And the answer, the impossible answer, was that the little boy had returned, was standing in the doorway asking the question, had simply been gone so long and so far that he no longer recognized his own beginning.

There is something almost unbearable in that to me, the image of my son standing in the one room that had always been his, homesick for a home he was already standing inside, grieving a self he did not know he still was.

That is what they had taken from him, more than the years, more even than the safety: they had taken his knowledge of where he belonged.

A child is supposed to carry, deep in his bones, the simple fact of his own home, his own name, his own people — the unquestioned ground a life is built on.