Reversing the paths travelled: voyagers return to Afghanistan

It was against such a global backdrop that, in April 2012, my sisters, nieces, brother-in-law and I returned to Afghanistan. We crossed the border on foot, from Pakistan into Afghanistan at the Khyber Pass. We were retracing our footsteps in the opposite direction to that taken 27 years earlier, when, as children, our parents had bundled us together and, under a cloud of uncertainty and blind hope, negotiated our way out of Afghanistan and into our future. We were returning as adults, pulled forward by an allure we were yet to understand – perhaps, simply, by a need to know more.