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“I’ve got one question for you,” the sergeant major said. “One of your village members brought up the word ‘cache.’ Do you know anything about a cache?”

“I don’t know,” the elder said. “I came here fifteen days ago from Karachi.”

“Oh, Pakistan!” the sergeant major said, as if that made everything clear. “So you can tell me about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda coming across the border.”

The elder stared at him. This was awkward. The Afghan soldiers were sent to search Muddy Feet’s compound. They did, finding nothing.

“Tea?” the elder asked.

“Sure,” a staff sergeant answered before the sergeant major could say anything. “I’m here to socialize. Whatever he wants.” He took off his helmet.

“Take care of your helmet,” Muddy Feet said. “Someone might steal it.”

We all walked inside a nearby compound, into a sitting room near the front. Mop-haired girls with kohl-lined eyes and bright orange and green dresses poked their heads around a corner to giggle and stare. We dropped onto cushions in a room. All the Americans took off their helmets and body armor and rested them and their weapons against the wall.

“Whenever you want to come here, you can come here,” the elder told them.

A boy poured the sweet milky tea from a thermos and quickly handed us each a cup.

“Some questions,” the staff sergeant started. “Do you know about any jingle-truck robberies?”

The elder thought, looked at the ceiling. “Whoever did it, they’re not Afghans. They might be from another country.”

“What about an IED?”

“I don’t know, I was not here,” the elder said.

“If you have any problems in the village, come to the base,” the staff sergeant told the Afghans. They nodded. Sure they would.

Mission accomplished, we stood, and after lacing up our boots at the door, walked out.

“Let’s go sing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” the staff sergeant said, before heading back to the base. I was pretty sure he was joking.

Everywhere we went, we heard the same story. No jingle trucks. No IEDs. No one named Wali.

The roads were so bad that convoys could barely go anywhere. It raised an obvious question—three and a half years after the fall of the Taliban, out near a small U.S. military base in a onetime Taliban haven near the border with Pakistan, little had been improved, like roads and power. The soldiers seemed to be marking time, handing out candy and meeting with elders who just talked about how much they needed. The soldiers were forced to double as aid workers, and aid was noticeably absent. Still, I was told it was better than before—these were the first U.S. soldiers many villagers had seen in two years. Just outside the base, a new cobblestone road named “The Road of the Future” was being built. At about a mile and a half long and with a U.S. price tag of $200,000, it would be the province’s first cobblestone road—slight progress, and an indication of how much effort and money was needed for the smallest of improvements in Afghanistan.

The photographer and I spent most of our time sitting inside the forward operating base, called a “FOB,” like the other fobbits, the nickname for people who spent all their time inside the wire. I watched all of Band of Brothers. I worked out in the gym. I drank a lot of water and went to bed early every night. I actively avoided calling or e-mailing Chris, falling back on the excuse that I was at war, after all. Being here was like being at the Afghan version of a spa, with no liquor, plenty of sleep, little stress, and little Internet access. I didn’t have to worry about the daily news. I didn’t have to worry about anything.

Mainly I hung out. I talked to the soldiers in my engineering platoon, including Crowley, a North Carolina native who blew apart any soldier stereotype I had. He had earned an anthropology degree, started graduate school in England before running out of money, and joined the army to be able to afford to go back. He was bright and, at twenty-eight, older than the other soldiers. He was cute, with slightly exaggerated ears and a big smile. Like