The insides of the mud-and-brick homes and shops were lain open to weather and wildlife, and all seven dirt roads and narrow lanes connecting them were left pock-marked by vehicles not meant for them.  The village that may have had three hundred people in it when he last visited had two now, a couple already elderly in their forties.  The woman and husband stretched themselves up from their shrunkenness to greet him, raising themselves off a bench next to a table that served as their kitchen pantry.  He sat on the ground at their feet so that they could remain seated.  They had survived because half of their house was underground.  Their village made a wrong choice, the man explained, in choosing to stay neutral in some big fight out there that had become local.  Over months, it had been demolished by both sides.  Bad people, the man explained.  His wife shook her head as if to correct him and said instead, People bad.  Anywhere outside of the village, he would have agreed with the man, but there, at their feet amidst the ruin, what the wife had said — by simply reversing her husband’s two words — felt far closer to what is true.