Thirty three years ago, I was born. I was born in my grandfather’s house in Afghanistan, in a room reserved for the sick, or those in labor. I was born on the evening of my midwife’s wedding. All of the other midwives and nurses were there in their pretty dresses after having spent hours on their fashionable henna and their smart hairstyles. And there was my mother, in the late August in southern Afghanistan, giving birth to me. No drugs, no sedatives, in fact, they had to send a girl to the wedding to beg someone to come. Eventually, one midwife did come and I was brought into the world, in my grandfather’s house.

My grandfather’s first name is our last name and we carry it with pride. This weekend I went to a memorial service for my great uncle, a wonderful man by all accounts. And as I sat there with my relatives, all praying and sitting on the floor covered in our headscarfs, I started to wonder about me. This person who writes this right now. Who am I? Where am I from? Where is my home?

When I was a little girl we lived in Connecticut on hospital grounds and my father was a resident. The soviets had just invaded Afghanistan and we were certain that after a few months, maybe a year, they would leave, having learned their lesson. In our attic in that little house, we had boxes of goodies, loot of all sorts. We had boxes of wooden spoons, whisks, can openers and those rubber thingies to open jars with. I would go over there and pour over all of this good stuff and my mom would tell me, she would say “this if for when we go back, when we go back home.” And I would ask her what would it be like? Would I drive a car? Would I go to college? Could I have a horse? And my mother would tell me in our native tongue “When we go back, you will have a driver, you will go to school anywhere you want. We will have a beautiful house in Kabul and you can learn to ride horses.” And I could not wait. Oh boy! When we go back home it was going to be great! I would take my American friends upstairs and show them the boxes and I would tell them “This stuff is for when we go back. When we go back I’m going to have a driver and he is going to have a very long black car and he will have to help me in and out of it. I will have a little white dog and horses and we will be very famous and posh, when we go back home”

That New Year’s Eve, my cousin/best friend in the entire world and I ran around our little house chanting “Free Afghanistan, Free Free Afghanistan” and we thought oh soon! So very soon we would go back home and we could have picnics in Alashkarga and see the place where my uncles crashed the horse wagons and where they would have motorcycle races. When I turned 18 I would take my mercedes and drive to Germany just like pop had done. Oh to go back home.

Five years later, my mother unpacked all of those boxes and we used the potato peelers and the tea balls. We used the fancy flatware (bought at sears or K-mart) and all of the plastic tumblers. We knew then, that the world was not going to sit up and take notice and that we could chant forever and no one was going to free Afghanistan any time soon.

So two years ago, they raised the flag over the United States embassy in Kabul. I heard about it on the radio and I cried and called my father and said pop, we can go home. At last, we can go home.

For someone who has had no home, the idea of going back, the nostalgia for a place I left almost as soon as I’d gotten there, is something that I cannot resist. So now that there is time, now that the world has sat up and taken notice, I’m going back. I’m going home. If only for a moment.