When they arrived at the Afghan base, in the Syed Khurram district of Paktia Province, they found the soldiers and policemen sipping chai, spread out across the compound, a series of modular buildings clustered on a barren patch of sloped land.
It is on this barren patch of land, just up the road from the tiny village of Viznar, that the author of Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba is thought to have been shot by a rightwing firing squad in 1936.
One summer Saturday afternoon, I was kneeling on a barren patch of dirt in Brooklyn, digging flat-bottomed trenches with a trowel.
When they do not work, however, the developer still gets the use of the bonus floor area while the public is left with a barren patch of pavement.
The rubble has all been cleared away, leaving a barren patch of scrubland, which Jon Parkes from the trust said would start to turn green in the coming months.
Farmers who used to toil over barren patches of land suddenly find that that land is worth a small fortune.
Second, what could they do with a barren plot of land (though with a decent infrastructure) measuring 1,350 square miles?
The cows and their owners are on a barren piece of land, surrounded by ruins, close to the beach which is strewn with rubbish.
