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The Navruz marries the grandiose with the flimsy: 24-karat gold leaf and glitter, Pamiri lapis alongside rendered chipboard and glue.

“On a clear day, you can see 7,000 mountains from here,” said Omurbek Satarov, our 38-year-old Pamiri driver, gesturing toward the Himalayas.

The Pamiri took the losing rebel side in the war, leaving them doubly decimated.

Yet in the last decade, they have seen remarkable recovery, in part because of foreign assistance, much of it from the foundation of the Swiss-born Aga Khan, a spiritual leader of the Pamiri population.

After lunch, she walked us through the school, heated with rudimentary ovens and plastered with peeling posters in Russian, Pamiri, Tajik and English, then through the rest of the village, which sits on a vast, wind-ravaged plateau ringed by soaring snowcapped mountains.