This could go much further -- especially in the conclusion -- but it is also very useful.

ZNet | Afghanistan

by Nikolai Lanine; Globe & Mail; January 13, 2007

Victoria, BC -- I thought I had escaped my past, but Afghanistan caught up with me in Canada. Looking at the flag-draped casket of my wife’s first cousin, Andrew Eykelenboom, a Canadian medic killed in Afghanistan on August 11th, I was overwhelmed with feelings of grief and a surreal displacement of time and space.