warns, "you should leave Afghanistan without delay while normal flights are still available".
The British ambassador then pulled down the Union flag and locked the gates of a magnificent compound Lord Curzon once said was worth five divisions.
The US ambassador had done the same weeks earlier, urging Soviet troops to complete their pullout and predicting the collapse of the Afghan government.
Anxious voices
These were the dying days of the Soviet empire in the harsh winter of 1989. We didn't know it then. But we felt Kabul was in the eye of the storm.
Every day, several times a day, I was asked, in whispered anxious voices, by foreigners and Afghans: "Are you leaving? Do you think it's safe to stay? When will Najib go?" Najib is what many called the Soviet-backed president, Najibullah.