I returned from leave a few days ago, coming back to Afghanistan after spending the past two weeks at home in Chicago, where I grew up. I still think of home as 'home', even though I am seldom ever there. I suppose it is important for people, psychologically, to believe they have a home, no matter how nomadic their lives may be.

Coming off the plane in Atlanta, the first thing you notice about the States is how clean everything looks - and smells. I remember back when I was in Iraq going into a porta-john on a dilapidated combat outpost located in the outskirts of Baghdad. Everybody knows that when you enter a porta john, the smell is very distinct from the outside, but this time it was not. Being inside, even with the door closed, was not different from being outside. Thats how bad parts of Iraq smelled.

Driving my car was strange. Not the mechanics of driving necessarily- I had driven in Afghanistan. No, what threw me off was my steering wheel, which are much smaller on honda civics than on MATV's. I felt like I was driving a clown car, holding on to that puny thing. In the early chapters of David Copperfield, a semi-autobiographical novel by Charles Dickens, the protaganist talks
about remembering how BIG everything was in his youth. Growing up has that effect on your perception of space. Everything
gets SMALLER.