Chris was finding more than his share of chaos to process. Events in his district started to go “a little haywire” in February 2010: there were kidnappings and beatings; Afghans who worked with the Americans suffered intimidation by the Taliban. Then with the coming of the fighting season, things started to get “busier.” “There are more bad guys around now,” Chris reported, “more I.E.D.’s.” In late May, he announced, “I think these last few months are going to be the toughest ones yet.” He was right.

So many of these details — the whole tone and texture of our correspondence — came back to me as I sat in my office trying to figure out what I ought to do. Knowing no other protocol, I drove the box back home, where I hid it in a closet, behind some winter coats, until I no longer remembered what was inside. I took the word of the customs form, which I also kept: a book, a box of energy bars, some candy, a tub of banana chips. With its mercilessly tiny boxes that must be filled with data, the “Customs Declaration and Dispatch Note” does what all official forms do — it weighs, measures and assesses, constructing an illusion of order out of even the most reckless jumble.

For four months the box just sat there. Open it, I kept telling myself, and then one day I did. It was even harder than I imagined. I needed a letter opener, scissors and a Swiss Army knife to cut through the layers of tape I had bound it with for the journey — tossed into airplane cargo holds, bounced around on trucks, perhaps deposited at its destination by helicopter. It couldn’t have been this hard for a recipient on the other end: curiosity, the anticipation of receiving anything whole and undamaged amid a landscape of destruction, must easily tear through all that tape.

Inside I found the note I had written to Chris, on the obverse of a postcard featuring Charlie Chaplin’s gentle Little Tramp in “City Lights.” It was a message for the living not the dead, full of the usual mundanity — incidental observations and updates, cheering wishes. It was a trifling installment in an ongoing conversation, the promise of which remains undelivered.