Landing in Karachi is like running into the arms of a lover you’ve been forbidden to see for years. My sabbatical leave has been granted and I’m home. No one searches me in this country. Here is the place I finally feel safe. There’s nothing menacing about the immigration officers. I laugh and joke with them, produce both my passports, the blue American one and the green Pakistani one, and eventually saunter off, grinning. I’m home. And I’m going to be home for a year, the longest time I’ve spent in Pakistan since I left for college thirteen years ago. When I was in college and the country hadn’t yet come under siege, I took it for granted and didn’t miss it much. But after I began graduate school in September 2001, it became increasingly difficult to leave and go back to the U.S. after my visits home. I would dread the interrogations of Homeland Security, the cold, long winters in Ann Arbor, and the constant feeling of alienation that comes from being asked where you are from originally and then hearing people talk about where-you-are-from-originally as a dangerous place.