There was so much I did not understand that first winter about how important it is to carry reminders of home when you go to hostile places. The hardest part was never the bombs, it was the lack of the familiar, a sense of the predictable, of even the most mundane pleasure. War zones are stripped down. Usually there are no choices — about what to eat, or much else. The food is mostly cold and functional. The kind you can shove into a pocket or throw under a car seat: protein bars, raisins, a box of potato chips. These are calories, not cuisine.
That first cold year, I came to understand the seemingly contradictory impulses that whipsawed me. I wanted to go to the back of beyond. I needed to push myself to some geographic and emotional edge, but I was homesick. I dreamed of home and, not least, of the foods that signified home.
