Innocent past

In Lashkar Gah, our small group driving the Ring Road stopped at a construction agency funded by the USAid, where we had previously met cook Khudai Nazar. At 64, he is old enough to remember what is possible with peace, and young enough to believe he might live to see it again.

We asked what he remembered of the Ring Road of his childhood. He sent his son for an opaque plastic sandwich bag stuffed with browning reference letters and old photographs.

They tell of a more innocent age, from the late 1940s to the 1970s, when American workers and their families lived in Helmand. They were building a dam, a power plant, irrigation canals and other development projects in the Afghan desert.

In one black-and-white photograph, Nazar is 12 years old and standing on a lush lawn surrounded by a white picket fence with his new bicycle, a gift from Rose and Don Wonderly of Portland, Oregon.

"The first time I met with her, I didn't understand English," recalled Nazar, who speaks with an American accent.

"American people always like children, and they didn't have any. She said come every day to my house and I'm going to teach you English."

Within a few days, Rose was giving the boy new clothes and encouraging other American families to leave him some of their hand-me-downs. The Wonderlys left in 1960.

By the time the Soviets invaded in 1979, Nazar had worked for a string of other Americans: George Belissary promoted him to a warehouse job; Jo Ann and Ronald Thompson of Sacramento, California, praised his baking skills; Jack and Maxine Smith wrote of their fondness for his pastries and good humour.

For the love of the land

The Smiths had to flee the Soviet occupation after 17 months in Afghanistan, and in her last words to him, Nazar said, Maxine urged him to take his wife and their 10 children to Pakistan.

"She said, ‘Just send me a message and I'll have a house waiting for you — everything'," Nazar said wistfully. It was clear in his breaking voice that he wished he could have left. But he never found enough money, or will, to turn his back on the land of his birth.

Nazar bid us farewell with the hope that some of his long-lost American friends might try to reach him.

Three hours after we left Lashkar Gah, a suicide bomber walked into the well-guarded compound of the provincial governor, a few blocks from where we'd visited Nazar, and blew himself up in the parking lot, killing eight people.