Watch full size video:

KABUL, Afghanistan — It looked like an homely vicinage playground: six children tumbling off their skateboards to the tune of laughter. But not so long ago, honorable 20 yards not present, the body of a suicide car bomber was sprawled beside a glistening pool of blood.

Afghan youth have learned to heal almost instantly from such routine violence. One person determined to inject something normal into their lives is Oliver Percovich, 34, of Melbourne, Australia.

He plans to evident this country’s first skateboarding school — Skateistan — in the arise. He sees sports as a way to encourage students into after-school activities like English and computer classes, which are otherwise reserved for the elite.

“Teenagers are severe to dissociate from old mentalities, and I’m their servant,” Percovich said. “If they weren’t selfish, I would’ve left a long time ago.”

Nowadays, when he pulls his motorcycle into a residential courtyard here, a dozen youngsters pounce before it comes to a stop, yanking six chipped skateboards off the back. The children — most participating in a play for the first time — do not want to lonely place any duration.

Their skateboard park is a decrepit Soviet-style concrete fountain with deep fissures.

But Percovich has raised the money needed to build an 8,600-square-foot bubble to house the nonprofit Skateistan complex, and the Kabul Parks Authority has tentatively donated land. He is still abeyance for official permittance to begin the contrive. Since a spate of kidnappings and a car bombing in late November, he has reduced his diurnal sessions at the fountain to once or two times a week.

Among those who lo presumptuous to his visits is Maro, an elfin 9-year-old girl who was terrified of skateboarding at first.

“It gives me courage, and once I twitch skating, I completely consign to oblivion in various places my fears,” she said.

All the children spoke from one side an interpreter.

Maro’s glittery Mickey Mouse shirt indicated middle-class standing. She stood out from the street children in muddied clothes who shared the skate space. Because the sport is in the way that new and queer here, Percovich said, it may help mend the state’s deep conversable and ethnic divisions.

But for Hadisa, a 10-year-old girl from a conservative family, skateboarding has not been accepted. She said two older brothers beat her with wires for skating by poorer children in September. Several friends said they saw blood flowing from her leg.