(she has tried, in her way, to be free)
I left the Southeast today.
This morning I went into the kitchen to say goodbye to our cook. He hugged me and said "I miss you". My words got caught somewhere on their way out so I left quickly.
As the the car pulled out of our barbed compound, my colleagues lined up by the gate to wave me off, and in the background Paktia's mountains gleamed white as cat teeth, sharply standing out against a blue winter sky.
My new Kabul-based job will take me back there on occasion, but it's not the same.
