A Washington Post article lets us know how lucky most of us in the US are. Pakistani emigres must email and text to find out what is going on at home and whether family members are still alive. The Taliban is indiscriminately rocketing, and has laid down land mines. "Combat between government forces and Taliban fighters is tearing up the remote valley where Khan was born. Hundreds of thousands of residents are fleeing, and hospitals are filled with the injured. Yet journalists and most outsiders have been prevented from entering Swat. News accounts have relied on army briefings.
About 7,000 miles away, here in Brooklyn, amid pizzerias, ice-cream trucks and the clatter of the subway, the biggest Pakistani community in the United States has an ear to the battleground."
To be far from home must be reminiscent of the influx of immigrants from the Mediterranean countries and other Europeans between the mid 1890s up to WW1. During that period, many male heads of households came to America to work to be able to send money back home. There was no instant communication then...only months between letters sent and replies received. It was a period when few had control of much in their lives, unlike today when there are many services available for education, medical and employment...though employment opportunities may have seriously lessened with the recession.
We worry about our service men and women but not their underage children with them at war. Families of people working very risky life or death jobs know how constant anxiety feels.
All jobs are dangerous, some statistically more than others
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