"The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family...," says Greg Mortenson, which sounds pretty good, considering you just need to drink some tea. Balti here being the analog for Afghans generally I guess, but then Balti are of Tibetian extraction and have little to do with the Taliban ISAF is up against, who are mainly Pashtun and, in Helmandia, Baluch as well. But then too Mr. Mortenson has had his own reckoning with the truth, building a whole NGO effort on a phony story about wandering off a Himalaya somewhere and being called by village kindness to build schools. At least I think that’s the story….
Anyway, the three cups thing seems to be alive and well in the coalition, where the thing is Key Leader Engagement, or “KLE” – quaffing chai with the local governor, tribal leader, Chief of Police. Conversation is always laborious, since few of us speak Pashto or Dari, and trusted as they are, interpreters still tend to constrain spontaneous fellow-feeling. But it kind of works: Afghans are all about relationships, even though, like kids these days, they tend to value them more than commitment, what with the foundations of reliability always shifting with circumstances, and with circumstances in a place like this always shifting as wildly as they do.
So Iftar. This is the great Muslim tradition of your first bite to eat after the sun goes down during Ramadan (the fasting month). It’s loaded with all kinds of freight, being a very family kind of affair, a kind of month-long Thanksgiving where you’re just dying to eat, man, and everyone with you is too. Not of course to forget the piety of the occasion, which kicks off with a prayer and is followed only a few hours of quick sleep later when you go through the drill again before the sun comes up.
Enter the Marines. KLE being the best alternative to the pointy end of the stick in action, where all kinds of people can get hurt. Iftar being a great time to do it, and key leaders being the absolute naturals to do it with. And at Camp Leatherneck, too. Here we have our DFAC (dining facility) which is like three corrugated metal barns stuck end-to-end, with food lines in one and the other two devoted to benches and tables where Marines galore chow.
Our delegation arrives from prayer in splendid robes, brocade vests, brilliant white turbans, shiny sandals. Warm greetings, pressing flesh, occasionally touching cheeks, then off we lead them to the chow line. Being dinnertime, the place is packed and the chow lines are long. You can tell they hate to cut in line - Marines are fierce egalitarians - but the level of their guests demands it. Each in our party gets a paper plate and a cellophane-bagged set of plastic dinnerware and we load up. It’s Indian food night, so the grub looks a little familiar to our guests, and they load up and head back to the distant barn (where, despite encountering the cordon, troops are advancing).
This is where it’s hardest. I imagine they have no idea that this is high Marine hospitality: you eat our chow. In our chow hall. You be one of us, at our table. We are real people together. I imagine they’re puzzled. I imagine they might have thought they’d be getting something more, I don’t know – fancier? How do they feel about all this? The best we can do is chatter through our interpreters, try to read the body language. And then - soon even the most taciturn is telling stories. His eyes dance, the grave, senior one is chuckling and shaking his head. Pretty soon they’re drifting off for little side meetings or interviews with official press. I think: is it the ice cream? All that food and no clean-up muss and fuss? Marine magic?
So who knows. Another iftar tonight, Marines hosting. This time it's at the Afghan Cultural Center. I'll bet this time we take off our shoes and eat with our hands.
I've been doing "deep dives" lately, ostensibly to fill in for a colleague on R&R, but in fact to look in depth at what we're up to at various district centers. Today was Now Zad, site of portentous TV headlines and pre-COIN bombardment of that town by ISAF. I had the good fortune of heading out in an Osprey, my favorite helicopter - has those rotors that point up for liftoff then tilt forward and it flies like an airplane - fast - until it's ready to land again, when it becomes a helicopter. No leaky hydraulics, exciting, fast. 
What used to be the second largest town in Helmand before the Soviets burned all the orchards and destroyed the kerez system - the underground tunnels that channel groundwater so farmers can irrigate - is now an arid clutter of mud ruins and scattered families, another sunblasted landscape with most of the population evacuated. 
