On 25 May 1998, I arrived to my home in Ramallah to find a mob of armed Palestinians inside my house, including members of the Palestinian security forces. All my belongings were scattered in the yard outside, and a bulldozer had leveled part of my bedroom walls and roof.
The Kam Air flight left Dubai and is touching ground in Kabul in less than three hours. The Boeing 737 dips under the mountain range and the pilot circles the plane to position for landing at Afghanistan’s Kabul Airport. Outside I see the blue sky blending into the gray shale clay mountain ranges surrounding the city. The mountains descend into a pale brown dirt that covers most of the land.