By then, as Zamir tells it, he had come to love gardening: “Because it was my father’s profession, it is a way to keep going with what he did, and it makes me feel closer to him.” Our miserable mud patch proved a blessing, a tabula rasa upon which Zamir could create whatever he wanted.

The garden is not often the first thing on our minds, as we cover Afghanistan’s long war. I didn’t notice what was going on until one day last year I looked out the window in front of my desk on the second floor and saw the purple floral spike of a hollyhock at eye level, a good 12 feet above the flower beds. It would grow another three feet before succumbing to gravity. There were sunflowers, too, that were nearly as tall. Rampant vines colonized the compound walls, disguising some of the ugliness of the inevitable fortifications.

With our garden now in its second spring, the results of Zamir’s labors are in their fullest flower. Bougainvillea, oleander, an arbor of honeysuckle, several varieties of matthiola and, everywhere, geraniums. Then of course there are the roses. Deeply fragrant, often massive, they will bloom into November here. In every corner, there’s a pot of succulents.

The garden is so splendid we have added a hammock — rarely used, but beckoning.

Inside, bureau vases sprout with Zamir’s hand-plucked arrangements. They look artful and even professional; Jane, he says, showed him how to arrange the sprigs of green and sprays of little flowers to set off the larger blooms. (He always used to bring fresh bouquets to Alissa J. Rubin, the bureau chief who hired him.)

“I feel like I am not getting old,” Zamir muses, “because when I work I see the result of my work and its beauty.” He’s all of 28 now. Some days when he leaves the bureau he stops first at the wrestling gym to train; he wrestles in the 70 kilogram class and is 3-1 in formal matches. Other days he goes right home to tend the garden his father made there; they are poor, but rich in fruit and almond trees.

Zamir recently married. He let his mother choose his bride, which he says was sensible because the women would have to spend a lot of time together and it was even more important that his wife get along with his mother than that she get along with him.