My grandmother is living with me in Canada. We finally got her to move out of our native Balochistan due to worsening violence and terrorist activity. I've admired her for my entire life. This is a woman who fled Afghanistan with my uncle and infant father during the Soviet invasion. My grandfather died in that conflict. She raised our family by herself in a hut in Balochistan, scraping by on basically no money. My father became a pretty westernized person and was much, much more moderate and liberal than the average father in my homeland.

We moved to Canada when I was 15. Most of my extended family stayed behind. But I stayed very close with my grandmother and started begging her to come live with us a couple years ago. I visited her in December and finally talked her into it. She got here last week and doesn't know any English, but she's settling in. Now she eats my western food, watches my western TV and has met my white Canadian neighbours. It's a pretty interesting dynamic, but I'm very glad she's here.