Notes from the line, January

Three weeks in the field, mostly between Khar and Mamond. A few things keep returning in the notebooks.

One. The recorder changes the room more than it used to. People who would have spoken in 2018 now look at the device and choose their words. They are not paranoid; they are correctly calibrated.

Two. The most useful conversations still happen in the hujra — the men’s guest room — over an hour or two of tea, after the recorder has been put away. None of that ever ends up on a page directly. It shapes which questions I know to ask later, on tape.

Three. The young men in Mamond are the most articulate I have heard in years about the texture of governance failure — schools without teachers, hospitals without doctors. They are also the most pessimistic. Those facts are connected.