“Soon you will be home, Mother would say. She said it nearly every time we spoke, and each time I said yes, I believed I meant it and not just because I did not know how else to answer or how to account for the fact that, though Benghazi was the one place I longed for the most, it was also the place I most feared to return to. The life I have made for myself here is held together by a delicate balance. I must hold on to it with both hands. It is the only life I have now. I would have to abandon it to go back, and, although I wish to abandon it, I fear I might not be able to reconstitute a new life, even if that would be in the folds of the old one. It is a myth that you can return, and a myth also that being uprooted once makes you better at doing it again.”