A Night in Afghanistan

"Shhhh!" my mother whispered as the tanks rumbled by under the cold Afghan night, the stars twinkling above the mountains surrounding us. From our hiding place in the brush along the shoulder of the dirt path through the Khyber Pass, I could see tanks stretching to infinity and, try as I might, I could not find an end to the convoy of trucks. Huddled along with my father, mother, and infant brother and sister, we peered anxiously as the Russian Spetsnaz scouts rolled past us in jeeps ahead of the convoy heading toward the Afghanistan-Pakistan border-the very place our destination lay.

My brother began to whimper. My mother began to pray. It seemed as if the line of tanks would never end. Finally, as the last of them rolled by, silence engulfed us. My father had been planning for months for our flight into Pakistan along the Khyber road and we could not stop now. Our nerves were frayed. We had not slept for three days since being smuggled out of the capital and the 15-mile walk across the border might have well been 15 hundred miles. My father stopped for a moment and fished a small, empty...

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Today, that pouch of a few ounces of earth that my father gathered during our last hours in Afghanistan lies on a desk in his study, reminding me of what I have lost, of another place filled with memories that I used to call home. But today, what I call home is in Orange County, California, half a world away from Afghanistan. Perhaps one day I will go back to see what is left after the years of war and strife and once again relax in our old backyard, or go to pick apples in an orchard in the Maymana district. But I will go back only to visit.