The Foreign Service Journal, March 2009

42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 9 awaiting the birth of our first child. The combination of family separation and pending war made both of us more reflective during our months apart. I turned my evening thoughts into a series of recollections on what increasingly seemed like my own improbable childhood, spent mostly in a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas where I had attended boarding school from the age of 6. The main intent was to pass on to our yet-unborn child something of a past that seemed increasingly remote. Quite unexpectedly, these initial reflections became the catalyst for, and formed the first four chapters of, a mem- oir the University of Georgia Press subsequently published under the title Some Far and Distant Place: Muslim-Chris- tian Encounters Through the Eyes of a Child. Without a separated assignment in Yemen, this book almost certainly would never have been written. Fifteen years after that separation, our recognition that an unaccompanied assignment in Pakistan would allow the rest of the family to spend more than a year with a sup- portive family network, including grandparents, aunts, un- cles and cousins in central Georgia, made my decision to serve in Islamabad much easier. We looked upon it as an opportunity for our three teenage children not only to see the United States for themselves, but also to connect at a deeper level with their extended family. Even a Washing- ton assignment would not have provided the quality time with grandparents that was possible during my 14 months in Islamabad. In the end, our kids did not just “cope” with the separation; they thrived. On arriving in Islamabad in April 2006, I made a per- sonal commitment to write a postcard to our youngest daughter each evening before going to bed. The idea was to relate at least one event from my day and provide a regular reminder that I loved her. Catriona now has a shoebox full of several hundred numbered postcards, each featuring attractive Pakistani stamps and depicting a scene from the physically stunning local landscape. Jonathan Addleton USAID Representative to the E.U. Brussels F O C U S