president daoud khan, the saur coup d'etat. it began a generation of war and invasion — the war we are still living with today. my parents were worried for our future. my sisters and i dressed in old burqas and plastic shoes. we managed to catch a bus across the border into pakistan as refugees. we tookjust a small bundle of things. mehtabuddin escaped too, along the road he had helped to build in the 1940s.