This week’s Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010 contributor was born in Pakistan, is fluent in French, is married to an Italian, and considers herself a cultural chameleon: Maliha Masood. She 
is the author of Zaatar Days, Henna Nights, a travel memoir about her riveting escape from a dotcom Seattle cubicle to a solo expedition across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey for one tumultuous year. Visit her website at http://www.maliha-masood.com.
What is “home” for you? Is it a particular place or person or thing?
Oh boy. I have wrestled with this for a long time. During my teens, I thought my home was in Karachi, Pakistan where I grew up as a child. When my father decided to immigrate to America, I was forced to say goodbye to all my friends, girls I had known from kindergarten to the fifth grade, whose faces I would probably never see again. And I had no idea how my life would be forever altered by that momentous decision. I was leaving behind everything that had made me who I was up to the age of twelve. We moved to Seattle, WA where I had to reinvent myself and adapt to a whole new culture and place. It was not as rough as it sounds. I have always been pretty flexible and actually enjoy the cultural gymnastics between East and West. My Karachi upbringing had trained me to put on many different hats and I never felt any contradictions. So to give you an example, I would read the Quran in Arabic with a religious scholar from the mosque on Friday afternoons and the next day, I would be at a party dancing to Abba and Travolta and come Monday morning at school, I might be reciting verses by Keats and Blake in Elocution class. It was all a great mish mash of cultures and I felt equally at home in all of them. Read the rest of this entry »
