Landing in Pakistan at five in the morning, I was all too relieved to touch ground after a sleepless night. A book kept my ever buzzing brain in order during the two and a half hours. Rain drops streamed down the windows and I wrapped a shawl to prepare for a cooler climate outdoors. Half asleep crew and immigration personnel let the passengers pass through but waiting for the luggage was excruciating; a stiff battle to keep both the eyelids separate whilst keeping an eye on the porters rushing to and fro like midgets. It was eerie, this contrast between the agile porters and the yawning passengers in the early hours of the day.

As my trolley was pushed out of the passenger restricted area, thousands of faces morphed into a single entity. Bone chilling gusts of air pummelled me and I tried to recall if the month really was March. A white head bobbed in the crowd and I was overcome with love for my father who stood in the dark. Mum was there too, neatly sealed in a light coloured shawl like a big, white, round teddy. The two crinkly faced, droopy eyed people stood with a halo over them in that dark crowd. My world was that and then. Dark with nothing but these two beautiful, old, bent figures radiating love.

Dawn was breaking as we headed home and the sweet smell of morning refreshed me. The rain had stopped and I had forgotten how green everything was here. My country is so magical, how could I have forgotten. The trees with their lush manes, shuddering in excitement by the roads, the planes of slopping hues of every imaginable green and the smell of soil. It was heady. I did not mind the rickshaws with their migraine inducing noise or the puffs of polluted smoke they let out in exorbitant quantities.