Aunohita Mojumdar who has lived in Afghanistan for five years writes about life over there.

They were shocked about the bombing. The sadness was genuine. The condolence carried with it a sense of apology and responsibility, as if a loved guest had been harmed in their home. I had not expected this. I see Afghans dying everyday in the violence and I know that almost every Afghan family has been touched deeply by personal tragedy. One of the Afghans who expressed condolence has been interring the bones of his entire family from a mass grave unearthed recently. It was the ability of these peoples to go beyond their own devastating tragedies and console me that touched and humbled me enormously. “It happens to Afghans everyday,” I told one young Afghan who expressed sorrow that I had lost a friend. “Yes, but when it happens to you when you are in a foreign land, in a different country it is hard,” he said. It was at that minute that I knew that in some strange way I was home, if not in my country, in my ‘southasianness’.